An Interview with Paul Collier

YJIA: Your work focuses on the “Bottom Billion,” people in small, impoverished, post-colonial countries that you say are structurally unable to provide certain crucial public goods, most notably security and accountability.  Why have the Bottom Billion remained disconnected from the global economy despite decades of international development aid?

PC: Evidently because in the context of the bottom billion providing the government with money is usually not enough to ensure development.  The international community has not sufficiently balanced money with complementary policies that open opportunities.

YJIA: In your new book Wars, Guns, and Votes you argue that rich countries should support democratic governance in Bottom Billion countries with security guarantees to restore legitimate governments to power in the event of a coup.  Do you think a shift to this kind of development policy is feasible, particularly in light of American involvement in Afghanistan and Iraq?

PC: If a democratically elected government is removed by a coup d’état, prompt international military action to restore the government is entirely legitimate. Given the token nature of many of the armies in the bottom billion, it is also usually straightforward, an example being Australian intervention in East Timor in 2006. However, when the interventions in Iraq and Afghanistan are classified, they are obviously not the same thing. If policy choices cannot be more sophisticated than the dichotomy of isolation/intervention then we are deservedly doomed.

YJIA: The idea of foreign intervention in Bottom Billion countries has attracted a great deal of criticism, including the suggestion that such action borders on neo-imperialism.  What do you say to those who caution against intervention for this reason?  What are the risks involved in sanctioning military intervention as an acceptable development policy tool, and is the international system capable of mitigating them?

PC: Peru has peacekeeping troops in Haiti, and Uganda has troops in Somalia: are they the new imperialists? Trying to force 21st century behaviour into the categories appropriate for the 19th century may make good theatre but is not intellectually defensible. The clearest lessons from the major recent international military errors of omission and commission such as Rwanda, Somalia and Iraq, is surely that we need clearer international rules of engagement. By defining the circumstances in which international intervention is legitimate, we also define those in which it is not.

YJIA: It seems that aid programs designed to provide security and accountability in Bottom Billion countries would require new levels of cooperation among military, humanitarian and political development organizations.  What kind of reform is necessary to enable this kind of cooperation?  How would programs with such a diverse range of actors be evaluated?

PC: In many post-conflict situations aid and peacekeeping are already both being provided by the international community. While they are interdependent they are not well-coordinated. I would like to see an explicit process of mutual commitments covering the post-conflict decade made by the Security Council (for the provision of security), the aid agencies (for the provision of money), and the post-conflict government (for integrity in financial management, and political inclusion). While each situation is unique, the broad principles of such mutual commitments could usefully be set out by the United Nations Peace Building Commission. I would like to see the Special Representative of the Secretary General of the United Nations given greater powers of coordination over other actors during this decade, in effect as the neutral supervisor of these mutual commitments.

YJIA: In what ways, if any, is the academic debate on aid reform relevant to the field?  Where can the lessons and suggestions generated in work like yours enter practice?  What evidence do you see that academic critique is affecting the way that aid organizations operate?

PC: Much of the academic critique of aid is misdirected. Matters such as the evaluation of projects should not be the concern of aid agencies but of governments. For example, to the extent that randomized evaluation is useful in project evaluation, academics should be engaging with governments to help them internalize these methods. The key issue for aid agencies is how best to work with governments of widely varying competences, legitimacy, and intentions. Everybody is happy to propose the aid architecture appropriate for the best-case scenario, but there has been political reluctance to think through the architecture appropriate at the other end of the spectrum. Because the academic debate has been inappropriately focused on evaluation and accountability it has driven donors into largely misplaced effort to show value for money. An analogy would be the disastrous consequences for the management of British social services of the intense exposure of scandals by the tabloid press.

YJIA: What are the essential questions those interested in aid reform should be asking?  What is your research agenda for the next generation of development economists and policy makers?

PC: The societies right at the bottom – the ‘fragile states’ – urgently need radical improvements in the provision of basic social services, they need jobs for ill-educated young men, and they need a political arena uncongenial to violent crooks. One half of the research agenda is what actions by the international community – across the full range of international policies from laws and codes, through trade policies and security interventions, as well as redesigned aid, – would be most effective in promoting these objectives. The other half is, conditional upon the political leadership of such countries wanting to address these problems, what actions should it take.

YJIA: If you were appointed head of DFID (UK’s Department for International Development) tomorrow, what would be your top priorities for reform?

PC: I would insist that DFID’s mandate should include all those government policies that impinge on the bottom billion, not just aid. And I would focus those policies on fragile states. In other words, I would implement the final sentence of The Bottom Billion. Nor would my task be hopeless: DFID has already moved further in this direction than any other development agency.

YJIA: Some say that recent global changes like Obama’s presidency and the international financial crisis provide a unique opportunity for re-thinking aid.  Do you agree?

PC: Absolutely. In Africa, the election of President Obama has switched America from having negligible legitimacy to having more than any other international actor, and indeed more than many African governments. The global crisis has dispelled the fantasy that the international private sector, left to its own devices, would rapidly develop the entire world.