Managing complexity and uncertainty???

In my dissertation, I will discuss more effective aid management of donor agencies.
As a result of my preliminary reading, I have noticed that when we talk about effectiveness, we need to specify any outcome aimed at by development assistance interventions first. Nevertheless, most of articles tend to argue effectiveness without specifying that. (Though some of them partially deal with that outcome against effectiveness, they seem to tend to shift emphases on possible reasons why donors have persistently maintain unfavourable practices in terms of aid-effectiveness.)

It seems to me to be caused by complexity of systems for development assistance and of development itself.
The former refers to the existence of multi-layered stakeholders within aid-chain, and their relationships.
The latter is about difficulties in defining what development is.

When we talk about effectiveness of aid, it would be natural to think of management of aid, which would be to manage aid, or various developmental interventions towards developing countires by developed countries. In this sense, development should be the object to be managed in order to achieve pre-determined goals.
However, it has often been said that development might itself consist of complex processes, such as identifying, planning, implementing, monitoring, and evaluating.
In addition, there exist various stakeholders, such as donors, recipient governments, primary stakeholders (beneficiaries), other intermediaries.
In short, effectiveness could be defined in various ways by respective stakeholders in accordance with their subjectivities.
It should be apparent that in such a context, to define effectiveness would be highly contentious, if not impossible.

Nevertheless, I believe that we have to define what development is, and to clarify which stakeholders are involved in development assistance. In other words, my dissertation will be to answer the question of what aid agencies are at all managing.

Social Cohesion

While I was talking with my classmate, she mentioned that according to the result of some survey, Japan was one of the highest countries with its social cohesion.
Although I rarely think about it of Japan, I agreed with what she said.
From my understanding, social cohesion refers to the extent to which people maintain relatively similar values within a society. In this sense, compared to other countries, it seems to me that social cohesion in Japan could be considered to be high.
However, recently, it is frequently argued that disparity in income levels and diversity in constituents of societies have been increasing there.
In such a situation, it is obvious that Japan is also facing significant challenge to maintain that seeming comparatively high social cohesion.
Like myself, most of the Japanese do not seem to think about "social cohesion" though we often hear about some signs of social instability.
What we need to do first would be to understand strengths and weaknesses inherent in our societis and, more importantly, our mindsets...

Aide Memoire

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manchester
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/University_of_Manchester
Aide Memoire

Someday, I may introduce Manchester to subscribers...
Someday, I may edit these pages...

Military is superior to liberal democracy???

It is said that developing countries generally lack effective bureaucracies which deliver public services to citizens. Building capacity of public servants is one of the most popular interventions under current development assistance. It is, however, not surprising that those interventions usually take time to find any tangible outcome.
One of the lectures presented us a question. Does a military government have advantages compared to liberal democracy?
The advantages are as follows:

1. Because military recruits its constituents (soldiers) from all over the country, it will help avoid regional separation or conflict;
2. Because military administers its constituents hierarchically, effectively functioning organisational structure could be easily established, and it will also help establish stable and coherent flows of commands and orders; and
3. Since military is usually keen to costs for its operation, and clear about objectives for its survival, developmental programmes are likely to be formulated.

Furthermore, all those advantages could become foundation for establishing liberal democratic government efficiently.

According to the lecture, history seems to prove that that is true (even for the case of Japan).
However, to me, this explanation seems to successfully be constructed by seeing the trajectories from the present time. It does not seem to be justifiable that, for expample, the USA supported several military governments of developing world aiming at establishing more liberal administration in the future.

Nevertheless, considering somewhat stagnated processes of institutional building in developing countries, the question seems to caution us against dangers with easily being inclined to a single mode of thought, in this case liberal democracy.

Structural Adjustment 01

Structural Adjustment, which was criticised and mostly belived to result in failure, could be considered successful in terms of realisation of managed money market by controllers of money and smaller groups of people who have access to money.

According to the commentator, money is controlled by small number of previliged elites.
Personally, I do not want to belive such an extreme explanation about our world. However, considering the overwhelming impacts exerted by money, the article I read seems to explain some of the reasons why money is so influential in the contemporary world.

Money is a medium of exchange.
Money is a measure of value.
Money is a commodity in the market.
What I got interested in is the fact that those who holds money try to maintain its value with limiting money supply, and those who utilise money try to increase the quantity of money with finding out as many acceptable substitutes which can be converted into money as possible.
Put it much closer to our daily lives, most of us are trying to earn money with providing our labour forces as acceptable substitutes for money.
To answer the questions, such as, who holds money, and how those holders have come to hold money, we have to look back on history.
If we refer back to the history, it might be felt that certain divisions between classes, or power relations exist almost inherently even in the contemporary democratic liberal world.

Another interesting issue is that economic thinking of equilibrium between demand and supply, which seems closely to be related with money, contradicts with the nature of money, which is never in such a stable position as equilibrium.
It is sometimes questioned if market economy can indeed equitably distribute resources.
Even existence of neutral, value-free market is sometimes questioned.
In order to analyse certain aspects of human behaviour, economics might be useful.
But, it is important for us to always see it critically. Otherwise, the useful tools of economics would soon turn to dominate our thinking as if they were really governing the world.

One of the most dangerous features of economic thinking is said to be its 'ahistorical' nature, which could easily make us foget historical discourses.
Until the 1970s, when continuous growth was still considered possible, theorists admit deficit in current account (relatively short-term liability) in order to realise economic growth.
However, as the introduction of structural adjustment shows, external debt of developing countries has suddenly been problematised. According to the article, this was caused by political decisions made by money controllers, that is, the international finance institutions (IFIs), such as the World Bank and the IMF. Further, it implied that those IFIs had reached certain agreements with large scale corporations, so called multi national corporations (MNCs) on comitting themselves to be controllers of world money, mainly foreign exchange.
The justifications of the structural adjustment are well-known neo-classical economic theory, which tries to enhance free open market economy, which is believed to birng optimal resource distribution.

The outcomes of the structural adjustment are far from what is expected by that theory. But, advocates of the structural adjustment have attributed the failure to debtor governments' inefficiency or incapability in implementing agreed policy programmes.

From the historical perspective, the reason why those debtors have come to suffer from unsustainable debts is i) shift of US$ to inconvertibility with gold in 1971, and ii) loss of credibility in debtor governments' ability to service repayment.
The former has made it possible for money holders to move ever more quickly money across soverign state boundaries. Thus, money in developing countries was swiftly withdrawn to other secure places, where the money could be easily convertible to internationally traded currencies.
The latter is highly political, not rational judgement because assessment of country risk regarding debt sustainability has never been done on any scientific basis. The debt crisis in 1982 affected MNCs behaviour and perception, and this has led to sudden withdrawal of money flow from 'suspected' debtor countries.