Development first crowd proven wrong again

Yet another example of why the development first theory is wrong:

In the Dictator’s Defense

Aid Watchers is unimpressed with the World Ban’s defense of lending money to the Government of Ethiopia:

…any horrible tyrant can be supported under the assumption that this tyrant is merely a temporary stage in a country “in transition to democracy,” part of an “innate tendency” towards “building institutions.”

Ha! Nice take down!

Dictator holds peaceful election

It’s easy to hold a peaceful election when people are scared of challenging the dictator.

Development first means giving into dictators

Helen Epstein has a great takedown on the development first crowd (i.e., economic development should come before democracy) in the current edition of the New York Review of Books. The subject of her article is Ethiopia, specifically focusing on President Meles Zelawi:

Meles’s Ethiopia is now the subject of an informal experiment to see whether “the big push” approach to African development will work. Its foreign aid receipts, which have tripled since 2000, amounted to some $3 billion in 2008, more than any other nation in sub-Saharan Africa…

Unfortunately, this aid is also subsidizing a regime that is rapidly becoming one of the most repressive and dictatorial on the continent.

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