By: John Parker

John Parker — Wed, 23 May 2012 11:39:38 +0000

Does The Economist look “very silly indeed” for doubting that Uzbekistan and North Korea have been two of the world’s most successful countries in terms of reducing child malnutrition? I looked up some other indicators of basic welfare to see how these countries were doing. I think it’s fair to say that if they were making great strides on child malnutrition they would also be doing at least fairly well on other social measures, too. But they aren’t. North Korea’s life expectancy is falling. It was 70.8 years in 1990 and is now 68.8. To see falling life expectacy is extremely rare and usually an indicator of prfound social and economic problems. I suspect that gives a better indication of real conditions of life in the country, though I admit no one can be sure since North Korean society is so opaque. Uzbekistan’s life expectancy is basically flat. It was 67.3 in 1990 and 67.4 in 2005.10. Its score on the human development index has risen a bit (from 0.611 in 2005 to 0.641 in 2011, ie an improvement of 0.03 in the period). But this isn’t much of an improvement. Tanzania’s HDI score has gone up by 0.1, Ghana’s by 0.6. So countries that are doing well by this measure are improving their HDI scores far, far more than Uzbekistan is. Of course this doesn’t prove the DHS numbers quoted by Save the Children are wrong. But it does pose a puzzle: how come these countries are doing so well on one measure of basic well being and so badly on others? One possible answer to that is that there is something a bit odd about the DHS numbers and that it’s not very silly to raise doubts about them.

By: Rosemary

Rosemary — Tue, 22 May 2012 11:04:14 +0000

Thanks for posting the article by Dani Rodrik, which I found intriguing. My sense is that there is a need to look differently at the context in which the ‘macro’ and ‘micro’ approaches are contrasted.
The ‘nodal governance’ theory posits that governance is not an activity privileged to the state alone, but that the state is one actor of many in a network of governance.
Communities which develop their capacity to solve problems at the local level (see the Zwelethemba example in South Africa) also develop their capacity to become a “node” within governance. This local-level capacity effectively ‘thickens’ democracy by adding local level actors and thus bringing change to the top of the system as well

Comments on: Development's 2 tribes; post-2015; the Big Dope Hunt; Save the Kids v The Economist; the next frontier; Millennium Villages under fire; African take-off: great advocacy videos: links I liked

By: John Parker

By: Rosemary