L5 - culture and history Flashcards
conclusion
- do informal institutions matter?
- yes: ENFORCEMENT AND INTERPRETATION of formal rules by bureaucrats
- yes: COMPLIANCE with formal rules among citizens depends on expectations, trust - does culture affect development?
- probably not: culture is too broad
- and the result of institutional change and development (rather than being independent of them) - what role does history play in development?
- colonial history determined inclusive vs extractive institutional rules
- the slave trade prevented the formation of centralized states
- and weakened informal institutions such as social trust
formal and informal institutions and the relations between the state and society matter, culture matters, they come from HISTORY, are shaped by it
HISTORY IS IMPORTANT
recap institutions
formal institutions are often very similar (e.g. Botswana and Nigeria pretty much same law against expropriation)
but what varies is the implementation (e.g. Nigeria much higher risk of expropriation than Botswana)
strong institutions depend on
- enforcement by the state
- compliance by society
definition institutional strength: degree to which (written) rules are complied with in practice
informal institutions
= socially shared rules, usually unwritten, that are created, communicated and enforced outside of officially sanctioned channels (outside of the state)
- we just know by living in society
- trust in the state is an informal institution that matters for public health actions like vaccination (e.g. in Nigeria if you trust scientists/state etc. you are more likely to get a vaccine)
- corruption is an informal institution
also known as SOCIAL NORMS: e.g. queing, let people off the train before you get on, shake hands after a sports match, don’t question your elders, women should not be seen in public
informal institutions not inherently good or band, not good or bad for development, but it shapes peoples experiences and opportunities
formal rules are the same (national legislation), enforcement is the same (national tax agency), compliance reflect varying informal institutions (perceived social contract with gov, social judgements for evading taxes)
how does enforcement depend on informal institutions?
citizens’ compliance with formal institutional rules also depends on informal institutions
informal institutions can help enforcement, e.g. an informal institution of professionalism (professionalism -> follow rules)
can also lead to non-enforcement (rules are necessarily abstract, dont tell people what to do in what circumstance -> there are gaps in them, bureaucrats always can deviate, reinterpret rules, can be corrupt or a good thing)(flexibility about conditions is important, not always just blind rule-following)
- all formal rules have gaps, ambiguities and interpretations
- enforcing ‘good’ rules (e.g. directing money in the budget to schools)
- ignoring ‘bad’ rules (e.g. not firing a teacher who arrives one minute late)
informal institutions and development - Himachal Pradesh and Uttarkhand
resources are the same, formal institutions are the same, but informal institutions are different
Himachal Pradesh: DELIBERATIVE NORMS
- policies adapted to local context
- listening to local teachers and parents
- e.g. allowing mother teacher associations to run schools (even if this slightly breaks the rules, it is good for development, thus we allow it)
- ‘embeddedness’ from the developmental state
- would expect to perform worse: a bit poorer, less urban etc., but they perform better
Uttarkhand: LEGALISTIC NORMS
- following the letter of the law
- ignoring the messy challenges in reality
- e.g. mother teacher associations banned bc they broke the rules on the timing of classes
- autonomy (meritocratic professional bureaucrats) but no embededness (no connection, no understanding of what’s going on in society)(they follow the law, are not corrupt, but don’t understand what needs to happen for development to work)
informal institutions can play a wide range of roles:
enforcement not always good, it is about a good balance between respecting the rules and being to legalistic and ignoring their spirit
pro development
- enforce formal rules = professional codes of conduct
- evade formal rules = deliberative norms, e.g. leniency in the ‘spirit’ of the law
anti-development
- enforce formal rules: legalistic norms, e.g. firing teachers for being a minute late
- evade formal rules: bribing the police
definition culture
= a stable, coherent set of identities, beliefs and informal institutions in a society
- Anglo-Saxon culture
- Mediterranean culture
- Confucian culture
can culture explain why the ‘West’ developed first or why most of our developmental states are in East Asia? - modernization theory
modernization theory = development requires a shift in values, beliefs and social norms
Parson’s Pattern variables:
(necessary for development acc to him)
- traditional: affective, diffuse roles, particularistic, ascriptive, collective
- modern: neutral, specific roles, universal, meritocratic, individualist
e.g. Protestantism (Weber): strong work ethic, compulsion to save -> investment and development happened first in Northern Europe
e.g. Confucianism (Zhu):
- discipline, obedience -> compliance with formal rules
- high savings rate -> investment
- premium on education
how does culture affect development
but..
- modern culture is subjective
- no single modern culture (perspective changes every x years, e.g. Weber thought Confucianism was bad for development, now we think it is good (Zhu))
- tradition can be harnassed for development (e.g. Japan, Botswana, Rwanda’s Imihigo accountability practice)
- China’s confucian culture was blamed as ‘not rational’, reliant on kinship and focused on ‘positions not profit’ until 1979 - culture is too ‘broad’ a concept
- specific informal institutions matter, but are not limited to any particular culture
- catholic France still had the norms to make institutions work for development - reverse causation: culture is a product of institutions and development, not just its cause
- culture isn’t fixed, it evolves over time
- formal rules anchor what is acceptable
- e.g. north vs south korea (diff culture bc they lived in diff political regimes)
- UN diplomats from more corrupt countries are less likely to pay unenforced parking fines in New York, but just as likely to pay enforced parking fines
should development agencies promote or discourage ‘traditional’ institutions?
traditional institutions not democratic e.g.
modernization approach
- traditional institutions are hierarchical, exploitative and backwards
- e.g. Tanzania’s villagization program 1970s
informal institutions approach
- traditional institutions are the foundation of key informal institutions like trust, conflict mediation, community identiy
- e.g. DFID supported the authority of traditional chiefs in Sierra Leone
the historical roots of institutions and the state
- why was there a reversal of fortunes in the Americas since 1500
reversal of fortunes: 1500 Peru and Mexico most developed, 2018 Canada and US
what happened?
colonialism determined whether institutions were inclusive (North America) or exclusive (South and Central America)
who colonized your country did not matter:
- both Sierra Leone and the USA were colonized by the British
- both Chile and Bolivia were colonized by the Spanish
not just about theft of resources
- development is about productivity (how much technology etc.)
- natural resources can even be a curse
- long-run effects depend on how incentives to invest changed
local conditions and time determined the institutions colonizers set up:
- extractive where they found natural resources and exploited the local population (South America gold -> extractive institutions to steal)
- inclusive where they settled and had to produce their own crops (to survive they had to, they did not find gold or smth)(to incentivize people to work, they needed to protect property rights, to have some dem)
- not by choice: this was the only way to stop colonists running away
e.g. ‘Mita’ system of forced labor in Peru and Bolivia
- weaker land ownership, fewer roads, poorer
- system not longer in place, but the effects still visible in the statistics today (with Mita system poorer)
e.g. establishment of land rights and democracy in the American colonies
definition: path dependency
= the ‘lock-in’ of initial choices that limits future changes
due to:
- inclusive institutions gain legitimacy and support
- extractive institutions concentrate power and wealth, preventing change
- informal institutions and culture adapting (e.g. Canada has trust in gov bc it is successful, if it weren’t trust would decline)
institutions are hard to change, there is a lock in of institutions that makes it hard to have others
- e.g. US if you would autocratize there would be resistance bc people have interest in maintaining it
- e.g. you can’t escape extractive institutions bc there is enough resistance from the elite that are benefitting from the current system and powerful enough to make it stick
- e.g. Mexican Independence bc Spain was becoming to democratic, Mexican elite didn’t want it bc slaves would get power -> elite would use resources -> Mexican independence as conservative movement
how does the intensity of colonial rule also matter for development?
- direct rule: British colonial officers in charge
- indirect rule: indigenous leaders and institutions in charge
they have control , if they do anything wrong the colonizer jumps in
In India the British used both, colonial institutions still persist today:
indirect rule areas are more developed today (less poor, lower IMR, more schools, clinics)
slavery and development
slavery has limited development, particularly in Sub-Saharan Africa (4 slave trades, ~18m enslaved)
countries with more intensive slave trade are poorer today
- at least 30% of the income gap to other developing countries
- after ‘controlling’ for geography (longitude, latitude, rainfall, islands, proximity to coast, natural resources)
- not just a product of past underdevelopment: the wealthiest parts of Africa were the target of slave trading as they had the institutions to support trade (money, a gov)
- another ‘reversal of fortunes’
!correlation is not causation BUT this is not the case here: slave traders went to the richest parts of Africa and made them poor (another reversal of fortunes)
how did the slave trade prevent development in Sub-Saharan Africa?
- a direct loss of human capital (less investment, less labour, less education) = short-term impact
- weakening institutions of property rights - esp labour freedom
- preventing the formation of centralized states (people were divided and fighting amongst themselves -> no centralized state/authority, no capacity to enforce the rules)
- trust: people in slavery affected regions have lower trust today than people in regions that weren’t that affected
in addition to partition of Africa: nations with many ethnic groups and no monopoly of violence
-> now a map of great diversity/confrontation (really diff than dev process Europe)
lack of trust and cooperation (informal institutions): they are being set against each other, they fear they will be sold be others (still say “he will sell you and enjoy it”, “he can make you dissapear”)
definition - dependency theory
= development is constrained by developed countries’ past and current economic and political power (it is not that they are doing something wrong today, it is that they are at a historical disadvantage, they have been kept from development)
(developing countries are being kept poor just bc the fact they started developing later)
historical processes have put developing countries at a permanent disadvantage
locking them into POLITICAL CIRCUMSTANCES that make development difficult
- e.g. past power locked-in through UNSC, contribution-weighted voting in the WB, IMF
placing them a the BOTTOM OF THE ECONOMIC PYRAMID
- e.g. generous, open trade where little at stake (e.g. US AGOA: duty-free acces to Sub-Saharan Africa for e.g. textiles)
- mercantilist in key markets (e.g. US, EU, agriculture): tariffs on imports, forcing developing countries to open to receive exports (they are locked out of markets)
dependency theory vs modernization theory
dependency theory rejects modernization theory:
(“it is the opposite”)
- development is constrained by external factors, not internal traditional culture
- developed countries prevent ‘modernization’ through colonialism and extractive trade
- integration into the world economy is DEPENDENT on developed/colonizing countries
- at best, ‘development’
