I remain pretty confused by this line of argument. I basically parse it as: we should strive to make the actions of developing countries similar to the (best) actions of developed countries. But actions seem of merely instrumental interest and what we actually care about is states (conditions) that are conducive to development.
The recommendations from these two perspectives (actions vs states) converge only insofar as the best actions are invariant across states. But this is quite a big claim and contradicted by e.g. Rodrik who insists that “Institutional innovations do not travel well”.
It seems like the development interventions we commonly see can be readily justified by the state-based view. For example, no, we didn’t see widespread deployment of insecticidal nets in the US, but, yes, we did see deliberate effort to achieve and good returns from achieving a low burden of infectious disease in the US. No, we didn’t have women’s self-help groups, but, yes, we did achieve a state of increased gender equality and of increased integration of women into the formal economy.
TL;DR: Why would we expect the same actions to produce the same end state given different starting states?
“To create conditions conducive to development, we should have a moderately strong prior in favor of doing things almost every developed country has done, and a moderately strong prior against doing things almost no developed countries have done.”
I’m not familiar with Rodrik’s work, but my mental model of Pritchett would claim that we should try to find similarities between very different countries that successfully developed, and that such similarities do exist. (My model could be way off, and it doesn’t account for most of how I judge development projects.)
I actually didn’t read Pritchett as having anything against LLINs, because “stopping malarial mosquitoes from biting people” seems like a thing developed countries generally do. (If he’s actually against LLINs and a big promoter of eradication strategies, I’m reading him wrong.)
I also imagine him trying to think backwards from end states: “What would a developed, wealthy Kenya look like? What sorts of work do people do in this hypothetical country? What role do women’s self-help groups play? If they’ve faded away, what role would they have had in enabling development? Why do we think they’d have had that role if we don’t have evidence that women’s self-help groups have enabled development in other places?”
I remain pretty confused by this line of argument. I basically parse it as: we should strive to make the actions of developing countries similar to the (best) actions of developed countries. But actions seem of merely instrumental interest and what we actually care about is states (conditions) that are conducive to development.
The recommendations from these two perspectives (actions vs states) converge only insofar as the best actions are invariant across states. But this is quite a big claim and contradicted by e.g. Rodrik who insists that “Institutional innovations do not travel well”.
It seems like the development interventions we commonly see can be readily justified by the state-based view. For example, no, we didn’t see widespread deployment of insecticidal nets in the US, but, yes, we did see deliberate effort to achieve and good returns from achieving a low burden of infectious disease in the US. No, we didn’t have women’s self-help groups, but, yes, we did achieve a state of increased gender equality and of increased integration of women into the formal economy.
TL;DR: Why would we expect the same actions to produce the same end state given different starting states?
I see his argument as:
“To create conditions conducive to development, we should have a moderately strong prior in favor of doing things almost every developed country has done, and a moderately strong prior against doing things almost no developed countries have done.”
I’m not familiar with Rodrik’s work, but my mental model of Pritchett would claim that we should try to find similarities between very different countries that successfully developed, and that such similarities do exist. (My model could be way off, and it doesn’t account for most of how I judge development projects.)
I actually didn’t read Pritchett as having anything against LLINs, because “stopping malarial mosquitoes from biting people” seems like a thing developed countries generally do. (If he’s actually against LLINs and a big promoter of eradication strategies, I’m reading him wrong.)
I also imagine him trying to think backwards from end states: “What would a developed, wealthy Kenya look like? What sorts of work do people do in this hypothetical country? What role do women’s self-help groups play? If they’ve faded away, what role would they have had in enabling development? Why do we think they’d have had that role if we don’t have evidence that women’s self-help groups have enabled development in other places?”