Initially I was among those uncertain elections should even reasonably be held in a nation still pulling itself together, yet there is much to be said for moving on and the positive impact of business as usual.  A successful election in the wake of a society-collapsing natural disaster is sincerely something to be proud of.  The nation of Haiti and its new President have displayed an encouraging degree of endurance in this success.  The promises made on the campaign trail were bold, and yet precisely the sort of changes people might hope for in such an impoverished nation.  As with any successful election, particularly in such circumstances President Martelly is sure to have the grace and favor of his people for a time, but the road ahead is equally certain to be a very difficult one.

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I have a piece up at The Will and the Wallet on the election’s significance and relevance to U.S. foreign aid, but I just want to take second to make a few totally obvious predictions:

• the lack of comprehensive reissuing of Haiti’s national ID cards (required to vote) will creative countless problems and reports of identity fraud
• reports of fraud, vote-rigging, and general corruption will inevitably run rampant
• violence is likely to erupt in crowded, urban areas such as the capitol city of Port-au-Prince
• between overall voter apathy, limited voter education, and the recent cholera outbreak, total voter turnout will be extremely low

This may be one of the most highly-anticipated elections ever–putting a hell of a lot of pressure on a poor island nation that has held fewer than five ostensibly democratic elections in its history.

Moreover, whoever wins the election will essentially be rebuilding its government from the ground up. S/he will also be responsible for building up Haiti’s nonexistent absorptive capacity for handling the influx of aid money that is slowly materializing.

My concern is that the international community will be quick to criticize and slow to support, which is the last thing that Haiti needs right now. Problems are inevitable, that’s a given. The international community, however, could make a huge difference by offering electoral support in the form of specialists to adjudicate disputes and strengthen the rule of law before the run-off election between the final two candidates scheduled for January 16, 2011.

I’m not naively optimistic here–it’s going to be a mess. But I am cautiously hopeful that with the right kind of support from the international community, Haiti can turn this election into the catalyst it needs to move its recovery process forward.

Image courtesy of Life.com.

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PS: It’s not all our fault.

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Haiti has made little progress in rebuilding in the five months since its earthquake, because of an absence of leadership, disagreements among donors and general disorganization…

[The] picture is grim: Millions displaced from their homes, rubble and collapsed buildings still dominating the landscape. Three weeks into hurricane season, with tropical rains lashing the capital daily, construction is being held up by land disputes and customs delays while plans for moving people out of tent-and-tarp settlements [have stalled]…

In all, just 2 percent of the $5.3 billion in near-term aid pledges have actually been delivered…

Yeah, but Haiti was like five crises ago. I am sure donors meant it at the time and its the thought that counts, isn’t it?

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Since then [April 2009] – in addition to the two wars, economic crises, and global flu pandemic — it’s been hard to keep up the pressing and immediate challenges on the Obama administration’s to-do list. We’ve seen natural disasters (Haiti’s earthquake, Nashville’s flooding, Oklahoma’s tornadoes), man-made disasters (the BP oil spill), default crises (Dubai, Greece, Ireland, Spain, Portugal), foreign policy crises (North Korea, Israel), and attempted terrorist attacks (Abdulmutallab on Christmas, Shahzad in Times Square).

I can only assume that it’s fairly common for President Obama to wake up, receive his morning briefings, and say, “You’ve got to be kidding me.”

Well, nobody made him run for president.

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Excuse me, what possible agenda could the US have in Haiti other than aid and reconstruction? It has no natural resources, is one of the poorest countries on earth, and is strategically irrelevant for US national security. What on earth does the US have to gain from aiding Haiti at this moment? Perhaps you say praise. Well, this may be true, but how does the US gain praise if it is turning away aid from other countries? Maybe the US is doing it because it fears mass exodus of Haitians to the US. This is plausible, but if this is the reason, the US agenda is to improve governance in Haiti to reduce demand for emigration. Is this a bad thing? Perhaps you argue the US is attempting to assert its dominance over Haiti. Sure, the US has a history of doing this, but usually for a reason. Why does the US care if Haiti is on its side or not? What does Haiti have that the US wants?

Moreover, I agree that the Government of Haiti should lead the relief efforts. The only problem is that the government doesn’t exist. The president is using a police station as his headquarters because all government buildings have been destroyed. There is no telecommunication infrastructure and Haiti has no army – not a weak army, but no army at all. Sadly, very sadly in fact, the earthquake destroyed the capacity of the Government of Haiti to lead the relief efforts. The UN is a bit better off, but it is in no position to lead the efforts, either.

Finally, I know its not pleasant to hear, but it is important to have infrastructure in place before starting large-scale relief efforts. Currently, the US military is probably the most well-equipped organization on this planet to be able to do this on a moment’s notice. I don’t like the militarization of humanitarian relief efforts and I don’t agree with it, but that is the world we have. Save the moral high ground talk until after the crisis. Just sending food onto the street without some plan for how you are going to distribute it would simply cause chaos.

This report was a gratuitous shot at the US. I am sure the operations are far from perfect, but look at the scope of the disaster. Expecting perfection not very realistic. I haven’t seen any other country offer anything close to the level of assistance the US has and if any other country wants to, let it come forward. Save the criticism for a worthy cause.

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MacGillis starts with the standard discussion of poverty in Haiti:

Development efforts have failed there, decade after decade, leaving Haitians with a dysfunctional government, high crime and incomes averaging a dollar a day.

MacGillis then talks a bit about how the crisis gives Haiti a chance to start over with a new and improved set of policies and institutions:

“It’s terrible to look at it this way, but out of crisis often comes real change,” said Ross Anthony, the Rand Corporation’s global health director. “The people and the institutions take on the crisis and bring forth things they weren’t able to do in the past.”

The early thinking encompasses a broad swath of issues. Policymakers in Washington are considering whether to expand controversial trade provisions for Haiti and how to help fund the reconstruction for years into the future. The rule of law needs to be strengthened…

the recovery effort must build up…the Haitian government and civil society…

“National disasters, as awful as they are, you want to seize those moments…said Jordan Ryan, the assistant administrator of the United Nations Development Program.”

OK, I got it. Things were really bad in Haiti. The silver lining in the crisis is that it presents an opportunity to get a new and improved Haiti. MacGillis then seems to lose the thread of the story:

There is, to an extent, a development framework in place from efforts underway before the earthquake involving the Obama administration, the United Nations, a huge network of international aid groups and a Haitian government that, despite corruption, was viewed as more reliable than any in years…the Haitian economy actually grew by 2.5 percent in 2009, despite the global recession.

“We were really making progress,” Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said Friday, before visiting the devastated capital on Saturday. “We had a good plan that was a Haitian plan. The Haitian government created the plan. It was realistic. It was focused. We worked with them…And it was certainly on track to be, in my view, a very positive effort.”

Now I am confused. If the country was making progress, why not stay with what was working? MacGillis doesn’t say. He doesn’t even acknowledge he wrote the exact opposite in previous paragraphs. Instead, he moves to the role of the Haitian government in reconstruction:

… some development veterans say a full rethinking is now in order. Gerald Zarr, who was the U.S. Agency for International Development’s director in Haiti between 1986 and 1990, said even more must be done to involve the Haitian government…

Others aren’t so sure. Putting more faith in Haitian authorities can only be done if there is a crackdown on corruption, said Stuart W. Bowen Jr.,… inspector general for the Iraq reconstruction.

Right. So the experts say we need to involve the government more. They also say the government should have less of a role. MacGillis never addresses this contradiction, either. Instead, the article moves to a few random policy areas that might be important for Haiti’s recovery:

William Loris, director general of the International Development Law Institute in Rome, points to another lesson from the tsunami: the role of the rule of law…

The international community is already wrestling with one major factor hanging over Haiti’s economic future, its crushing foreign debt…

Here, too, some progress had been made, with the International Monetary Fund announcing in July that the country’s reforms had qualified it for $1.2 billion in debt relief of the more than $1.9 billion it owed. On Friday, France contacted the so-called Paris Club, the informal group of financial officials representing the world’s wealthiest nations, to discuss speeding up relief.

OK. The international community has to get serious about reducing Haiti’s crushing foreign debt…even though they have already reduced it by two-thirds and promised to do more. Does MacGillis know he has stopped making sense? Does he care? Does the Washington Post have editors?

MacGillis then moves on to foreign aid:

Meanwhile, Peter Yeo, vice president for public policy at the United Nations Foundation, said the Obama administration needs to develop its strategy for appealing to Congress for additional aid for Haiti, beyond the $100 million in emergency aid Obama announced last week.

The use of meanwhile suggests that MacGillis isn’t even trying to make this coherent, but let’s get back to the policies:

But creating a new economy will rest on more than sacks of food and aid dollars, which is why others say the United States should revisit trade policies with Haiti…

James Roberts, a former foreign service officer in Haiti now at the Heritage Foundation, argues for liberalizing the fabric rules further, to lower Haitians’ costs. He also called for revisiting the “really destructive” U.S. tariffs on sugar to encourage growers in Haiti. Others say the United States should make it easier for Haiti to export its mangoes, which are prized by many American consumers but have faced hurdles with U.S. food safety rules

Some experts say that the answer is a rice revival.

OK.  So what do we learn from this article about what can help Haiti recover?

1. Things were bad in Haiti before the crisis.
2. Things were good in Haiti before the crisis.
3. The Haitian government needs to have big role in the recovery.
4. The Haitian government needs to have small role in the recovery.
5. Haiti needs to improve the rule of law.
6. Creditors need to write down Haiti’s debt.
7. Creditors reduced Haiti’s debt burden by two-thirds before the crisis and have already promised to do more.
8. Haiti needs more aid.
9. Encouraging the following exports may be helpful to Haiti’s economic recovery: textiles, sugar, and mangoes.
10. Haiti should grow more rice.

As I wrote earlier, I hope that MacGillis just randomly called a bunch of people who know something about Haiti and that the Washington Post has no editors, because if this is the type of advice the Haitian government is getting, it will only recover by luck.

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On Oct. 17, 1989, a major earthquake with a magnitude of 7.0 struck the Bay Area in Northern California. Sixty-three people were killed. This week, a major earthquake, also measuring a magnitude of 7.0, struck near Port-au-Prince, Haiti. The Red Cross estimates that between 45,000 and 50,000 people have died.

This is not a natural disaster story. This is a poverty story. It’s a story about poorly constructed buildings, bad infrastructure and terrible public services…

So far, so good. Brooks next discusses the challenges we face in Haiti because we have very little understanding of how foreign aid can reduce poverty:

…we don’t know how to use aid to reduce poverty…

In the recent anthology “What Works in Development?,” a group of economists try to sort out what we’ve learned. The picture is grim. There are no policy levers that consistently correlate to increased growth. There is nearly zero correlation between how a developing economy does one decade and how it does the next. There is no consistently proven way to reduce corruption. Even improving governing institutions doesn’t seem to produce the expected results…

I think he goes a little to far, but he is being polemical, so it’s no big deal. The real problem starts four paragraphs later when Brooks begins to contradict himself completely:

…programs, like the Harlem Children’s Zone and the No Excuses schools, are led by people who figure they don’t understand all the factors that have contributed to poverty, but they don’t care. They are going to replace parts of the local culture with a highly demanding, highly intensive culture of achievement – involving everything from new child-rearing practices to stricter schools to better job performance.

It’s time to take that approach abroad, too.

At this point, I became utterly confused. A few paragraphs ago he seemed to be saying that we have no idea how to reduce poverty, now he says we do. What is Brooks trying to say?  He might be saying that economists are too narrow in looking only at developing countries. Aid has worked to reduce poverty in the US, so perhaps we can learn what might work overseas by looking at successful programs in the US. Yet this contradicts his argument that we don’t know anything about how to use aid to reduce poverty. I am not being polemical. I am genuinely confused. Is the article just a cheap shot at development economists?

Maybe he thinks the program in Harlem is not aid, although I don’t know what else to call it. It is a government program to reduce poverty. True, it’s domestic aid, not foreign aid, but that’s largely beside the point. Even worse, many foreign aid projects like the one Brooks describes in Harlem already exist. Micro-credit, which he acknowledges works but is insufficient, is one type of program like this. So are programs that link access to things like subsidized food to school attendance. Participatory development is a third example.

It’s also important to point out that Brook’s argument fails on his own terms. Economists have long acknowledged the micro-macro paradox: projects may work on a local level to reduce poverty, but generally fail to show up at the national level. The program that Brooks discusses in Harlem may succeed there, but it will not show up in changes in US GDP or measures of poverty at the national level. In fact, poverty is rising in the US. To have a large and sustained impact on poverty reduction, the program needs to be replicated in thousands of places across the country and tailored to local conditions. That is not an easy task. There are lots and lots of articles that make this point.

Brooks’s thesis utterly fails. He first tells us that aid can’t do anything to reduce poverty, then he tells us it can, when it fact research shows that the programs he suggests tend not show large scale reductions in poverty. So he’s actually right in the first place, but doesn’t realize it. He either doesn’t know what he is talking about, and/or doesn’t understand he is contradicting himself. How could this get past the editorial board at the New York Times?

Finally, I have a message for the Times’s editorial board. I would love to have a column in your newspaper. I don’t know if I have anything interesting to say, but I am confident I can write 1000 words without contradicting myself, getting the facts wrong, and confusing all my readers.

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