Carrots, Sticks, and Ethnic Conflict: Rethinking Development Assistance

9. Policy Dimensions: What Can Development Assistance Do?

CHAPTER 9 Policy Dimensions:What Can Development Assistance Do? Milton J. Esman In most countries that receive development assistance—in Asia, Africa, and Latin America; in Eastern Europe and the successor republics of the former Soviet Union—ethnic pluralism has become an important (often the most salient) dimension of politics and the principal source of violent con›ict. The previous chapters address whether this presents a special challenge to the providers of development assistance and, if so, how they should deal with it. Where ethnic divisions have been politicized, can donors continue to assume an integrated national economy where economic growth will raise all ships, a society of individualistic economic maximizers willing and able to participate in market competition, or a government committed to equity among its diverse citizens and subjects? Or must they reach beyond technical rationality, beyond macroeconomic variables, to the actual structures, values, and political dynamics of the societies in which they intervene? Can economic development proceed under conditions of political turbulence induced by ethnic con›ict? If not, must foreign assistance directly confront this reality? And has it the capacity to prevent, alleviate, or help to resolve such disputes? Three decades ago, the reluctance of development assistance agencies to consider the social impacts of their interventions was held responsible for the failure of many projects and for in›icting needless pain on weak and vulnerable populations. As a result, “social soundness,” or socialcultural compatibility, was incorporated into the guidelines of several development assistance agencies (Kottak 1991). Projects and policies were expected to take account of the values, preferences, lifestyles, and capabilities of the publics they affected; the harm in›icted on any group should be held to a minimum. Though social soundness is now a recognized concern of development assistance agencies and is included in their operating instructions, it has yet to be fully institutionalized. It has seldom been 235 extended to such “political” factors as ethnic solidarities and their implications for development assistance. The Importance of Context In developing sensitivity to ethnic pluralism, context is critical. Such simplifying abstractions as those that facilitate macroeconomic analysis and prescription are not useful for evaluating social and political realities. Every societal environment is distinctive, and that distinctiveness at national, regional, and local levels must be appreciated if development assistance is to have bene‹cial rather than detrimental effects on interethnic relations or on relations between ethnic communities and governments . Among the signi‹cant contextual factors are identi‹cation of the principal ethnic communities; their demography—numbers and geographic distribution; their relative power, economic roles, social status, and relations with government; whether interethnic relations are strati‹ed or segmented (members of all ethnic communities are represented at all socioeconomic levels); the extent to which ethnic communities are politicized , mobilized, or passive; divisions or factions within the ethnic communities ; their dominant values and capabilities; evidence of interdependency and of crosscutting af‹liations and memberships; recent history of relationships among ethnic communities and between them and the state. In possession of such basic information, development assistance agencies can equip themselves to estimate the impact of proposed interventions on ethnic politics. By intent or by inadvertence, development assistance produces changes, including changes in economic status, aspirations, and expectations that may increase competition and hostility between ethnic communities . Policies and projects that bene‹t from contextual evaluation can reduce the uncertainties inherent in foreign assistance and in induced societal change. They may enable the adjustment or revision of proposed intervention strategies so that the resulting changes prevent unintended harm or even ameliorate interethnic relations. This is a precondition for the conversion of ethnic sensitivity to viable intervention strategies. The Consequences of Development Assistance The interethnic consequences of development assistance are conditioned by the strategies pursued by aid providers, the orientation of the govern236 Carrots, Sticks, and Ethnic Con›ict ment, and the predispositions of the ethnic communities that are affected. There is nothing predetermined about the interethnic effects of development assistance. A development assistance project or policy may prove to be irrelevant or have no apparent effect. It may not be perceived as affecting the interests of ethnic parties one way or the other. Where the impact threatens to be harmful, development assistance may precipitate mobilization along ethnic lines, as Brysk notes in the case of Ecuador (chap. 8), among publics that had previously been relatively passive . The resultant grievances may even stimulate ethnogenesis, as small communities ‹nd it expedient to...