Did the World Bank's Development Efforts Fail in Kenya?

What does Kenya tell us about economic and social development?:

Did Development Fail in Kenya?, by Jean-Michel Severino, Project Syndicate: A month ago, Kenya fell prey to a sudden burst of post-electoral violence... The intensity and scale of the violence have stunned the world. ...

[T]hings seemed to be going well recently. This year's campaign was exceptionally peaceful... Perhaps more fundamentally, Kenya was unanimously seen as the "good student" of development, sometimes referred to as a symbol of an African renaissance.

The "Kenya vision 2030 framework," a set of ambitious macroeconomic, legal, and constitutional reforms, was being implemented in close partnership with the World Bank. Cherished by the donor community, Kenya received almost $1 billion of official development assistance in 2006 - up by 250% since 2002. Its booming horticulture and tourist industries were hailed as models for other African states...

The country's economic expansion, which averaged 5.5% in the last four years and fuelled the progress of neighbouring economies, appeared to prove that vigorous growth is possible in Africa even without mineral or fossil resources. Today, this economic miracle is up in the air. All is not lost, and there are strong reasons to believe that Kenyans will ... put the country back on its promising track.

Nevertheless, as we sit on the brink of the abyss, it is worth re-examining our assumptions that since poverty breeds conflict, socio-economic development must foster political stability and reduce recourse to violence.

The first lesson we should draw from this month of civil strife is that development, however well-managed, cannot solve everything. Some tensions are deeply ingrained in societies, and peace requires more than any development agency can deliver. Parallel to the growth agenda, there is a specific role for bilateral and multilateral diplomacy to play in support of improved governance.

In fact, development itself generates a number of strains on societies that lie at the very roots of conflict. Fast-paced changes of identity caused by urbanisation, the empowerment of women or exposure to foreign media tend to weaken traditional norms and social networks...

By displacing traditional centres of power, development can nurture collective resentment. Ethnic manipulation is a small step away, which many political leaders are disposed to take. None of this, however, disproves the link between development and peace, or inverts the correlation.

At both the micro and the macro level, development projects and economic growth can do much to alleviate some of the structural causes of political violence. But development professionals, ... should be more conscious of the complex strains brought upon developing societies. ...

Ultimately, the enhanced economic activity that development generates is the only way to reduce inequalities... Moreover, fast-paced but ill-distributed economic growth can be accompanied by programmes that focus on those who are left behind, thereby mitigating grievances.

It is no coincidence that much of Kenya's ongoing violence is occurring in the slums of its large cities. Had more attention been given to the country's most glaring inequalities in access to water, shelter, or jobs, this population might not have chosen violence as an instrument of change.

Let us draw the right lessons from Kenya: socio-economic progress remains our best tool to prevent conflict in the long run. But the relationship between growth and political stability is subtler and less linear than we like to believe.

Development is no miracle solution to violence, and may create its own set of grievances - particularly when done without regard to the abrupt changes it brings to societies.

Kenya isn't an illustration of development failing, but of development at work: complex, powerful, and yet fragile. [Jean-Michel Severino is former World Bank vice president]

Comments

[dissent]

Blather!

"Fast-paced changes of identity caused by urbanisation, the empowerment of women or exposure to foreign media tend to weaken traditional norms and social networks...
By displacing traditional centres of power, development can nurture collective resentment. "

What happened in Kenya is that development didn't displace traditional centers of power, it enhanced them, to the detriment of those outside the "traditional" centers. The problem is INEQUALITY and related corruption. For heaven's sake, by his argument, Nigeria's problem is too many liberated women and weaker tribal ties, instead of exploitation, inequality, corruption on massive scale.

[zinc]

There is no hope for the dark continent. They are doomed to subservile, ethnic, muslim living. Send them a few once in awhile and move on. Africa doesn't exist unless a first world country dicovers resources there.

[Bruce Wilder]

Those people back in the 1960's, who were warning about the potentially catastrophic consequences of overpopulation?

They were right.

[hari]

The relation between growth and political stability is fundamental to East African development - which by definition includes Mauritius (in the Indian Ocean).

First, I must acknowledge my role in the region during Lome III (1985-90), as ACP/EC advisor on Trade and Development. I held my first trade development seminar with the private sector in Nairobi and used case studies to demonstrate how development could move forward regionally and possible intergation of trade and industrial flows from EC and else where. Mauritious is a successful development case study.

I've made remarks here previously that corruption, at high official level(s), disrupted efforts to maintain a serious policy framework of programmes and budget commitments. Yet, Kenya has an active private sector which includes Asian part of the local population.

The real problem, in my view, is the constraint of post-colonial political setup (UK mandate!) built along the age old tribal divisions. The British Whitehall Mandarins have done the same all over the Empire - see the exacerbated political/military confrontation in South Asia!

Therefore, first, find a solution to the tribal divisions not only in Kenya but all over the Sub-Sharan continent. Because we can't deliver successful development programmes which fundamentally seek to blur the triabal and other racial divisions - without the consent of the Sovereign!

[hari]

For example, if you want to understand problems incurred by US foreign policy in Afghanistan and Iraq, you don't have to go too far to find it in the structure and function of the tribal society and its inherent constraints.

[anne]

"For example, if you want to understand problems incurred by US foreign policy in Afghanistan and Iraq, you don't have to go too far to find it in the structure and function of the tribal society and its inherent constraints."

Rubbish, hateful prejudiced rubbish. Imagine, we invade and occupy and continually smash a country and people to bits and we have the bloody nerve to speak of tribal this and tribal that and tribal the other. Even now, Iraqis should be streaming through the streets all hugs and kisses for America's shock and awe, just to show America there are no Iraqis tribals. Tribals are the problem, not wanton American destruction. Tribals, tribals, tribals.

The problem is Iraq is America, not tribals which set down a people as less than we are.

[Robinia]

Colonial population displacement and land-grabs can't be "solved" by urbanization and development. People have waged war over access to land and land-based resources (in Kenya, water) for millenia, and will doubtless continue to do so (i.e., McCain's vision of occupation of Iraq lasting for a century). Inequality, xenophobia, corruption and despotism are not in any way the exclusive province of the underdeveloped, and war is ubiquitous in both developed and underdeveloped countries (although developed countries are able to afford to stage their wars in remote locations-- like with so many other industries, they can outsource the negative repercussions of war to the neighborhoods of their employees, and place the industry at some remove, so as to not disturb their "peace").

Highly recommend reading Wangari Maathai's autobiography "Unbowed" for some historical context on the situation in Kenya.

[anne]

"There is no hope for the dark continent."

There is only no hope for such a person who spouts such prejudiced rubbish. No hope at all. Of course, we are the the people of light and the people of light are the bestest of people. The rest are people of darkness.

[hari]

Anne -

If you want to understand Africa and help them then you must be open to objective criteria based on tribal and race based organizational structures which foreigners must understand if they want to help.

Your attitude is of the Old Colonials - who refused to deal with existing social constraints to development - and chose to leave them behind after exploiting the land and the resources.

[anne]

Hari:

"If you want to understand Africa and help them then you must be open to objective criteria based on tribal and race based organizational structures which foreigners must understand if they want to help."

Agreed; learning of geographic-social distinctions is critical. Simply labelling political conflict as tribal covers an unwillingness to examine the roots of the conflict. The political conflict in Kenya could easily be the conflict still found through what was once Yugoslavia.

[hari]

Anne -

Yugoslavia was an Ottoman Empire product with its Greek Orthodox and Muslim adherents united under a single Tito flag. Remember Stalin considered Yougolavia and Tito the most revisionist regime in the Comintern - was prepared to liquidate its secret service.

British colonialism and its Mandarins never lifted a finger against tribal leaders, including the Mau Mau leader of Kenya, who became the first President of Kenya.

[anne]

The divisions that were politically forged and manipulated through Yugoslavia were initially geographic and religious among Christians, Catholic and Orthodox, then geographic and Catholic, Orthodox, Muslim, then geographic again, political divisions being increasingly forged and manipulated. Where there had been decades of religious integration, from neighborhoods to schools to marriage, there came to be divisions which were purposely cultivated.

I wonder, by the way, whether there was still a significant Jewish population as the Yugoslavian conflict began and if so how they have fared.

[anne]

Kenya has a President who has inordinate power, the power to immediately enrich and impoverish. So who is President can mean well-being or misery for large numbers of people, and who is President can seem desperately important especially in a poor country. The elections of legislators were considered fair and were largely uneventful, but not so for the intensely powerful Presidency. Being a legislator is personally important, since legislators are wildly well-off, but of far less political consequence.

We have a Presidential conflict in which significant numbers of people, often with terribly little, can think the decision critical for their well-being.

[anne]

The arbitrary ethnic divisions that are being played on are of political-economic consequence. By using language carefully, we can be forced to think of where the division stem from and how fostered rather than thinking the problem in Yugoslavia was Catholic and Orthodox. Notice, Muslim was irrelevant for quite a while. But, was religion ever the issue?

[hari]

Kenya's ethnic divisions are historical and not arbitrary or whatnot. The Mau Mau was Kenyatta and his ethnic people!
The British handover to Kenyatta was recognition of his ethnic power in the country. There's no end to this ethnic division in Kenay after +50years of independence.

[hari]

Anne -

I've a secret to tell you!
The bestman at my wedding was a Yugoslav colleague and an international lawyer. So, you must understand that I miss the old country and its culture of food and hospitality. My favourite dish is chebab chichi and rashnichi - all made from marinated beef and pork.

Of course, there was a Jewish population. They're mostly in Bosnia (children of Abhraham!).

Don't forget how WWI started in Sarajevo (at the time part of Austro=Hungarian Kingdom).

[anne]

Agreed; now we must ask why ethnic self-identification has so persisted in Kenya, as I have never understood the same for Yugoslavia especially a communist Yugoslavia which had to have at least superficially emphasized secularism.

The winter Olympics ware held in Yugoslavia when I was too young to remember, but I have several times been told there was a stunning beauty about Bosnia.

What we need to do in thinking of what makes for peace is to rid ourselves of stereotypes that makes for hopelessness. Right now America needs to be working for peace in several areas of Africa, but we are just not.

I am thinking....

[anne]

What I do not even understand is why a Yugoslavia should have broken apart geographically but never so Kenya. I am not sure the Kenya-Yugoslavia metaphor is even useful more than to break apart stereotypical thinking.

[anne]

What I noticed in the New York Times reporting on Kenya, by the fine team, was that the conflict has never been reported in "tribal" terms. The term was never used, which has struck me several times. The reporters are struggling to understand, and allow for others to better learn.

[hari]

Anne -

We can say GOP is a spiritual home of political tribalism -
top down!

Demos are bewitched and bothered by their plurality and thinking-head of liberal contortions.

So, in way, there's some of the old tribal behaviour even in an industrialized nation - think about it!

[hari]

Yugolavia broke down simply because Tito's death - he was a Croat - left a huge political vaccum that no one could readily/easily fill. I also think as income disparity increased between Serbs, Croats and the rest, it was only choice left and breakdown of Republic into its ethnic parts
unfortunately became a realistic alternative.

My colleague was married to a Croat. Can you imagine how mixed the Yugoslav social structure was before ethnic cleansing?

[JRip]

Did the World Bank fail in Kenya?

Remember the 1965 Watts Riots?
34 dead
1000+ injured
about 4000 arrested

Come forward a bit

1992 Rodney King Riot

53 dead

Right here in the US of A

Getting along is difficult.
Getting to know each other is taking a long time.
Do not pull back from the effort.

[One Salient Oversight]

There is no hope for the dark continent. They are doomed to subservile, ethnic, muslim living. Send them a few once in awhile and move on. Africa doesn't exist unless a first world country dicovers resources there.

That was the sort of argument that people used to say about India a few decades ago.

The United Nations Human Development Report (Here, pdf, 12.0mb) is a reasonably good way of determining how countries are progressing over time. On page 236 (page 251/399 of pdf file) it shows how Kenya's HDI has been falling since 1990.

( grants a number between 0.000 and 1.000 for each nation. The number gives equal weight to GDP-PPP per Capita, literacy levels and average lifespan. A number below 0.500 indicates a poor third world nation; a number between 0.500 and 0.800 indicates a developing nation; a number of 0.800 and above indicates a developed nation. America has a HDI of 0.951. Industrialised Western nations generally have a HDI above 0.900)

Kenya's HDI has fallen thus:
1990: 0.556
1995: 0.544
2000: 0.529
2005: 0.521

It needs to be pointed out that the majority of countries around the world have growing HDIs. In fact, a falling HDI can be found in places like Zimbabwe, Kenya, South Africa and Chad (the latter nation of course is now undergoing a civil war).

Although the HDI provides only a "crude" number, I think that any long term decline indicates potential for civil strife.

In the case of Kenya, obviously economic growth was not raising the standard of living of ordinary Kenyans. GDP per capita may have been increasing but education and/or health were obviously declining. Given the decrease of Kenya's HDI since 1990, it is obvious that something was going badly wrong in Kenya's society.

[anne]

December 2001 -

31,293,000 total population of Kenya.
15,333,000 population of adults 15 to 49.

2,300,000 adults HIV/AIDS positive.
15.0% adult rate of infection.
60.9% of infected adults are women 15 to 49.
12.45 - 18.67% range of women 15 to 24 infected.
220,000 children 0 to 14.

190,000 AIDS deaths in 2001.
890,000 AIDS orphans cumulatively to 2002.

[My initial data development, with infection and derivative rates likely over-estimated by 15% to 20%. Nonetheless meaningful in terms of development indicator monitoring.]

[anne]

Add to AIDS and problematic health care to begin with, especially for infants, a model for which in Kenya should have been found in China and Cuba, lack of free and subsidized public schooling, unwillingness to subsidize agriculture which in failing drove migrants to Nairobi in particular, to poverty ridden and violence prone and malaria ridden expanses.

[Winston]

"Simply labelling political conflict as tribal covers an unwillingness to examine the roots of the conflict."

Anne, you immediately and unreasonably rule out the possibility that the real roots of this conflict might be tribal. This represents a tendency among white liberals to downplay the influence of tribal cleavages in African social life, lest they sound racist. But to remain open to the idea that a conflict might be "tribal" is not racist: it is not an admission that Africans are a backward people who are unable to transcend their small-minded tribal loyalties. Rather, it is an admission that African social values are fundamentally unlike those of the West, that many Africans regard their tribes as salutary social institutions worth defending. To reduce tribes to nothing more than means of political manipulation is to trample on the social values of ordinary Africans. And it will get us nowhere in solving Africa's problems. For only by appreciating the role of tribes in African societies can we design pluralistic or corporatist political institutions that will minimize the risk of future conflict.

[Winston]

My father's side of the family is Gambian, by the way -- proud members of the Mandinka people. So I am speaking partly out of personal experience.

[Winston]

"Therefore, first, find a solution to the tribal divisions not only in Kenya but all over the Sub-Sharan continent. Because we can't deliver successful development programmes which fundamentally seek to blur the triabal and other racial divisions - without the consent of the Sovereign!"

Very nicely put, Hari. In ethnically fragmented societies, development in the absence of pluralistic political institutions tends to exacerbate conflict.

[Bupa]

anne, on jews in former yugoslavia see this excellent piece in December's New Yorker

http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2007/12/03/071203fa_fact_brooks

[Bupa]

sorry to stick to the Yugoslavia tangent, but I know much more about it than Kenya. I've lived in Croatia and traveled all over what was once Yugoslavia. I still travel throughout southeast europe several times a year. I'll be in Kosovo next week to witness the birth of the most contentious state in recent history.

one correction hari, Tito was half Croatian and half Slovene.

Most people I've met in southeast europe are secular. Religion has only a tangential role. It was one of several things which distinguish one group of people from another. Hatreds amongst the peoples of southeast europe are deeply rooted and based on the long contingencies of history. Borders have moved many times over the centuries. All sides have atrocities to remember...some more recent than others.

Despite the region's violent history and the tensions which might follow in the wake of Kosovo's independence, I'm fairly optimistic that in 25 years the region will have left its violent past behind. Like much of the planet, global warming is the emerging threat for southeast europe. Last summer's drought, fires and heat are likely to become more common. Water could become a scarce resource as the children of southeast europe grow old.

[hari]

Bupa -

Thanks for the correction. The EU has opened its doors to the former (Yugoslav) states and there's adequate incentive in the Balkan intergration initiative which, I hope, will overcome the disparate segments of former Yugoslavia. Slovenia, as you know, is currently in the chair of EU-27 and will hopefully succeed in facilitating the intergration of Serbia and Kosovo - eventually.

[anne]

Bupa:

"Most people I've met in southeast Europe are secular. Religion has only a tangential role. It was one of several things which distinguish one group of people from another. Hatreds amongst the peoples of southeast europe are deeply rooted and based on the long contingencies of history. Borders have moved many times over the centuries."

Which of course tells me how complex ethnicity can be, and how little we know when we think we know what ethnicity is.

[anne]

Bupa and Hari,

Thank you; this is interesting and please add ideas along with suggestions. I will read the article by Geraldine Brooks in the December New Yorker.

So the presumption here is that we make and unmake ethnicity as a social construct, often as a political construct.

[anne]

We arbitrarily make and unmake ethnicity but are so completely caught up in what is ethnicity that we can be destroyed by it or allow it to destroy others or us. What is interesting about Yugoslavia or Czechoslovakia is that the countries have recently split apart where African countries of completely arbitrary historical borders have generally persisted.

[hari]

Don't forget the African Map was cut up at a Berlin meeting - exactly when I've forgotten - but at turn of 20th cent or even earlier.

Eithiopia is unigue and perhaps more unlike rest of Africa in terms of culture and tradition. It's a shame the Cold War was used to polarize the domestic setup.

I've fond memory of my visits in Addis and coastal/mountain regions of prisitine nature(at the time!).

[anne]

Hari:

"Ethiopia is unigue and perhaps more unlike the rest of Africa in terms of culture and tradition. It's a shame the Cold War was used to polarize the domestic setup."

Ethiopia is really the only African country never actually colonized, though much effected by countries ranging from Italy to America, and interestingly a country whose borders have been and are quite unsettled. Likely more than Asia and definitely more than Latin America, Africa was subject to Cold War contesting that at the least has meant much of the continent is awash in weapons.

[anne]

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/20/books/review/Fugard-t.html?ref=books

January 20, 2008

All the World's a Page
By LISA FUGARD

PEOPLE OF THE BOOK
By Geraldine Brooks.

When Hanna Heath, a manuscript conservator, first touches the centuries-old Hebrew codex known as the Sarajevo Haggadah, she feels a "strange and powerful" sensation, something "between brushing a live wire and stroking the back of a newborn baby's head." The manuscript is small, the binding soiled and scuffed, but its lavish illuminations — miniature scenes "as interpreted in the Midrash," created "at a time when most Jews considered figurative art a violation of the commandments" — are stunning. It's the spring of 1996 in Sarajevo, and Hanna has been called in to examine the book before it's put on display.

To understand the work of the craftsmen who created the medieval texts she restores, Hanna has made her own gold leaf and created white pigment by covering lead bars with the dregs of old wine and animal dung. She's familiar with "the intense red known as worm scarlet ... extracted from tree-dwelling insects" and the blue, "intense as a midsummer sky, obtained from grinding precious lapis lazuli." Looking closely at the parchment of the Haggadah, she can tell it comes from "the skin of a now-extinct breed of thick-haired Spanish mountain sheep." These lush details, at once celebratory and elegiac, will appeal to the sort of reader who picks up a book just for the feel of it.

Hanna is opposed to "chemical cleanups" and "heavy restorations," believing that damage and wear reveal much about how and where a manuscript has been used. "To restore a book to the way it was when it was made is to lack respect for its history," she tells Ozren Karaman, the Muslim librarian who risked his life to save the Haggadah while Sarajevo was being shelled. During her examination of the manuscript, Hanna finds a fragment of an insect's wing and a small white hair, which she slips into glassine envelopes for later analysis. These clues and other oddities — where are the book's clasps? — are the springboard for Geraldine Brooks's panoramic third novel, "People of the Book."

Brooks, who won the Pulitzer Prize for her previous novel, "March," has drawn her inspiration from the real Sarajevo Haggadah. As she explains in an afterword, little is known about this book, except that it has been saved from destruction on at least three occasions: twice by Muslims and once by a Roman Catholic priest. Building on these fragments of information, Brooks has created a fictional history that moves to Sarajevo in 1940, then back to late-19th-century Vienna, 15th-century Venice, Catalonia during the Spanish Inquisition and finally Seville in 1480, the new home of the artist responsible for the Haggadah's illuminations....

[Zero]

Anne Dear. Most of the current problems in Serbia and Kosovo can be traced to Bill Clintons illegal bombing in 1999.

You rail on against the Iraq war, but you never acknowledge the illegal acts in 1999 by YOUR tribe. Given your hateful and vicious language and inability to debate, you are exhibiting the same characteristics at home that gets people in trouble in other parts of the world.

[anne]

"There is no hope for the dark continent. They are doomed to subservile, ethnic, ------ living. Send them a few dollars once in awhile and move on."

Always vicious prejudice, all the time. Imagine my surprise.

[anne]

http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9A0CEED6143DF933A15751C0A96F958260

February 20, 1999

No 'Stonewalling' on Kosovo Peace, Milosevic Is Told
By ELIZABETH BECKER

President Clinton warned President Slobodan Milosevic of Yugoslavia today not to ''stonewall'' a peace settlement in Kosovo and threatened to bomb Serbia if Mr. Milosevic missed the Saturday deadline for an end to the peace talks.

Intent on increasing the pressure on Mr. Milosevic, Mr. Clinton said it would be a mistake to extend the noon deadline, and praised the courage of the negotiators who represent the Albanian Kosovars at the talks in Rambouillet, France.

Mr. Clinton set no clear timetable for military action but offered a clear message to Mr. Milosevic, who refused to even meet the American Ambassador, Christopher R. Hill. Mr. Clinton said allowing an agreement and letting NATO peacekeepers into Serbia was the best way to guarantee that Kosovo remained part of Serbia.

With President Jacques Chirac of France at his side at a news conference at the White House, Mr. Clinton emphasized that an agreement, which the Albanian Kosovar delegates have endorsed in broad outline, would compel the Kosovars to give up their demands for independence for at least three years.

Mr. Clinton said the two NATO allies stood ''united in our determination to use force, if Serbia fails to meet its previous commitment to withdraw forces from Kosovo and if it fails to accept the peace agreement.''

''I don't think there is an option'' other than NATO air strikes, Mr. Clinton added.

Mr. Milosevic, who has remained in Belgrade during the negotiations in France, repeated that he would not accept an international peacekeeping force in Kosovo. He refused to meet Mr. Hill, saying he would not surrender Kosovo, ''even at the price of bombing.''

Earlier in the day, Mr. Clinton telephoned Prime Minister Tony Blair of Britain. The two agreed that Mr. Milosevic ''should be under no illusion about our resolve should he prevent a deal'' on Kosovo, a spokesman for the White House said.

At his news conference, Mr. Clinton emphasized that the NATO allies would not allow Mr. Milosevic to talk his way out of a troop withdrawal, as he did in October.

Four months ago, NATO also threatened air strikes if Serbia did not pull back its forces after a summer offensive that had led to the killing of more than 1,000 Kosovo civilians, the destruction of 200 villages and the flood of 400,000 refugees driven from their homes.

After nine straight days of negotiations in Belgrade between the American envoy, Richard C. Holbrooke, and Mr. Milosevic, NATO ended up settling for an unarmed monitoring mission rather than a full withdrawal to the agreed-on level of 15,000 Serbian troops and police....

[anne]

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/16/world/europe/16serbia.html

September 16, 2007

Serbs See Rift With West if Kosovo Gains Independence
By NICHOLAS WOOD

BELGRADE, Serbia — Eight years after it was hit by NATO airstrikes, the former Yugoslav Defense Ministry still lies in ruins on Knez Milos Street, a reminder of what the Serbs consider unwarranted aggression by the West in the war over the Serbian province of Kosovo.

Their anger is flaring again as Western governments, particularly the United States, speak of recognizing Kosovo this year as an independent state. The governments say that in the absence of reconciliation, doing so would help stabilize the region by officially separating the Albanian-dominated province from the rest of Serbia.

Serbian politicians, even pro-Western ones, worry that a recognition of Kosovo would introduce a new era of Serbian isolation and hostility toward the West, leaving Europe with little sway here.

Since the war ended, in 1999, Europe has tried to integrate Serbia into NATO and the European Union. As a regional power, Serbia expected an easy path into Europe, especially since many of its neighbors have joined the union.

But Europe has also demanded that Serbs make a fresh start by chasing down important war crimes suspects wanted at the tribunal for the former Yugoslavia in The Hague. Serbia has complied only fitfully.

If Western countries recognize Kosovo, then “we do not need the European Union,” Velimir Ilic, Serbia’s minister of infrastructure and an important political ally of the Serbian prime minister, said in an interview. “It means they are not our friends.”

He added, “It is a tough choice, but Serbia has its pride and its integrity.”

Mr. Ilic, who has a reputation as a populist politician, is the only senior government official to issue such a statement. But others agree that a nationalist reaction would chill relations with the West.

A widespread recognition of Kosovo “could lead to a chain of events with unforeseen consequences, including the loss of Serbia’s European perspective,” Leon Koen, the former leader of Serbia’s negotiating team on Kosovo, wrote in the daily newspaper Dnevnik.

Serbia’s senior diplomat for European integration predicted that whatever support there was among Serbs for arresting war crime suspects and sending them to The Hague would vanish if Kosovo were recognized....

[Bupa]

Zero, your name is very appropriate.

I'll be strolling down Bill Clinton Boulevard next week in Pristina witnessing the celebration of Kosovo's citizens following their declaration of independence. They named the main street in their capital after Clinton because he is viewed as the hero who stopped the murder, rape and ethnic cleansing carried out by Milosevic.

America's support for Kosovo is bipartisan. One of the few bipartisan issues left after nearly 8 years of the worst Administration in American history. Still, to their credit, the Bush administration will ensure that the US is one of the first countries in the world to recognize Kosovo's independence.

This certainly will be a bitter pill for the Serbs to swallow. They have a lot of good arguments in their favor, but they can't stop this train. Hopefully, they'll get over it as time passes and resume their path to EU membership and recognize the great potential that Serbia has.

[anne]

I have just been reading reading of Yugoslavia since 1990, and will read considerably more and follow events in Kosovo and Serbia closely in coming days, but would welcome aditional comments as I form a better sense of and opinion about the events than I presently have.

[anne]

Bupa, please describe and discuss Pristina on your visit when the chance comes. I will read all you suggest.

Zero, please suggest any reading on Serbia and Kosovo and I will read what you suggest.

[4degreesnorth]

@Anne,

you need to read - or read again - Pr Acemoglu's papers on the reasons behind the successful growth of Botswana compared to many other African countries, not least the way its independence leader wisely chose to share among various tribes the benefits of diamonds.

The fact that colonizers bear responsibility for many of Africa's ills does not imply that African ethnic and social divisions bear no major responsibility. We see both on the ground all the time.

[anne]

4DegreesNorth"

"The fact that colonizers bear responsibility for many of Africa's ills does not imply that African ethnic and social divisions bear no major responsibility. We see both on the ground all the time."

I would only change the emphasis in that ethnicity here as much as in southern Africa is socially constructed. Now, social constructs have a reality, and the reality can be beneficial or harmful, but we need not to decide that a particular social construct is a given for Nigeria rather than that a means by which geographic political dominance has been gained and used to further dominance.

[anne]

http://www.salon.com/tech/htww/2006/09/08/botswana/print.html?blog=/tech/htww/2006/09/08/botswana/index.html

September 8, 2006

The Battle of Dimawe, an African Whodunit: The Botswana economic miracle.
By Andrew Leonard

Who won the battle of Dimawe between the Boers and the Tswana in 1852? Dr. David Livingstone, the famous Scottish missionary, lived nearby at the time. No fan of the Boers, he wrote that the Tswana, under the leadership of their canny chieftain, Kgosi Kgolo Sechele, managed to defend themselves until nightfall and then slipped away in the dark, albeit suffering the loss of hundreds of captured women and children. But some modern historians declare that the Tswana defeated the Boers outright, with the help of guns and a cannon stockpiled by Sechele.

One thing is not in dispute: the advance of the Boers from their south African stronghold stopped there. And the borderlines of what eventually became the modern country of Botswana were formed.

As development economists survey the wreckage that is sub-Saharan Africa, the battle of Dimawe rages on. Because Botswana is an African mystery -- for 30 years, from the 1960s to the 1990s, it boasted the fastest growing economy in the world. In 1965, at the moment of independence, it was the third poorest nation in the world. In 2001, per capita income was $7,280, placing it squarely in the ranks of the world's upper-middle-income nations, leaps and bounds beyond the vast majority of its sub-Saharan brethren. It is rated the least corrupt country in Africa, has a rock-solid credit rating, and substantial foreign reserves.

A country the size of Texas with a population of 1.6 million, Botswana is no paradise. Inequality and unemployment are high, and AIDS is a nightmare. But in a continent of failed states, Botswana is a beacon. How did it do it? And can its example be copied? ...

[hari]

Putin and Russia is the reason for Serbian inability to make a deal with EU on Kosovo independence. As long as they can count on Russian support, Kosovo will be a still-born child of EU and USA.

[anne]

http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=244582

September, 2000

The Colonial Origins of Comparative Development: An Empirical Investigation
By Daron Acemoglu, Simon Johnson, and James A. Robinson

Abstract:

We exploit differences in European mortality rates to estimate the effect of institutions on economic performance. Europeans adopted very different colonization policies in different colonies, with different associated institutions. In places where Europeans faced high mortality rates, they could not settle and were more likely to set up extractive institutions. These institutions persisted to the present. Exploiting differences in European mortality rates as an instrument for current institutions, we estimate large effects of institutions on income per capita. Once the effect of institutions is controlled for, countries in Africa or those closer to the equator do not have lower incomes.

[anne]

http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=258512

February, 2001

Institutions and Geography: Comment on Acemoglu, Johnson and Robinson (2000) By John W. McArthur, Jeffrey D. Sachs

Abstract:

This paper responds to findings by Acemoglu, Johnson and Robinson (2000) that suggest weak institutions, but not physical geography and correlates like disease burden, explain current variation in levels of economic development across former colonies. Using similar data and expanding the sample of countries analyzed, our regression analysis shows that both institutions and geographically-related variables such as malaria incidence or life expectancy at birth are strongly linked to gross national product per capita. We argue that the evidence presented in Acemoglu, Johnson and Robinson is likely limited by the inherently small sample of ex-colonies and the limited geographic dispersion of those countries.

[anne]

Here is how the moral dilemma was presented:

http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9B0CE3D8143DF931A35754C0A96F958260

July 2, 1999

A Bad Year for the World's Border Guards
By TINA ROSENBERG

Among its other casualties, the war in Kosovo punctured the sanctity of state sovereignty -- the idea that a nation's actions within its borders are its own business. This concept has organized international relations since the Treaty of Westphalia in 1648. That year, as Europe's religious empires crumbled, the Continent's powerful states agreed to respect each other's sovereignty, founding the modern state system. That has now been eroding for 50 years, but the events of the past year have been a blow like no other, and one that should be welcomed.

Sovereignty's worst day in memory was undoubtedly March 24. NATO began bombing Serbia, probably the first multinational attack designed primarily to stop violations of international law within a country's borders. The same day, England's high court ruled that London could send Augusto Pinochet to Spain to be tried for crimes in Chile, as both European countries had signed an international convention promising to prosecute torturers, no matter where their crimes took place.

Then on May 27, the war crimes tribunal for the former Yugoslavia announced a warrant for the arrest of Slobodan Milosevic. It was the first indictment of a sitting head of state for violations of international law. A year ago, 120 nations, not including the United States, signed a treaty establishing an international criminal court, in which international law trumps national sovereignty.

While sovereignty has been fading since the end of World War II, until recently governments have in general ceded powers voluntarily. European nations have voted their way into defense, political and monetary unions. Globalization has been bringing down economic borders, but whether to open up has been a nation's choice, although one influenced by substantial economic pressure. Peacekeepers and election observers are found around the world, but they do not arrive without the blessing of their hosts.

This year's attacks on sovereignty had widespread approval, but not from Mr. Milosevic or Mr. Pinochet. That is a shift toward respecting a nation's sovereignty only when it respects the rights of its people as international law defines them.

That idea has been growing since the end of World War II. The Nuremberg tribunal introduced the concept that leaders' treatment of their own people was subject to international prosecution. The United Nations -- organized around sovereignty -- also created one of the most important tools for the assault on sovereignty today, the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Nations also signed the Geneva Conventions and a treaty promising to punish genocide carried out anywhere in the world. These laws were never enforced because cold-war politics intervened.

Now there are the first stirrings of enforcement....

[4degreesnorth]

@anne

as a matter of fact, the specific paper I had in mind was this one:
An African Success Story: Botswana1
Daron Acemoglu2 Simon Johnson3 James A. Robinson4
July 11, 2001 (sorry, I don't have the academic reference, though i've got the paper)

though obviously the colonial origins of development is interesting too in this context.

And before you mention it, yes, all is not well in Botswana. The last three lines of the above paper:
"We end with a note of caution. While the economic achievements of Botswana have
been impressive, there remain serious problems, particularly with respect to the incidence of
AIDS, the persistence of inequality, and high urban unemployment. It remains to be seen if
Botswana’s institutions will be strong enough to address these issues and sustain growth."

[4degreesnorth]

being 4degreesnorth...

[anne]

http://ideas.repec.org/p/cpr/ceprdp/3219.html

February, 2002

An African Success Story: Botswana
By James Alan Robinson, Daron Acemoglu, and Simon Johnson

Abstract

Botswana has had the highest rate of per capita growth of any country in the world in the last 35 years. This occurred despite adverse initial conditions, including minimal investment during the colonial period and high inequality. Botswana achieved this rapid development by following orthodox economic policies. How Botswana sustained these policies is a puzzle because typically in Africa, 'good economics' has proved not to be politically feasible. In this Paper we suggest that good policies were chosen in Botswana because good institutions, which we refer to as institutions of private property, were in place. Why did institutions of private property arise in Botswana, but not other African nations? We conjecture that the following factors were important. First, Botswana possessed relatively inclusive pre-colonial institutions, placing constraints on political elites. Second, the effect of British colonialism on Botswana was minimal, and did not destroy these institutions. Third, following independence, maintaining and strengthening institutions of private property were in the economic interests of the elite. Fourth, Botswana is very rich in diamonds, which created enough rents that no group wanted to challenge the status quo at the expense of 'rocking the boat'. Finally, we emphasize that this situation was reinforced by a number of critical decisions made by the post-independence leaders, particularly Presidents Khama and Masire.

[anne]

Again, I am pleased with Botswana's progress and reasonably optimistic but not sure the economic success is as transferable as Nelson Mandela thought Singapore's was. There has been a curious inattention to soft and hard infrastructure that makes Botswana too dependent mining however valuable the mining continues to be.

There is no need to innumerate problems for Botswana, I understand this as well, and know the country is worth considerable African attention and study. I am thinking....