In Pursuit of Development

Political Constraints in Growth and Development: Moving beyond talking about them to actually tackling them – Peter Evans

Episode Summary

Dan Banik and Peter Evans discuss strategies for tackling corruption and mainstreaming political economy research in development.

Episode Notes

Although political constraints have significant negative impacts on development, mainstream approaches to addressing these issues are often primarily technical and lack a willingness to understand and address political economy factors. Despite decades of technical efforts in sectors like health, education, and climate, some critical problems persist, such as drug supply losses, tree planting failures, and chronic absenteeism in health and education. 

Peter Evans is a governance specialist with wide-ranging experience and expertise across international development and social research. He holds a PhD in medical geography and was previously Team Leader of the Governance, Conflict, Inclusion and Humanitarian Research Team at the UK’s Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office (FCDO). In this role, Peter designed and led the Anti-Corruption Evidence (ACE) programme. Until recently, he was director of the U4 Anti-Corruption Resource Centre at the Chr. Michelsen Institute (CMI) in Bergen. @PeterEvans_Guv

Peter argues that the supply of practical political economy research is limited and often falls short of practicality and accessibility, shaped more by researchers' interests and fund availability than the needs of policymakers or practitioners. Political economy research is further hindered by its sensitivity and riskiness, making it challenging for researchers, particularly in politically unstable or corrupt environments. On the demand side, there is a lack of structured efforts to understand and address political constraints in global investments for growth and development. Politics is often relegated to a risk rather than a problem to be understood and engaged with. And many actors in the field, including national governments, bilateral agencies, and multilateral organizations, often avoid addressing political economy factors, which hinders effective development outcomes.

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Professor Dan Banik (@danbanik  @GlobalDevPod)

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Episode Transcription

 

Banik   

Peter, it's good to see you again. Welcome to the basement.

 

Evans

Thank you, it's great to be here. I've often listened into the podcast from the basement, so it's great to be here, thank you.

 

Banik   

Well, there's nothing better than having a live guest in front of me. I'm super excited with Season 5 and I'm very pleased that you're here. I wanted to talk to you about many, many things, in addition to corruption, which is something that you've been interested in. But let's start at the outset, you've been a civil servant for over 20 years, you've had all these positions. Also, you're an academic with a PhD, you've studied Tanzania, Malawi, you've lived there, and in India, in Bangladesh, in all of these countries. And you've been trying to address some of these wicked problems: corruption, underdevelopment, poverty reduction, improved health. Are we making progress in relation to promoting development? Should we be taking a step back? Should we be doing things differently? Where are we in terms of this pursuit of development?

 

Evans

I guess I would focus on a thread on politics, which isn't where I started, but 20-25 years down the track is where I tend to focus my attention particularly. So, I began my PhD in community-based malaria control in Tanzania, in Dar-es-Salaam. And I joke that the politics of mosquitoes is where I first learned about politics. So, this was a relatively standard sort of social science approach to understanding about people's perceptions of risk, environmental risk, malaria, their use of things like sprays and coils and bed nets. But in my field work, which is in 93/94 in Dar-es-Salaam, I kind of initially unconsciously, and then more consciously came up against problems of capacity in public health in the City Council system. But also, politics, so basically the grip of the ruling party, and how this affected the way public health was delivered, the way communication, in terms of health messaging, was applied. And what struck me then was that party members believed, I think, sincerely, that they were part of the forces of good, the forces of the state. And the fact that they might behave in a political party system, and they might include some and exclude others, even in basic things like you know, access to mosquito bed nets. It struck me as being kind of it wasn't what I thought I'd be getting into. I thought I was there to talk to people about, you know, malaria, mosquito risk perceptions, et cetera. But this thing of politics was a small thread in my PhD, it wasn't the main focus, but it was kind of interesting in terms of how a party machine affects health. I then worked in Kolkata, working on a major urban development programme funded by the UK Government. Kolkata in those days, Left Front dominated, by the Left Front government. 

 

Banik   

The CPIM government, yeah.

 

Evans

Even although my focus on was on disability inclusion, so the rights of persons with disability and their inclusion in urban development, and again the grip of the party machine in terms of who gets access and who doesn't, how health systems and public health are delivered was also really apparent. I occasionally tell people that working in Kolkata kind of cured me of my interest in Left Front politics. No, it wasn't entirely true, but the formality of the party and the formal relationship with things like unions, and the fact that so much of employment was informal, and therefore people were beyond the formal unions and formal representation, et cetera. was something that that really struck with me. I also say that I never intended to work in India, but I went there for, I think three or four weeks and then it became four months and then it became six years, and I got married in Kolkata, changed jobs, and worked for a few more years as a consultant. So, I started off believing that I was an East Africa focused person, and I ended up living in in Kolkata for quite some time.

 

Banik   

But the common thread here Peter appears to be, if I can sum up, if I've understood you correctly, is that there may be a whole range of actors with good intentions. Or we think there are good intentions, but the reality is perhaps different. Everybody wants to cling on to power, to be re-elected, or to reinforce their importance, or their perceived importance. It could be donors wanting to do certain things, even though they know that this may not work, one wants to keep up appearances. Is that what you're trying to get at? Is that what we have to question, these good intentions, we can't take them at face value?

 

Evans

I think there is some of that. Like with the CPIM and I guess the Left Front people in power systems who believe they're acting in good faith, and similarly international donors who, you know, 20 years ago, I think there was a bit too much righteousness and a belief that with enough aid we could solve the world's problems. But there is a degree of this in terms of people acting probably in good faith with goodwill but with power, and occasionally pursuing a track that is very path dependent, and never sort of stepping back and thinking, is this the right thing to do? Is this line of work really for the good of all? Or are we systematically excluding ideas kind of evidence that?

 

Banik   

Why is it that we don't step take a step back? Why don't we want to reflect? Why do we continue on this track, knowing that this is suboptimal?

 

Evans

So, there have been different waves of belief in this, so development, the MDGs throw enough money at it, we can solve the problems, The rise of the use of evidence and a belief that if we use research and evidence, we can have the effect we want. So, a sort of a crossroads that I hope we’ll come to, is the fact that we can only get so far the way with traditional evidence. So, you know, drawing on the sort of history and the philosophy of hard science and believe that there are technocratic solutions to all our problems. And I hope we can come to a crossroads whereby we see that actually politics and power can be addressed more systematically and understood. And that we can weave more political economy, political economy research into our development investments, our public policy. So, this isn't only about aid, this is also about, you know, national public policy in any country, about policy choices, I think you mentioned big stocks or sticky problems. So, I think that particularly when we haven't made progress in public policy areas then we may need to step back and think so what's really going on in terms of power and politics? Is there a different hack, is there a different kind of thinking, is there a different framing? Is there better and different research that we could fund and draw on to address some of these things?

 

Banik   

So, let's go back to malaria because this appears to be one of those problems that we thought by just putting in more money, we would be able to solve it. Buying bed nets and changing people's behaviours, it wouldn't cost too much money, but we did need some money. This is the Jeffrey Sachs argument. Which has perhaps helped a bit, but I'm not sure about the evidence. But it reminded me of this debate that we've had before between Sachs and Easterly and others, some people saying just give us the money and we will solve it, we know what works, it's just a matter of lack of finance, and others would say it's not just about the money we perhaps don't really know that one particular solution that has worked in one context will also work in others, we don't need planners, we need searchers. This was the Bill Easterly argument. So, thinking about malaria now, I mean, since you spent that that amount of time in Tanzania, what is the sort of the evidence there? Is it money, or is it we're just hoping for this vaccine that has been rolled out, is that it? I mean, it just seems to be something that we thought would be easy to solve, but it has proved to be pretty difficult.

 

Evans

So, it has been proven to be very difficult and you're testing me on something that I haven't worked directly on for quite a while. But even in my mosquito days in in Dar-es-Salaam, Tanzania, the technology, you know, impregnating nets in a pesticide, getting people to sleep under them, the protective effect was clear. Who do you target? Do you subsidise? Do you allow them to be sold? Are they all free? So, there are lots of policy or political questions about how you pursue high coverage. One of the earliest political sort of angles in my involvement was in bed nets was about whether they are tax rated as a medical device and therefore tax free, and you can import them, or whether they're a garment, whether they're textiles and therefore they have an import tax. And so, the debates about taxation of bed Nets was something that I never thought that I'd get into, and the expectation was that the Tanzanian government would zero rate them, classify them as a medical product. I knew entrepreneurs who imported them, but when they arrived on the dock in Dar-es-Salaam, my memory is that the tax code wasn't changed and they were taxed as garments, as textiles. So political choice meant that they were suddenly much more expensive to invest in and supply. So, I think that that's just an example of, there's always hiccups and political angles. Somebody can make a profit; somebody can make maybe a wreck-off in such things. So, it's always been more complex than throwing the money, inventing the technology and applying it. I think that’s the sort of dismal shadowy world that I've increasingly focused on, so you know, great evidence for an intervention. Why isn't it applied at scale and achieving its full effect? There may be relatively formal delivery in scaling aspects, but there's often something sort of political and harder to put your finger on that sort of impedes the full effect, full delivery, full results. The Swedish Government focuses on things like, its slogan is corruption as an obstacle to the SDGs, which I think is nice and snappy. But it's kind of true in that it's that last 20% of much of the good intention of investment that we've persistently failed to achieve and particularly in difficult and complex places. And that's where I think politics, institutions, political economy, power of vested interests is often at play. And it's quite hard for us all to put our fingers on that. But I think we could try a bit more formally and a bit more strategically and systematically to try and surface these sorts of political constraints. Because I think that we can pay lip service to them, you know? Oh, we take politics really seriously or we need to commission political economy analysis, but I wish there was more public debate, you know, responsible public debate about political constraints.

 

Banik   

I've been often saying in in the context of, say, a country like Malawi or many others in a similar situation, maybe national governments, political leaders should say no to certain things that they know will not work, rather than just saying yes, we'll sign on the dotted line, give us the money, and then there's no commitment. Similarly, for international agencies and donors and other actors, we should also be saying no sometimes, rather than just pushing, you know, aid money, et cetera, in the hope that it will work and. I think this ability to say no or to stop rather than push things, shove things down people's throats in the hope that it'll make a difference. So, what I'm trying to get at, Peter, is I think the interest we all have in doing the homework, in uncovering the uncomfortable questions, to talk about things that we perhaps do or do not understand, we perhaps need to be self-critical and say that this path that we've been treading on for the last couple of decades has not worked. Maybe we should stop. But I suppose many of us, or agencies and civil servants, are under huge pressure because to admit that something did not work, or to admit that we've known that this is a problem we did not do anything about it, is going to lead to a huge amount of criticism back home, to whoever is funding our work, right? So, I'm trying to understand and trying to probe you to think a little bit more about why is it that we don't want to unearth, or talk about, these uncomfortable questions. All these elephants in the room that we, it's not like we were unaware of it, but we still don't want to talk about it. Why is it do we want to promote our foreign policy as a country? Is it because we all have a vested interest in promoting development?

 

 

Evans

So, you mentioned Malawi, so my first posting in DFID was in 2001 to 2004 in Malawi, and I was probably an archetypal energetic, eager beaver. I was part of a wave of belief that aid could have an effect and that we focused on Malawi, and we had a large budget there. We believe that with the right investment and the right expertise, we would help Malawi to achieve progress in the MDGs, etc. You know 20 plus years later and now being a grey haired grumpy middle-aged man, no one from Malawi or who works in Malawi really wants me to say oh, we tried that back in the day and it didn't work. But the reality is the public policy machine, the aid machine, and I think public policy in terms of national ownership and actors, and aid in terms of external support for that, does tend to try the same things again and again. And we're very bad at looking back and learning from history. So, I have a few emblematic issues in a range of countries, including Malawi, that I look at and things that I worked on a long time ago. Then I try and check in to see if these problems have been addressed. One of them is the central medical stores and the procurement of medicines and their delivery to public health stations. And the last time I checked, and decent research under my previous job, you know, leakage of drugs from the government, supply is still about 28 to 30%. And this is Malawi, but this is not uncommon in a range of low- and middle-income countries, and this has been more or less stable. You know, this level of leakage has been stable for 20 plus years. And if you look at the explanation of why this happens and the effort to address this, it's often still described as a capacity issue. You know, the packages are badly packed, they don't go to the right places, the truck drivers don't deliver them to the right address, et cetera. And I think 20 years later this doesn't sound like a technical or capacity problem. There must be something more to it. And this is where I get into, well, maybe there are powers and politics at play that sustain this leakage because somebody benefits from this. So, I think there's the failure to look back and also when we come to spend large amounts of money on public policy or aid, the most convincing arguments are usually made on the basis of technical evidence. It’s much easier to reflect research on things like drug suppliers, drug packaging, the use of essential drugs lists, et cetera. It's much harder to really reflect, particularly in a partnership between sovereign nations about corruption and politics and who's really benefiting from this leakage. So, I think that the failure to do things differently is partly the human frailty of not wanting really to learn from history. You know, it's arduous going back, thinking about why this has failed before. And then having to spend money on public policy or an aid programme, you do tend to divide it into big chunks, and you often repeat the technocratic investments of your predecessors. The final point I make in Malawi is reading Stefan Dercon's book, Gambling on Development, and his account of the Malawi agricultural inputs, sort of, corruption case. And he tells it in a brilliant way. Now this was a round of the same corruption that came after I was in Malawi, when more or less exactly the same corruption in agriculture happened. Not only does Stefan talk about his own crashing into giving advice to people who then use the advice to do corrupt deeds. But others in those roles had already done this in previous rounds. I don't know how many agricultural input corruption cases have been in Malawi. But if we ever have another one funded by international donors, I think that would be a profound shame. It would also prove my point that we're not very good at learning from history.

 

Banik   

Everybody talks about corruption. In fact, everyone, Peter, I would say, agrees that corruption is bad. It's bad for development. It's bad for the SDGs. It's bad for everything. It's bad for the country. You would never really hear anybody saying corruption is good, even though in the in the academic literature, you may find instances where corruption has led to economic growth. Is good in terms of combating red tape, in speeding up process, the speed money can be good. But let's agree that corruption is bad. And there are definitions of the corruption of need. We try to justify why people take a small bribe, it could be a policeman being poorly paid and trying to supplement his or her salary. But it could also be the corruption of greed. We try to justify corruption as the need to take care of an extended family, that due to the lack of predictability we have to make hay while the sun shines now, we don't know what will happen in the future. There are many, many ways of talking and understanding corruption. But having worked in this field for all of these years as part of the civil service in the UK, as being stationed in some of these countries that we're talking about, could be Bangladesh, it could be India, it could be Malawi. What have you concluded in terms of corruption? Because, again, just like many of the other issues we've been talking about, everybody's been trying to do something about corruption, fighting corruption, but we don't seem to be making much of a headway, are we?

 

Evans

So, my starting point is that there is no easy solution. I also reflect on my own life and my own family and our relationship with corruption. I occasionally think of my grandfather in a small town in in North Wales, Dolgellau, who was very public-spirited and was a town councillor and a county councillor. And I was told a story about once he'd done a favour for somebody and this person came with a puppy in their pocket, and it was a gift, a Jack Russell puppy for my grandfather and it became the family pet. So, when I think about, you know gifts and what we count as corruption, I imagine, ok, so later on would there have been a gift book? And if the puppy was worth less than €5, he could have kept it, et cetera. So, I think that one starting point is history and the history of my own country, the UK, and how we got to where we are, you know, over centuries and centuries of codifying behaviour, of evolving the way we do politics, of changing the way we expect people to behave in public life. So, I think it took a long time to change, and therefore trying to do anti-corruption in a three-to-five-year project, is ahistorical. And my former colleague and friend Mushtaq Khan is very hot on this, and you say all this is very nice, all of your plans are great, but these are completely at odds with any historical experience. So I think you need to think about the history of the reduction of corruption in any place and think this is going to take some time. The other UK lesson is you can go backwards. So, we were on a progressive roll, you know, more transparency, freedom of information, right to information, et cetera. And then we've had a major setback. COVID procurement has been a real great example that a country that I thought was progressing can have a major down slope. So anti-corruption can go both ways and corruption can also go both ways. Now in terms of working in anti-corruption, and I've just finished being the director of the U4 Anti-Corruption Resource Centre in Bergen, I think for me the reality is show me the corruption problem and I'll try and think through how it could be addressed. There's no, and people say, oh, there's no magic bullet, there's no panacea, et cetera, I wish people would stop saying that because it implies that somewhere there might be one and we still haven't found it. Whereas the reality is, you know, every sector, every area in which corruption is a problem, you need to address that problem. So, for example, corruption in relation to doctors feeling that they can remain absent from rural posting, and they can move and do practise in the big city. That's a very specific problem that it's worth unpacking the incentives and the career structures and the supervision to try and see whether the outcome that you want, i.e., doctor serving in where they're supposed to be serving can be addressed, whether their behaviour is corrupt or not, that's a separate debate. But it's a problem-focused approach, you know, show me the particular problem and I'll try and help you get through it. Investments in things like changing the social norms of a country, you know, putting out radio ads or billboards saying corruption is bad, don't do it. We know these things don't work, and what's more, they can also backfire. I am interested in the institutions of anti-corruption, so anti-corruption commissions, anti-corruption courts et cetera. But they have a role in anti-corruption, but they're having what is not the be-all and end-all of fighting corruption in place. So, I guess my simple message would be watch the particular problem in that place and sector, and let's think through how we might change that behaviour. One point I say is I'm here for the development outcomes. So, you know my career is about better health, about inclusive growth, about gender equality, about education and learning for future livelihood success, et cetera. Corruption is one of the constraints in all of these paths. And I'm interested in corruption as a thing that we should address in order to have better development outcomes. Corruption per se is something that I focus on, but it's not the be-all and end-all of my interests.

 

Banik   

That is a conclusion that we arrived at in a particular case in South India many years ago. We were looking at pollution control in the tannery industry, leather tanneries. What we were trying to look at is that there were all of these legislations, then there was this institution called the Pollution Control Board. There were rules, there were procedures, there were institutions. But the paradox talking about the result, the development outcome, was that a particular river was still being polluted from these industries, just throwing, you know, and getting rid of this polluted water from the tanneries flowing into the river and nothing was happening. And the first thing that we were told, was that it's a corruption problem, and to cut a long story short, it turned out it was not the main issue. One tends to think that when in many of these instances when things don't work, the first thing locals will tell you, but also foreigners, is that it is a corruption problem. And our conclusion was that it was more an implementation issue, it was lack of communication, lack of incentives. There were fines for people defaulting on these rules, but the fines were so small that it made more sense to just pay the fine and keep polluting. So, I agree with you that sometimes you know, corruption isn't the issue. But do you think we sometimes overlook corruption in the pursuit of some of these development goals? That we don't want to talk about it, that it is swept under the rug because we think that's a normal way of doing business, that 10% or 20% of the money will be syphoned off and that may be our sort of tolerance level, and if it increases to 21% then we'll put the foot down, but otherwise we're happy we to pretend that it is there, but we're not going to do anything because we are trying to promote a greater good?

 

Evans

So, all great points on the tannery example, I think I'm often driven by well, you know if you wanted to clean up the river, how would you influence behaviour change which could include corruption? It could include making compliance easier. I’m more interested in cleaning up the river than, you know, prosecuting bad people or fining them. So, I think that my desired outcome is a cleaner river, not having lots of people fined or in prison for polluting. And I think across the public policy areas that I've worked in, so violence against women, corruption in relation to bribes in health centres, illegal migration, you know the outcome that I would like to see is safer migration, less violence, et cetera. And so, if corruption is part of that problem but not all of the problem, how do you intervene so that these behaviours change with the least effort possible, rather than busting bad guys? And so some debates I have in the anti-corruption field are basically people who are really interested in prosecution, and I try not to be a kind of a-moral or even immoral and say I don't really care about the stuff I just want the world to be better, but I am more interested in enabling good outcomes by reducing corruption. And I want to enjoy the outcome as not see people in prison.

 

Banik   

But there are some people who insist, and I'm talking about donor agencies, they talk about a zero tolerance for corruption. Is that achievable? Is that realistic?

 

Evans

No, is the short answer. And when I was in DFID and FCDO, we had a zero-tolerance policy, and we would report to government on our estimates of the amount of aid lost to corruption. And, of course, the cases are only those that you know about and investigate and can measure. And so, it was a very low number. But it was a fairly unhelpful way of spending money when in theory you have zero tolerance. Of course, you should investigate if there is concerns about corruption. But I think you have to realise you're investing in systems in which there will be loss, there is deviation of funding. And you try and reduce that as much as possible, but saying zero tolerance can mean you're very risk averse and you know the most difficult and important work in in aid and development is where the risk is high. So, for example fragile places. Working with the U4 donors, there are some of them were talking to colleagues about corruption risk management and aid spending, and some believed in these other donors, that their institution had a zero-risk policy. And in a couple of cases, we demonstrated that that wasn't actually true. So, one thing I dislike about zero-tolerance approaches is people believe in them even when they're not actually policy and they can constrain peoples' behaviour and risk-taking.

 

Banik   

They suppose it is good for the taxpayer back home to hear that.

 

Evans

Of course, it's a political slogan, zero tolerance, whereas the reality is usually more complicated. The thing I dislike about zero tolerance is it's part of the story about why aid trusts, international intermediaries, like consulting firms and big NGO's rather than local NGO's, because you believe that somehow, you're reassured by the big international outfits, you're reassured that they have the systems in place to be zero tolerant. Whereas you look at local NGOs and CSOs and it's true, they may not have the capacity because you haven't invested in capacity, they may not have the compliance that would reassure you. I believe that the corruption risks are there in both of these, the sort of mega firms and the small parties. But we have a risk of institutionally being reassured by the big glossy machines. And I think that we should step back and think well, actually, investing in capacity and spending through local CSOs, if we're committed to localization, if we're committed to decolonization and localization, then we have to change our approach to risk, including building capacity and not wave the flag of zero tolerance because it tends to push us into lots of conservative and unhelpful ways of doing business in aid. You mentioned the 20%, 10%, whatever, so, Bill Gates, in one of his annual letters some years ago, made a reference to a tolerable level of corruption in health. I can't think what the percentage was, was it 2% or 3%? And he said if this is a 3% tax on every life saved, this is a loss or a risk that I think is worth taking. So, we often kick this number around and say the work in Malawi on drug losses, where losses were 28%, and this is from really serious work and by a team, led by Jablonski, to put radio trackers in drugs to see actually what are the losses in drug packets and see where they end up. So, we would say 2%, 3%, 28%, you know which is it? Now my view is going back to zero tolerance, the loss of any public budget, be it aid or a national revenue funded budget, it's serious. But I believe in taking risks. The diminishment of outcomes, say in health, so, if you lose 10% of your budget, and that reduces your rate of immunisation by 10%, I think that's a serious issue to grapple with, that you're losing aid money, which is hard to account for, to your taxpayers, your targets will be brought down, which is a serious thing if you're actually seeking to achieve those targets. But also, if any money is fuelling corruption systems, so basically there's the loss of the money, there's the diminishment of the outcomes, immunisation, but also, if you're fuelling a sort of a political system, say in health, whereby corruption leakage is something that is overlooked, there may be vested interests in sustaining this corruption, somebody may be getting a payoff either inside or outside government. So, I would say to the U4 donors, you know, I think you need to look at this on three levels, loss of aid, lost outcomes but also fuelling these corruption systems. And in one way it’s the focus of anti-corruption, including U4 on things like transnational corruption and the illicit financial flows has made my third reason to worry about corruption come into sort of a harsher light because the money fuels national corruption systems, but also goes over borders, and so this is money that might get invested in offshore tax havens or onshore tax havens, spent on luxury goods, white elephant investments and property, et cetera. So, I try and tell a kind of a slightly more complex story and say I am worried about corruption, but not only for zero tolerance reasons, but also because it's bad for world systems and we now know more about the transnational effects of national corruption and how they fuel lots of bad things. This also leads me to telling our donors, including my own country, the UK, about, you know, and some of these lines lead across borders to UK territories, to the City of London, to UK real estate, to UK private schools, to UK investments in UK universities, in luxury goods, et cetera. So, I think Russia's full invasion of Ukraine has really brought this into even more of a harsh spotlight. There's no such thing as a far-off corruption problem that may affect our aid, but nothing else. If you pull these threads, that usually leads you back to problems closer to home. But also we have control over, you know, I don't about Norway where we're sitting, but definitely in the UK, we have some complicity and we have some power of action in addressing these nets, these global networks of corruption.

 

Banik   

I remember that there was this saying corruption is no stranger to Washington. It's a famous resident, you know? Or some of my African and Asian colleagues pointing to corruption scandals in Europe, Italy. In many parts of the world, we have corruption not just in low-income countries. I think the first step is to recognise corruption is a problem also in our parts of the world, and we are indeed complicit, tax havens, look at the Swiss banks. I mean, there are lots of things that we could have done. But we don't do it for obvious reasons. Perhaps because we also benefit, some groups of people, or some sectors in the economy in our countries benefit. It seems that the standard response from the West, or the aid agencies, et cetera, to combat corruption is to raise awareness, is to maybe you know erect those billboards. I remember in Malawi, seeing those, the president's face saying honesty, integrity, anti-corruption, zero corruption, all of them. And you just said that maybe those don't really have the desired impact. But awareness generation through workshops, through so-called capacity building, I really have a big problem, Peter, with this term capacity, because sometimes I think it is not a question of me building somebody else's capacity, but maybe also building my own in that process, getting more information. But it seems to be some sort of an imbalance, you know, you're trying to make people aware. So anyway, my question is about these so-called capacity building initiatives through training sessions and workshops and empowering, you know, anti-corruption bureaus, the Ombudsman's office or the Human Rights Commission by providing money, training, et cetera. Do they work? Or is it a matter of what, again, going back to Stefan Dercon's book, the problem really isn't about capacity building, the problem is that there is a political settlement among elites. There is an agreement that this is the order of the day and we're not really going to change anything. What we're doing is basically saying give us the money, we'll nod our heads and say yes, we'll take part in these trainings and workshops, but nothing will really change. The donors are happy, and we go about our business. So, is it trying to make a dent in that political settlement on corruption that we should be striving for, rather than these symbolic workshops which, in my view, I would want to stop right away. It is just a money-making racket, I don't want any more workshops.

 

 

Evans

So, I'm also workshop averse, and it goes back to the thing about capacity building, when you do it again and again in a place where the problem itself doesn't change. I'm a big fan of understanding context and political settlement, political economy. And Stefan Dercon’s focus on elites is really important, and elites and growth at the national level is really important. I also think we need to focus within sectors. So, for example, power sector or climate adaptation possibilities in a particular place, let's say Bangladesh, and then think about well, so what are the deals and what's the distribution of power and who are the elites in these fields, which is still you know massive. So, investment in health in Bangladesh, for example, by government by non-government actors, but also out of pocket costs for people, it is colossal, it's a colossal amount of value spent on health, and in some ways good, so progress, and in other ways bad, so out of pocket costs are really high, some drugs are really expensive. So, focus on what are the power dynamics? Who are the elite and how do they behave in a sector like health in a country like Malawi, or Bangladesh? And how does that affect the outcomes, the experience of people? How does it affect health stats, the cost of drugs, et cetera? So, I believe in the political settlement approach, but I'd love to see it pursued more at sector and sub-sector level, because I think that's where you would really see the benefits of unpicking these corruption problems or political problems and thinking, who might benefit from a change? Are there interested parties who would like to see drugs reduce in price? Are there other pharmaceutical product producers who can't compete but would if the playing field was more level? What are the interests that maintain artificially high prices or cartels that allow sort of price gouging and inflated prices, et cetera? So, it's really that application but at sector level. One might say, oh come on, you can't do the politics of everything. And I would say, but these sectors are billion-dollar sectors and donors invest millions or even billions of dollars in them. So, why not try and understand the politics as well, as I occasionally said to Mushtaq Khan who works in these fields, the molecules. So, the molecules in drugs are really important. The prices are really important. But the politics of who controls the molecules and fixes the prices is all really important. So, we began talking about, I mentioned that the politics of mosquitoes, so the politics of molecules and how they're applied in public health is also a kind of a focus that I like to have because it's not all about, you know, technical evidence and pharmaceuticals, it's about interests, it's about elites and about private sector, and about politicians in terms of who sets the prices, who enjoys the benefits, et cetera. Two other examples from Bangladesh, and I'm quoting Mushtaq Khan and Pallavi Roy & Co’s work from the SOAS Phase Programme, which is one of my earlier involvements in DFID research. So, the work they did in the garment sector on trying to unpick corruption in incentive payments for training garment employees for factories. It's a billion-dollar sector in which the ADB and the World Bank invest, and the research they did to try and unpick the corruption in these incentive systems to try and make training more effective, cost about £100,000. So, a political economy study of £100,000 that could unlock the benefits in a sector in which donors spend a billion dollars. So, I think is it worth it? I think it is. Similarly in the power sector, so work on captive power generation by using very expensive sort of temporary generators which burn really filthy fuel, so furnace oil. You know, political economy analysis to try and understand well who benefits from this system, it's really, really filthy, really bad for the environment and its drained revenue. Who would benefit from more competition, better procurement, more assurance that if cleaner energy players wanted to participate in government procurement, would they have a good chance and would their contracts be valued, respected? If the answer was yes, then you can address a corruption problem with big sector outcomes. So, I guess I'm just making the same point again and again, that take the political economy or political settlement approach, but I would love to apply this to more places and more sectors because I think that the benefits are there to be had. Which is all a very long way of saying I'm not very interested in capacity building. I'm interested in a problem-focused anti-corruption approach that uses, you know, decent quality political economy research to try to unlock these very sticky, very long-term problems.

 

Banik   

Thanks for mentioning Mushtaq’s work. He's been on my show as my loyal listeners will know and so has Stefan Dercon. I'll put links to these episodes in the show notes. I totally agree that we need to better understand who benefits from certain policies. Often the assumption we have is that everyone is for this policy change, this reform, that everybody is against this vice of corruption. And I remember when I was doing my earlier work on famine prevention, the standard understanding was that famine is bad. Everybody, you know, loses from famine, even the elites would starve to death if there isn’t food available. But it turns out that famines can also benefit certain people. Famines are good for certain people who want to hoard their goods and who just wait for prices to increase, and then they sell at a big profit. So even famines which you think is a societal phenomenon, there will always be somebody benefiting. The second point has to do with what I was saying earlier about these anti-corruption institutions, that a lot of international agencies invest in, it could be the Anti-Corruption Bureau. And one of the things I notice in countries like Malawi is that as part of these institutions one is constrained by finance because, well firstly you're appointed by the President as a Human Rights Commissioner or as an Anti-Corruption Bureau Chief, you need parliamentary approval, the donors may fund some activity, but by and large, by controlling the purse strings, the political leadership exercises considerable influence and control over so-called independent institutions. So, I don't really know how to resolve this issue, because if external actors were to fund these institutions 100%, totally fund them, they would also risk losing legitimacy. It would be seen as tools of foreign governments interfering, etc. So, you want local ownership, accountability, et cetera, but on the other hand, that local ownership means that these institutions are prone to political influence. I wanted to ask you about procurement, because this is something that crops up all the time. And apart from capacity building, we also want to introduce, as foreigners, rules that will streamline procurement, to cut off the middleman, to prevent somebody from benefiting, you know, enormously from these huge contracts. But in that process, I've seen in some countries by introducing electronic procurement procedures, et cetera, there are certain other problems that emerge, delays, lots of levels of approval. And these levels of approval can in turn create even more rent-seeking behaviour. So, what is your take on procurement? Is there a way in which these procurement procedures can be reformed could be made better?

 

 

 

Evans

The first point you made about funding for anti-corruption and related organisations by government, I think it's super important. And this comes up again and again in terms of why doesn't a function like audit, for example, work in a country, and then you see that actually it's on a drip, drip budget from the Ministry of Finance. So, a friend working in in DRC has recently, mentioned this to me in terms of you can't have audit if the auditor doesn't have a budget. Oh, I agree with you that donors shouldn't step in and say we'll pay for audit, but what they might do, for example, the World Bank might do is to say, you know, a condition for our next tranche of funding, and our conditionality is questionable, but it could be, you know, properly funded audit so that audit reports happen on time. That would seem to me quite a logical and reasonable thing to do. Not getting into the politics of audit. But it would seem to be that you could at least try and address the funding of audits to ensure that it all happens on time. On procurement, I love public procurement and I try and persuade others that it's really worth their attention. So, one experience that I had in government was that procurement was regarded as a thing for procurement experts. You know, we'd work in a sector health and then we'd say, oh, we've got a procurement expert coming in to look at procurement of drugs or procurement equipment and I'd say, but look, you know 30%, 40% 50% of the entire budget is spent on public procurement or through public procurement. We need our health advisers, health experts, to really grip what's being procured and how the process is, rather than discharging it to the techies. And procurement people are lovely, but they're often quite sort of dry and focused on, you know, rules and regulations, et cetera. Now, I think huge strides been made in terms of, you know, procurement tends to follow the same standards globally and this has enabled a huge amount of reform, normative reform, and transparency. So, that there's now way more public procurement data available for those who want to find it, and work by organisations like open contracting. I think it's magnificent, you know, the potential for what can be understood now investigated in public procurement is great. Again, in the anti-corruption evidence programme my previous work, work by a team, so Elizabeth (Liz) David-Barrett and Mihály (Mishi) Fazekas on red flags in public procurement. So, working on this newly available procurement data and thinking well, what can we see about rules being followed or broken in these massive procurement data sets? And you know, the red flags are fairly clear, and you can understand why they're red flags. So, single source competitions, so you don't have a competition, you just award a contract, using consulting rather than procurement, so, you call anything consulting and you award a contract to your favourite consultant buddy, cost overruns, time overruns. One of my favourites is, I think there are 9 altogether, my favourite is probably contractors who registered companies in tax havens. So, I think why would any country want to give public procurement contracts to a company that is registered in a tax haven? You know it's not a red flag, it's a red hooter. It just sort of screams, no, no, no, no, no, but still it happens. So, a lot of progress has been made in in this sort of normative- and transparency-led approach to public procurement. Now talking to, again back to Mushtaq Khan about this, he says, yeah, but the paperwork may look good, but actually the politics may still be bad. So, you may appear to have a competition, you know, three bidders, it’s gone to the technical, the T1, the technical best and also at a reasonable cost, but they’re still a cartel and they're taking turns to win. So, I still believe you need to understand the politics of any sector and procurement competition to understand whether it really is better or whether the paperwork looks better, and things are still, you know, skulduggery and bad practise is still happening. The final point I'd say is in terms of public procurement and transparency. Looking into the data, you know, a government can easily appear to be more transparent but can present data in a way that no one could ever use it. So, I don't mean to beat up Malawi, but a few years ago I was looking at publication of public procurement data from Malawi. And it was in PDF forms, but it was basically like a Xerox of a form, so very hard to sort of interrogate it electronically. On an idle Friday afternoon, I looked at some of the data and I looked at procurement of vehicles and saw that, you know, lots and lots of individual vehicles procured by lots and lots of different government ministries, which to me, you know, surely you could find a lower price if you procured all these things in in one go. And I have an interest in policing and police reform and did some work on police reform in Malawi. So, I looked at police procurement and looked at a contract. And these are lines in a contract for things like police hats and material for police uniforms. And by looking at the company that had provided the hats, I then Googled it and saw that I think it should have been a blacklist or was on a blacklist. Again, you can see these loopholes if you can be bothered to look into the data. So, I think the key message is transparency is great, public procurement is really important, but you need to have people who are motivated and even funded to be picking through this data. Ideally the data is in a decent clean database and so you can do it electronically. If not, you need people and not me sitting in my backroom in Oxfordshire, but people on the ground in the context that they live in and care about to, to actually think, so who are these guys who were in these contracts? Was it a fair competition? What do I know about, you know, police hats in southern Africa? Is this firm legit? Should they be allowed to bid or not? Because it's only that level of interrogation and interest which I think will make or will reap the full benefits of anti-corruption efforts in public procurement. My standard line on government spending is in a public procurement 20%, 30%, 40%, 50% of the budget, debt repayment, sadly, a big chunk these days, and then payrolls, or paying the people of government. So, in any sector, be it the energy sector, health, education, I see things in relatively simple terms. You know, you're either paying people, you're buying stuff, or your government is servicing debt. And we need to get to grips with these systems which are partly technical, but particularly political. So, that's the way I see the world.

 

Banik   

I'd like you to please reflect a bit more on where you would like more research. The kind of advice you would give us in the academic sector. Where should we be doing more work? And the kind of advice you have for donor agencies like FCDO and NORAD and CDOR? And all of these like-minded countries that form the U4. And finally, also a third set of actors, national governments. It isn't as if there aren't honest people. It isn't as if there aren’t people who want to do something to combat corruption, but they find it exceedingly difficult to make headway. So, if you were a local government official with a certain amount of power, where would you put your efforts in trying to combat corruption? So, academia, international organisations, local governments, trying to do something about corruption control.

 

 

 

Evans

So, I think corruption control and development and growth outcomes, which are constrained by a range of things, including corruption, but including bad politics with a small p as well as a big P. So that's the political economic constraints. Lots of donor friends say to me, if only we could have more public debate about the politics and political economy of the sectors in which we invest large amounts of money in, or colleagues invest in. So, this could be climate, health, education, livelihoods, energy, whatever. Donors often fund their own political economy analysis, so, they're concerned about the politics in the sector, so they employ experts, or they do it in the house. They generate analysis to tell them what's really going on in a sector. But often those things are unpublished. So, my interest is in public goods and public debate. I think that if there is a political story in why teachers don't turn up to work, and about the power of teaching unions and corruption in teaching systems such that, you know, teachers are pulled into a bad system, they may have paid for their place at a teaching college and paid for posting as they may be sort of compromised, and their will to speak out against corruption. Or they may be forced to pay their head teacher to receive their salary, or they may turn a blind eye to sexual violence against their colleagues or students, et cetera. So, you get these corruption systems. I would like, you know the understanding of the politics to be there in public, which is why I like political economy research as well as PEA or political economy analysis which is often unpublish. I think every context deserves an open public debate. However, political economy research can be a dangerous, you know, dangerous pursuit. It's a bit like investigative journalism, you can easily upset powerful people. So, I think that, you know, I wouldn't say every country needs people to do highly risky research on public procurement because you could easily get, and I've experienced this you know second hand, you can easily get harassed, or even worse shot, if you if you poke into bad procurement, for example. But I would like to raise the sort of tide of availability and the supply of problem-focused, sector-specific political economy research. So that your decent and honest civil servants, also those who are just doing a good job but could do a better job if they have had access to this debate could also benefit from it. I think that sovereign donors, so sovereign bilateral agencies funding political economy research, will always have kind of a foreign policy aspect to it. It will always look like they've funded something because they're particularly interested in one set of actors in a place. So, I'd love to see more research funded as a public good. I'd like it to be more findable, so a lot of people get in touch with me and say I'm working in country X on sector Y, can you help me understand the political economy of this sector and corruption too? And I can usually help a bit, but I think not everyone has my e-mail address or they can find me on Twitter, but I won't reply to any DM. You know, it can't just be me and people like me giving this service. So, is there a public good platform whereby you could collect and curate such research, on a country and sector basis? You could pull out problems that are often similar regionally or even globally. Absenteeism in health is one where the drivers of absenteeism and the political drivers are often fairly similar in terms of it's about career paths, and about the power of medical associations, and about the relationships between the elite and doctors. The fact that elite people are often doctors, so you can find these similar things that would help you to understand a problem in many contexts. And then I guess the punch line is in my fevered brain, I see a thing that looks a bit like our world in data but is our world in political economy. So, I'd love to see this as a public good platform. So, that rather than asking me, people could find easily curated political comic research. And where there are gaps that would also be apparent too, because I think this kind of research is way underfunded. So, I'd love those who invest in sectors like health and be they governments, or be they the World Bank, or be they foundations and philanthropists to think, actually this political economy stuff is useful, there's a big gap. Maybe if we're spending 100 million, we should, you know, have a side bet on a political economy gamble, on understanding the politics because I think that's fundamental to unlocking the benefits of the big investments, of the 100 million. So, maybe in this time next year you'll see a political economy version of our world in data. Don't hold your breath, but if anyone's interested then, yeah, I'd love to hear anyone who would use it. And I've had several conversations with people who think this would be a good idea as users. But the hard thing is the funding. So that's the, probably not the $100 million question, maybe a couple $100,000 question.

 

Banik   

Peter, it was wonderful to see you again. Thank you so much for coming to the basement for this really productive, very enjoyable conversation.

 

Evans

It's been a real privilege. I'm just sorry we didn't talk about witchcraft, but maybe next time.

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