Help me improve my “political economy of development” course?

I decided to overhaul my Master’s level course this year, adding new material and dropping old. I was laboring under the reading and re-reading and stress of a new syllabus. Just as I was getting to the point where I thought, “OK, this is good enough, I can get it perfect as the class gets moving,” a close colleague reminded me that a syllabus is a contract, and the more time I invest it in now the easier my life is going to be.

So I persevered, and indeed have one more week, but there are new topics where I’m not sure what I should cover. And maybe good ideas or readings I’ve missed. So the syllabus is below for those who enjoy these things.

You can search for “TBD” if you want to see where I’m undecided: how to talk about “strong societies” and how they shape states and institutions; what to cover on successful state-building in the modern era (ideally domestic reform strategies but also external interventions; and the role of peacekeeping, military intervention, occupation and trustee states.

Recommendations welcome, especially if you can say why.

Course Overview

Nobody agrees on what “political economy of development” actually means. It’s a catch-all course title. In this case, the class is going to tackle a number of “big questions”:

  • Why are some countries so poor, repressive, and violent?
  • What did rich and stable countries do to end political violence and develop complex, specialized, productive economies?
  • Can today’s poor, stagnant and violent countries not copy this? What’s stopping them? Why don’t they reform?
  • What role has the West played in either their failure and success?
  • What role (if any) should the West play in future? Can any of the things the West does—aid, peacekeeping, military intervention, democracy promotion, state building (whatever that means)—make a difference? Can they make things worse?
  • Why do so many programs and reforms and organizations sound good on paper, but then turn out to be so dysfunctional in practice?

Another way to think about my course goal is this: Looking at the countries that are still stagnant or violent, a lot of smart people are genuinely surprised that these countries’s leaders have not been able to make more progress in end violence or implementing good policies. This class is going to try to demystify what’s going on. There are some good reasons leaders don’t make headway, bureaucrats seem slothful, and programs gets perverted. The idea is to talk about the political, economic, and natural logics that lead to function and dysfunction.

A lot of you will graduate and go and do development work of some kind. I can’t tell you what specific programs or reforms to focus on, or how to implement them. What I can do is help you to understand some of the big, revolutionary ideas about why the best plans so often goes awry—ideas that surprisingly few development practitioners ever acquire.

Mostly we’re going to talk about poor and fragile states, and how those states can get on track to growth and middle income status. I’m going to focus on that transition, in part because that’s the big development challenge of your generation: fragile countries are the only ones not growing, and the rest are well on their way to middle or high income status.

Of course, it’s also important to know what middle income states need to do to stay on track and become less corrupt, more just, and develop more complex industrialized economies. But we only have 14 weeks of class, and I don’t really know much about these topics, so like any course this one has a focus. Whatever your plans, I think this class will be helpful and fun for you. But if you really want to know the political economy of development for middle-income nations, one of the other political development core classes might be for you.

This is a global class, but a slightly unbalanced one. A lot of the examples are going to draw on Africa and Latin America, with a good deal on historical European and U.S. development, plus some material on the Middle East and Asia—an ordering determined largely by my knowledge and ignorance.

Finally, as a core course in the Economics and Political Development concentration, this course will be more theoretical and more reading and writing intensive than most other SIPA classes. It is designed to give you an appreciation for big ideas and theories in comparative politics, international relations, political economy, sociology, geography, and development economics.

I won’t have the concrete policy answers in many cases. Actually, no one does, and one of my big aims in this class is to help you learn enough and think critically enough to know why everyone with a clear solution is wrong, and why “development” is the hardest thing in the world. There is no single answer. But there are some principles to finding the right answer in the right situation, and history to learn from. That’s what you’re signing up for in this class.

Weekly readings and schedule

There are few better ways to learn than to read a lot. “Required” readings are, well, required—you’ll need to show that you’ve read and thought about them to do well on the midterm and final.

“Recommended” readings are not required, but I’ll often discuss a key idea or concept in the lecture. You are not responsible for reading these readings, but the ideas we discuss in class are testable.

All the required readings are articles or book chapters that are downloadable online through Columbia’s network or a proxy server. The book chapters that are not on the Internet have Dropbox links. Let me know if any links are broken.

Week 1.        Introduction to political and economic development (January 19)

Required readings

Recommended readings

  • Chapters 1 to 3 of Maddison, Angus. 2001. “The World Economy: A Millennial Perspective” OECD. (Courseworks)
  • Binyavanga Wainaina (2005). How to Write About Africa. Granta 92.

Week 2.        Order and violence (January 26)

Required readings

Recommended readings

Week 3.        Order through states (February 2)

Required readings

  • Chapter 2 of Samuels, David J. 2012. Comparative Politics. Pearson Higher Education.
  • Chapters 1 and 2 in Jeffrey Herbst (2000). States and Power in Africa: Comparative Lessons in Authority and Control. Princeton: Princeton University Press. (see Courseworks)
  • Chapter 1 of Dipali Mukhopadhyay. 2014. Warlords, strongman governors, and the state in Afghanistan. Cambridge University Press. (The Kindle version of Chapter 1 is available on Amazon for free by clicking on “Send a free sample”)
  • Preface (p. ix-xxvi) in James C. Scott. (2012). Two Cheers for Anarchism.

Recommended readings

Week 4.        What are institutions? How do they affect growth? (February 8)

Required readings

Recommended readings

Week 5.        How do open and inclusive institutions come about? (February 16)

Required readings

Recommended readings

Week 6.        Geographic drivers of states, institutions, and growth (February 23)

Required readings

  • Chapter 4 of Jared Diamond (1997). Guns, Germs, and Steel. New York: W.W. Norton & Co.
  • Chapter 5 in Jeffrey Herbst (2000). States and Power in Africa: Comparative Lessons in Authority and Control. Princeton: Princeton University Press. (see Courseworks)
  • Mellinger, Andrew D., Jeffrey D. Sachs, and John L. Gallup (1999). “Climate, Water Navigability, and Economic Development”
  • Engerman, Stanley L, and Kenneth L Sokoloff. 2005. “Institutional and Non-Institutional Explanations of Economic Differences.” In Handbook of New Institutional Economics, edited by C Menard and M.M. Shirley, 639–65. Amsterdam: Springer.

Recommended readings

Week 7.        Culture and societies as a determinant of institutions (March 1)

  • Chapter 1 of Scott, J. C. (2009). The art of not being governed: An anarchist history of upland Southeast Asia, Yale University Press.
  • TBD
  • TBD
  • TBD

Recommended readings

Week 8.        In-class midterm (March 8)

Week 9.        Spring break (no class March 15)

Week 10.     Legacies of Western mercantilism, slavery, colonialism, capitalism, socialism, and wars (March 22)

Required readings

  • Chapter 2 of Migdal, Joel S. Strong societies and weak states: state-society relations and state capabilities in the Third World. Princeton University Press, 1988.
  • Chapter 2 of Mahmood Mamdani (1996). “Citizen and Subject: Contemporary Africa and the Legacy of Late Colonialism,” Princeton: Princeton University Press.
  • Leander Heldring and James A Robinson. 2013. “Colonialism and development in Africa” VoxEU.
  • Read introduction to: Nathan Nunn. “The long-term effects of Africa’s slave trades”. Quarterly Journal of Economics, 123(1): 139-176, 2008.

Recommended readings

Week 11.     Late states, weak states, and the politics of survival (March 29)

Required readings

  • Chapter 8 of Migdal, Joel S. Strong societies and weak states: state-society relations and state capabilities in the Third World. Princeton University Press, 1988.
  • Bates, Robert H., John H. Coatsworth, and Jeffrey G. Williamson. 2007. “Lost Decades: Post-independence Performance in Latin America and Africa.” The Journal of Economic History.
  • Van de Walle, Nicolas. “Economic Reform: Patterns and Constraints.” Democratic Reform in Africa. The Quality of Progress (2004): 29-63.
  • TBD
  • Revisit from Week 3: Chapter 2 of Samuels, David J. 2012. Comparative Politics. Pearson Higher Education. (especially second half of chapter on late state development)

Recommended readings

Week 12.     The politics of foreign aid (April 5)

Required readings

Recommended readings

Week 13.     Peace and statebuilding (April 12)

Required readings

Recommended readings

Week 14.     Democratization, democracy promotion, and regime change (April 19)

Required readings

  • Chapter 5 of Samuels, David J. 2012. Comparative Politics. Pearson Higher Education.
  • William Easterly (2011). “Benevolent Autocrats.” unpublished working paper.
  • TBD
  • TBD

Recommended readings

Week 15.     Organizations, institutions, and approached for development (April 26)

Required readings

Recommended readings

100 Responses

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  3. Chris, first I think it is very brave and laudable to put your course to public scrutiny. Not only you teach what you preach with example but also gives a sign of your accountability with the class. I took your course at SIPA in Spring 2014. And now working for a humanitarian agency – which totally blew my mind how related is to my previous work experience (international financial institution) – precisely because of some very important readings we had in your class. Please keep including fun pictures and videos in your presentations (maybe TED talks?) to complement. Here is my opinion and I hope you find it useful. Your course was one of my favorite courses at SIPA – at it was a very useful course to go to Uganda during the summer. Your advice on the helmet… was totally right.

    The most useful weeks for me that apply directly to my current job are the following:

    All week 1 readings

    Week 2 is new and I love it, I wish I had that before.

    Week 3, Herbst is not the most fun author to read, but I still remember the maps and DRC explainaition (was this this book? maybe I’m confusing it). Dipali M also very useful.

    Week 4: we know you love Acemoglu… and we understood why after this class. It is a mandatory for any public administrator! (or international civil servant) Glaeser is good too. Wantchekon should be a must-read for those specializing in Education or anyone interested in capacity-building.

    Week 5 – Mahoney definitely, John North and Van de Walle is so relevant 15 years later.

    Week 6 – J. Diamond is so good! Sachs (yes Sachs) that is a good reading for those in sustainable development and Sokoloff.

    Week 7 – are you going something like Max Weber and the protestant ethic or more on the soft elements of culture? maybe divide into the 2 elements (hard/soft) and then go from there. Just humble suggestion.

    Week 10 – Mandami… definitely. Nunn too.

    Week 11. You tweak this week. Like it (the recommended readings)

    Week 12. Easterly is a must. Are they going to read the other side of the coin? (besides Sachs that I see on the recommended readings) meaning Moyo with Dead Aid? Read it for other class and its cool.

    Week 13. Ok now we are talking our topics. Why dont you include Durable Peace: the challenges for peacebuilding in Africa (chapter 10) and include some of the role of the private sector (that no one includes and it’s huge) for political stability.

    Week 14. Mind-blowing Benevolent Autocrats. Include maybe something on participation (e.g. participatory budget) for democratization of political processes?

    Week 15. One of my favorite readings, planners vs. searches in foreign aid (Easterly) keep it.

  5. Great reading list – for the lesson on Democratization, Democracy Promotion and Regime Change, I recommend opening chapter of Carothers/de Gramont book on Development Aid Confronts Politics: The Almost Revolution. Offers excellent overview of the role of “politics” in international development , and also will help with the gender imbalance.

  6. Perhaps you can consider for the ‘TBDs” the following:
    “Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed,” by Jared Diamond (2005)
    “Culture Matters: How Values Shape Human Progress,” by Lawrence E. Harrison and Samuel P. Hutchinson (1999)
    “The Central Liberal Truth: How Politics Can Change a Culture and Save It,” by Lawrence E. Harrison (2006)
    “Why States Recover: Changing Walking Societies into Winning Nations, from Afghanistan to Zimbabwe,” by Greg Mills (2015)

  8. For Peace and Statebuilding Week:

    McLoughlin, Claire. “When Does Service Delivery Improve the Legitimacy of a Fragile or Conflict‐Affected State?.” Governance (2014).

    Most useful for its discussion of the trade-off between legitimizing state authority and improving immediate term welfare through non-state service provision.

  9. Just one little suggestion. You mention Tocqueville’s Democracy in America under the recommended readings for week 7 on culture and institutions. I found the following essay, which summarises Tocqueville’s position on the role of culture in the formation of institutions, quite interesting:
    Meyer, Heinz-Dieter. 2003. “Tocqueville’s Cultural Institutionalism Reconciling Collective Culture and Methodological Individualism”, Journal of Classical Sociology, vol. 3, no. 2, pp. 197-220. (http://jcs.sagepub.com/content/3/2/197.abstract)

  11. More African authors please! If we are to explain Africa, why not ask academics from there. They exist but have a visibility problem in US/UK universities.

  12. Do you know anyone who is redesigning their course around the following ideas to have emerged from September (Pope and sustainability goals at UN) .Uniquely these transformations have come from dialogues have been directed by quite wealthy but concerned New Yorkers and counterparts at dialogue spaces such as Windsor Castle UK and Open Space Beijing. Moreover there is a feeling that development is not just a a foreign issue, if projections are right that populations of New York suburbs will double in next 10 years then sustainability goals have edgy relevance to more than a few regional communities and families

    It would be timely to go back to the goals-designed systems view expressed in last chapter of keynes general theory – in particular his idea that there would come a time when transformation would need to match the most exciting decade for students and their livelihoods

    In this regard why not take each of the 17 sustainability goals and conduct search of which economist youth could most livelihoods trust to which sustainability goal- and then orientate reading mainly around those economist and goal compounding system designs

    the question then becomes which of the above weeks remains structurally suitable because within its frame of reference – all the goals cases are consistent; and which of the weeks themes is complex because opposite lessons are prompted by different goal contexts

    we would like to support and systems professor who agrees that making 2016-2025 students most exciting decade is not some luxury or idealist notion but sustainability critical given how many tipping points the 17 goals are at.

  13. I recently took a similar graduate-level course on development, and we spent a few weeks discussing institutions, governance, and the power and failures of external actors. For your week on institutions, I might add Chapter 3 of Acemoglu and Robinson’s “The Making of Prosperity and Poverty,” which has a nice discussion of inclusive vs. extractive institutions that begins with a comparison of North and South Korea – it’s very accessible and I noticed that you have another chapter from this book on the syllabus already. David Booth has a short piece on the World Bank blog (http://bit.ly/1Crl0oC) that highlights the challenges of “improving governance,” and Chapter 3 of Ha-Joon Chang’s Kicking Away the Ladder argues that institutions must be analyzed only with a strong historical perspective. Merilee Grindle’s (2004) “Good Enough Governance: Poverty Reduction and Reform in Developing Countries” (Governance 17, 4 (October): 525-548) makes a similar argument, and adds some recommendations about which policies developing country governments should focus on first.

    For the week on geography, Jeffrey Sachs (2001) has a short piece called Geography and Economic Development (http://bit.ly/1OmPlWV). This is based on the Gallup, Sachs, and Mellinger (1999) piece, “Geography and Economic Development” published in International Regional Science Review 22 (2): 179-232. Both are good, but as a student myself, I recommend the shorter version!

    During our class about culture, we read a few pieces that were good at spurring discussion among all students, even those who didn’t have a lot to say during about other weeks’ topics. Chapter 5 of Mike Tidwell’s Ponds of Kalambayi (1990) does a great job of illustrating cultural difference even when everyone has the best intentions. It’s a fun read that offers a lot, and any returned Peace Corps volunteers in your class will probably have some similar stories to share! Habyarimana, Humphreys, Posner, and Weinstein (2007) use some game theory and econometrics to provide some answers to the question, “Why Does Ethnic Diversity Undermine Public Goods Provision” (American Political Science Review 101, 4:709-725); their analysis highlights some common answers to the question and provides a nice conclusion. In a field where so much is left to future study, I personally think empirical papers that find concrete answers make a good change of pace. Finally, Fareed Zakaria’s 1994 interview with Lee Kuan Yew (Foreign Affairs, v. 73) is an interesting discussion point, since Lee Kuan Yew is adamant that something about Singapore culture is unique and crucial to understanding the country’s economic success.

    For the week on the legacy of the West and colonialism, I highly recommend Paul Farmer’s (2004) “Anthropology of Structural Violence” (Current Anthropology 45, 3: 305-317). The piece discusses Haiti’s past in light of its relationship with the French and the U.S., and will be great discussion fodder for multiple weeks.

    Finally, I think it might be nice to add a discussion of community-driven development or the sub-field of development micro; I’m sure there are quite a few SIPA students with potential interest in RCTs and other evaluation techniques, but they might not be aware of those interests yet! Microeconomic development also provides interesting parallels between the country-level issues you’ve highlighted (why don’t poor countries just do what rich countries have done to succeed?), because it can shine a light on the constraints facing the world’s poor that we might not take into account. Maybe during the culture week you could add something? I think it’s important to give students a way to talk about why people in poor countries might differ from those in more developed countries (and people of different income levels within the same country) can’t be easily compared, while still maintaining sensitivity and avoiding ignorant comments brought about by privilege. Poor Economics by Banerjee and Duflo is popular with all my friends who have read it, even those who hate economics, so the introduction could be a good read.

    That’s all for now – your course looks really interesting, and your future students are lucky to have a professor who’s working so hard to make their syllabus perfect!

  14. For week 7, “The Clan and the City” by Greif and Tabellini (http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2101460) on how morality, institutions, and economic growth interact. The paper compares the form of economic and social organization in Europe (corporations) to that in China (the clan), which both resulted from and perpetuated generalized and limited types of moral systems, respectively. Greif also gave a talk on the paper that summarizes the main take-aways (and then reviews a bunch of Chinese history that students may be happy to skip if they’re not interested in that kind fo thing, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZlihEnv8Fuw).

  16. Week 13:
    Keen, David. Complex Emergencies, Polity, 2008 useful to understand why the state of war can offer more incentives than peace.

  18. I am a bit surprised not to see Besley and Persson on state capacity somewhere – not sure where, week 3? Idea that states need to invest in capacity to tax and might have reasons for not doing so seems like a key one, and that state capacity strongly associated with prosperity.
    intro to book is free online if that makes any difference to you
    http://press.princeton.edu/titles/9624.html
    although maybe some of their papers better for your purposes.

    on politics of foreign aid, the relevant bit from Angus Deaton’s book? And I can see why you might not be terribly interested in it, but recent empirical investigation into that question:
    http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S030438781500111X
    (Deaton himself – in a podcast with Owen Barder … or maybe EconTalk – said he did not think effect of aid on political institutions could be empirically identified)

    maybe something on conditionality there too, about when donors can influence policy in developing countries (and whether it is a good idea to try). Not sure what the best ref is there, a recent one is:
    http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/sjoe.12085/pdf

  19. I found David Graeber’s book on debt (Debt: The first 5,000 years), to be quite interesting and provocative. Parts of it could work in various classes listed above. His book on Democracy would offer interesting fodder for your discussions in Week 14, particularly as he relates the whole Occupy movement to a broader history of democracy.