Civil Society and Development from the
Ground Up
Philip Oxhorn
Professor of Political Science and Founding Director
Institute for the Study of International Development
International Development: Bridging the Worlds of Theory,
Policy, and Practice, McGill ISID International Development
Program October 27-31, 2014, Montreal.
Introduction
Insights from the Ebola Crisis
 A Microcosm of Development Challenges
 Focal Point: Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea
• Among the poorest countries in the world
• Long term problems of governance and instability, including recent
histories of political violence and civil war
 March 25:
• WHO first reported 86 suspected cases in Guinea, reports of possible
cases in Liberia and Sierra Leone; 60 deaths.
• The first time in West Africa.
• Public health Institutions weak and unprepared
− 1 doctor/100,000, compared to 240/100,000 in the Us
 Understaffed, lack of supplies, means healthcare providers
are also very vulnerable, increasingly decimating the
healthcare system
Insights from the Ebola Crisis(cont’d)
 October 15:
•WHO reports 8997 confirmed, probable and suspected cases;
•4493 confirmed, many of them healthcare workers
•All but 24 in the 3 countries most affected.
•Discovered in 1976, about 20 past epidemics, less than 300
deaths in each
− Irony: development is one reason why it is so severe today
 The Worst is Yet to Come
•WHO: 5-10,000 new cases/week by December
•CDC: .4m in West Africa within next 3 months
•Word Bank: Economic loss of $3.8-32.6 billion by end of 2015,
or 3.3% of regional GDP
Insights from the Ebola Crisis(cont’d)
 Development Vicious Cycle
• Existing capacity quickly overrun, health personal vulnerable
• Recent health gains threatened
• “Easy”response is isolation:
− cut off from jobs, means starvation, disruption of economic systems,
inflation, closed businesses, Foreign investors…
 Weak Governance: just beginning to recover before crisis
• Lack of Trust
− Rumors, conspiracy theories
− No one may believe the message if they even hear it
• The New “Disappeared”
• Inequality: better off people can still bury their relatives
− Buying False Death Certificates
• The danger of a resurgence of violence
Insights from the Ebola Crisis(cont’d)
 Separating out necessary short term assistance from
long term development
•MSF cannot replace national healthcare systems
 Civil Society: Problem and Part of the Solution?
•Cultural Practices (burials)
•Filling in the Gaps when all else Fails?
•Are NGOs part of civil society? What roles should they play?
 Paul Farmer: Despite Common Wisdom, 90% should
survive
•Basic medical practices: hydration and isolation
•“Without staff, stuff, space and systems, nothing can be done”
Insights from the Ebola Crisis(cont’d)
 World Response: Too little, too late?
•Failure of the UN System: Ban Ki-Moon: A 20 fold surge
compared to what is promised is needed
•More than money, personnel is needed
− 2-3 staff per hospital bed needed
− US military trained in dealing with epidemics, but will not staff the centers
it builds
− MSF requests Australian doctors instead of pledge of funding, Australia
balks
− Exceptions: China and Cuba!
 The WHO Admits It Failed to Recognize the Risks
• Weakest regional office in Africa, bu it should be the strongest
given the enormity of health challenges
− Technically the weakest, full of political appointments
The Fundamental Development Challenges
 Articulating long and short term goals to create the
kind of society people want
 Setting Priorities
 Ensuring Follow-through
 Avoiding Dependency by achieving development in
the most basic sense
• Access to services, including healthcare, education and
old age retirement
• Creating an economy that can generates resources (taxes)
and employment
 Balancing humanitarian, short term assistance with
long term development aid
A Political Economy Approach
 The interplay of interests
• Who represents who?
• Who is not represented?
• Who “wins,” who “loses”
 Development as a Public Good
 3 Levels of Actors
• The International System
• Domestic Civil Society
• The State
What is “Sustainable” Development?
 Defining Development: Improving People’s Quality of Life in
Ways They Appreciate
 Brundtland Commission (1987): “Development that meets the
needs of the present without compromising the ability of
future generations to meet their own needs.”
• Standard Interpretation
• Current economic activity can continue
• Environment primary concern
 Problem: Insufficient for Majority of World’s Population
• Not lifestyles but Basics: housing, water, sanitation, electricity (access to
internet and cellphones!)—just building school rooms!
• The Need to Create Jobs
- Especially for youth
• Not one-size fits all
Donor Countries
 Resources:The Global “Haves”
 Responsibility?
• Moral responsibility vs. Realpolitik
• Cuba: long a pillar of its foreign policy, it has 670 doctors/100,000
 Accountability: National Taxpayers or Beneficiaries?
−The Onion: “Ebola vaccine at least fifty white people away”
−Irony: it is that close only because of fears of Ebola’s weaponization
−National businesses or local?
 Priorities
• Protection of population or free flow of people and merchandise?
• Buildings or Less Conspicuous Inputs for Development
• Agriculture vs. urban investments
 Dependence and Neo-colonialism
International Organizations
 Development Agencies (World Bank, UNDP, regional
organizations)
 Accountable to Who?
• Inequality of Representation
• Coordinating multiple actors with conflicting interests
- G8 vs. G20 vs. those inevitably left out
- Can Brazil or Mexico represent Haiti or Honduras?
- Ex.: Environmental Impasse
 Danger of One-Size Fits All Approaches
- Ex.: Privatization and Decentralization
 The Threat to National Sovereignty
International Civil Society
 Conflicting Visions and relations with local civil
society
• Ex.: the Environment
• Problems of Representation—whose agenda?
• Sustainable?
- Squeezing out local alternatives (Haiti)
- MSF cannot become a substitute for national healthcare systems,
yet is providing 2/3s of isolation beds
 The Ultimate Insufficiency of all International Resources
• The Need for National Development
• National actors cannot be displaced
Civil Society
 Autonomous, Self-Constituted Organizational Activity
• Minimal consensus
• Defines “quality of life”
• Ebola: communities must decide how to reorganize their lives.
 Cultural change impossible without civil society
 Filling in the Gaps: when states do not suffice
 Civil Society and Development
• Frequently weak in developing countries
− Inequality and Exclusion (women, minority groups, the poor)
• Challenge of Scope:
− Community vs. national development
− Self-help vs. development
• Often divided, competing with one another
− Capable of achieving a broad public good?
 Civil Society Cannot Govern
The State
 Rule of Law
• Controlling Criminal Violence
• Property Rights (ex. of Haiti)
 Establishing and Pursuing a Sense of Public Good
• Health, education, social security
• Infrastructure
• Citizen Rights (and obligations)
 Setting Priorities
• Ensuring the “boring” aspects of development are not
ignored
 Mobilizing Resources
 The Importance of Trust
The State (cont’d)
 The Gate Keeper vis-à-vis the international
community
• States, not MSF, should insist on personnel rather than
money
• States should be in debates about who receives vaccines
- Debate: 5 years ago, no one would demand that Africans be given
untested drugs to see if they work!
- More generally, if states cannot coordinate aid, set
aid goals and ensure promises are kept, who will?
State-Society Synergy
 Working with civil society to define and pursue public
goods
• Ex.: Education
• Ex: Controlling Crime
 Controlling Ebola:
• Makeshift clinics and training local people, especially survivors
with presumed immunity in Liberia and Sierra Leone
• Education campaigns and community action needed—involve
churches, traditional healers and other traditional institutions.
 Mutual Strengthening
• Aid to Civil Society Organizations (material,non-material)
• Extending the reach of State Institutions (ex.: treating river
blindness)
The Importance of Good Governance
 Rule of Law vs. a Police State
• The Foundation for Trust
 States must have institutional mechanisms for
achieving state-society synergy
• Transparency
• Entry points for civil society (e.g., decentralization)
 Legitimacy
• Nationally: Citizens respecting the outcomes of the political
process
• Internationally: Legitimate interlocutors with external actors
- Appropriate recipients of international assistance
Democratic Governance
 The Power of Popular Support and Legitimation
• A member of the club of nations or a pariah state?
 Responsive, accountable government through
active citizen participation
 Often achieved through elections
• Easy to Learn (e.g., Iran, Afghanistan, Haiti)
• Hard to Pull-off: The importance of institutions
- Timing: when feasible rather than as soon as possible
- A good example of conflicting interests of donors and recipient
countries?
 Integral to achieving state-society synergy
Citizenship
 The Substance and Universality of Rights
 3 Models, 3 types of rights: civil, political and social
• Citizenship as Cooptation:
- Rights are unequal and segmented
- Ex.: informal vs. formal sector workers
• Citizenship as Consumption:
• A person’s access to rights depends on their economic resources
• Ex.: public education and healthcare vs. private alternatives
• Citizenship as Agency
• The active role played by multiple actors in defining citizenship
rights
• Ex.: Canada
China
 The Exception that Proves the Rule?
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Spectacular Economic Growth, Decreased Poverty
Strong Governance
Even supplying medical personnel in West Africa!
But Without Democracy
 A Siren Call for Would-be Autocrats?
 Why it is not a Model for Export
• Costly Errors (Great Leap Forward, Cultural Revolution,
Tiananmen Square) Before it Took Off
• Increasing Calls for Accountability
• When the Economy Slows?
• The Absence of Regular Self-reflection
 Amartya Sen: Democracies Do Not Have Famines
Final Thoughts
 Development is a long term process
• Articulating long and short term goals
- Disaster relief plus development
• Setting Priorities
 External Actors, however well-intentioned, can only
help, but help they must
 The Centrality of the State
• An interlocutor with both national and international actors
• Its weakness creates a vacuum
• Ex.: West Africa
 The Need for State Society Synergy
 The Goal of Citizenship as Agency
The Challenge of Working in Culturally
Distinct Societies
 Civil Society’s Basic Dynamics Imposed on the
“Outsider”
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Diversity, Lack of Trust
Yet the Practitioner Cannot be Part of the Minimal
Consensus
The Colonial Legacy
 Lessons from the Soup Kitchen: Chile’s Slums,
1986
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Cultural Sensitivity, Respect and the Earning of Trust
Knowing Your Place and Potential
Contribution
 Two Extremes in Local Perceptions
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Exaggerated expectations of what you can do
Resentment because you are a foreigner
And they may not be mutually exclusive!
 The Reality
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You have a comparative advantage due to the resources you
enjoy (education, economic, broad experience)
You do not have a monopoly on the “truth” or what is “best
Residents’ advantages too: local knowledge and focused
experience, human energy, and a real stake in the outcome
− They determine what is appropriate
Developing Mutual Respect
 Genuine Collaboration
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Even at home, we can forget to listen
Accepting outcomes consistent with what civil society
represents rather than your expectations
 Patience and Understanding
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Learn local power relations and customs
Labor is relatively inexpensive, so there may be a lot of
people involved!
Working “well enough” vs. “absolutely good”
−
Things may only seem to work better back “home” when you
are away
A Partnership in Development
 Trying to Find Common Interests
 Recognizing that the Challenge is Too Big for
the State, Civil Society or International Actors
to Solve Alone
 It is not “West vs. the Rest”
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The Arab Spring: Some Ideals May be Universal
Cultures Evolve and Are Never Absolutes
− Healthcare: the Best of the West and non-West
 Looking for Consensus, Respecting
Difference and Finding Solutions