Discusses markets and politics in what used to be the third world
Colburn, Forrest D.
AT A CONFERENCE, I kept hearing the term "emerging countries." After awhile I leaned over and asked my neighbor, Noel Ramirez, then president of Nicaragua's Central Bank, if Nicaragua was an...
...Among other works, FORREST D. COLBURN iS the author of The Vogue of Revolution in Poor Countries and Latin America at the End of Politics...
...Universities and foundations joined government agencies in devoting considerable resources to promoting nation-building and state-construction...
...At the farmers' market where I shop in Alajuela, Costa Rica, I recently saw a young man dressed in a red shirt emblazoned with the slogan, "Mao More Than Ever...
...Fewer people are living in extreme poverty...
...The intellectual and political elites of Western Europe and North America may have been queasy about accepting the blame for "underdevelopment," but they were seduced by the belief that the keys to rapid progress could be found and that there was, in fact, one set of keys for all the poor countries of the world...
...And if you are not in the market, you might as well disappear, even if you have a seat and a microphone at the United Nations...
...The volume opens with a wry epigram from John Maynard Keynes: "It is ideas, not vested interests, which are dangerous for good or evil...
...Finally, and perhaps most significantly, the heterogeneity of the poor countries became more and more accentuated...
...When does market activity—and political activity for that matter—push countries forward...
...What would work for Bolivia would work for Botswana, and would work, too, for Bangladesh...
...The collapse of the "Second World"—the demise of so-called socialist regimes in Eastern Europe and finally the implosion of the Soviet Union itself—made the continued use of "Third World" awkward...
...There surely are opportunities in the world's markets, but poor countries confront many obstacles, including well-ensconced competition...
...Literacy has improved...
...The new market paradigm makes no promises, though—and it shifts all responsibility for the welfare of the poor to their own weary shoulders...
...38 n DISSENT / Spring 2006 No, it is across the Charles River, at the Harvard Business School, where intellectual guidance can be found...
...Most likely he was wearing a castoff from the 1970s...
...The carton of 1.1 pounds of pure cane sugar pressed into cubes is imported from France...
...A colleague from Cameroon, Bertrade Banoum, says dismissively, "The Third World never existed...
...The ascendancy of the competitiveness paradigm poses many challenges to poor countries...
...It is true that the term Third World always embraced an extremely heterogeneous set of countries, marked by awkward differences of geography, size, history, culture, political system, and level of economic development...
...Where are we today...
...Moreover, actual links—including communication—among the countries were limited...
...Individual countries are atomized, locked in competition for markets and market share...
...At the forefront of the debate were economic issues, including prominently a demand from the poor countries for material assistance and for concessions on finance and trade...
...There has been progress...
...Left unsaid by Porter is the obvious: if you are not competitive, you are a loser...
...Okay, but what is the "internally driven process...
...While it suggests poverty, it also evokes countries "on the move"—politically and economically—and, above all, in solidarity with one another, pursuing a common political agenda, one that demands attention—and resources— from the rich countries of the world...
...Senegal and Nigeria were established in 1960...
...A country's competitiveness depends on the capacity of its industries to innovate and upgrade continuously...
...He focuses on what has become the new synonym for development—competitiveness...
...There was a widely shared sense that development was within reach, and that the right poliDISSENT / Spring 2006 • 39 POLITICS ABROAD tics would make a decisive difference...
...Through the process of innovation and upgrading, countries create prosperity—it is not inherited or a gift of natural resources...
...A simple but illustrative example is a brand of cubed sugar in New York: A la Perruche...
...Indeed, many in the world's poor countries are skeptical, even hostile, to the new market paradigm...
...DISSENT / Spring 2006 n 41...
...They were, he pronounced, the Third World or Tiers monde, echoing the name of the third house of the French Parliament of the ancien regime, the Tiers etat...
...Mao Zedong summed up the feeling in 1958 when he said, "Our nation is like an atom...
...Similarly, the Chinese Revolution in 1949 gave that mammoth country the sense that it was beginning anew...
...Solidarity and politics have given way to competition in business...
...Governing elites—policymakers, in the lexicon of the book—need to focus on providing a supportive environment for the market...
...We often forget just how "new" most poor countries are...
...One of the most influential books of the era has a revealing title: How Europe Underdeveloped Africa...
...Kenya gained independence in 1963—it took until 1980 for Zimbabwe...
...But he best captures how governing elites in poor countries—and everywhere else for that matter—behave: in an atomistic, self-interested way, almost like firms, competing for profitable niches in the international economy...
...Some countries have transformed themselves, other countries have stumbled along, making some progress, and still others have faltered...
...Malaysia was established in 1963...
...The back of the box states, "Product made of Swaziland or Congo sugar packaged in France...
...These questions are daunting and answers to them are elusive...
...THE BEST RECENT thinking about political and economic development might be found in an edited volume published in 2005 by Oxford University Press and the World Bank: Development Challenges in the 1990s: Leading Policymakers Speak from Experience...
...The world, as he observed it at the time, was divided into two great blocs: the capitalist, democratic West and the communist East, the First and Second Worlds...
...How telling it was that the preface to Frantz Fanon's The Wretched of the Earth was written by Jean-Paul Sartre...
...In a time of increasing global links, countries, and even cities, have become more important—paradoxical as it may appear— because competitive advantage in particular industries is created and sustained through a highly localized process...
...We shall be able to do things which we could not do before...
...Libya was established in 1951, Tunisia in 1956...
...India became independent in 1947, Indonesia in 1949...
...Besides poverty, these newly created or recreated countries shared an anger at European (and Japanese) colonialism and what was frePOLITICS ABROAD quently referred to as the neocolonialism of the United States (though just what that meant remained vague), and a corresponding sense of entitlement—they were "owed" something...
...Also, there are individual cases— prominently China—where there have been wide gyrations in economic growth over the course of the last few decades...
...However, he asserts, it is not sufficient to ensure a prosperous country...
...for example, agriculture and health care...
...A country's prosperity, he says, is determined by the productivity with which it uses its human, capital, and natural resources...
...It is thus no surprise that the world's richest individual—Bill Gates—would spend his fortune combating diseases in poor countries but sidestep financing nation-building and state construction...
...And in those countries at the center of the HIV/AIDS epidemic, life expectancy has been falling...
...The most evocative term, though, is "Third World...
...But there is a "black box" that is obscured by all the discussion of markets...
...Instead of the "Third World," there are many poor countries, and the differences among them are significant...
...Between the end of the Second World War and the end of the twentieth century, membership in the United Nations more than tripled...
...the state is "out," the market is "in...
...In contrast with decades past, today it is difficult to group together— even for the purpose of discussion— the poor countries of the world...
...the French, with their skills in packaging and marketing, pocket the dollars...
...But this classification was incomplete...
...However, a useful place to start is by an intellectual trek to Harvard University...
...Moreover, the reigning paradigm highlights these differences and the extent to which countries compete against one another...
...Africans try to earn a living selling raw sugar on the international market for 11 cents a pound...
...Often, too, there was political intoxication: a conviction that with the right political organization all was possible...
...Professor Michael Porter has tirelessly studied and promoted "economic competitiveness...
...A prominent example is the World Economic Forum, which publishes an annual global competitiveness report...
...Countries may have been newly created, but the societies they represented had just been held back—retarded—by colonialism and its handmaiden, capitalism...
...Indeed, the phrase "Third World" was coined in the early 1950s by the French sociologist Alfred Sauvy...
...Timothy Besley, in the introduction to the book, says, "Each country must find its own growth strategy based on an internally driven process responsive to its institutional capacity and economic conditions...
...Development was essentially a political task...
...The "Third World" lost its thunder...
...Intellectuals in Western Europe and North America were overwhelmingly sympathetic...
...There was also a sense of solidarity, of being in the same creaky boat, pride in national identity, and a heady sense of optimism...
...But the answers are not forthcoming from the Department of Government (lost in a fog of formal modeling) or Samuel Huntington's former kingdom, the Center for International Affairs, or that nursing home for the casualties of politics, the Kennedy School...
...He best captures the behavior of governing elites in poor countries, even those who publicly denounce markets...
...LIKE IT OR NOT, Michael Porter is today's Julius Nyerere, Gamel Abdel Nassar, Mao Zedong, and Fidel Castro...
...The collective testimony suggests how thoroughly governing elites in poor countries have changed the way they see themselves (and how they are seen, too, by international financial organizations...
...There is a proliferation of institutions and publications that "rank" countries...
...It is used to refer collectively to all the poorer countries of the world...
...the agenda was jumpstarting and sustaining a "North-South" debate...
...There are paired comparisons of neighboring countries that are stark: Thailand and Burma, Ghana and Liberia, Chile and Argentina...
...it did not encompass the poorer, backward lessdeveloped countries of the Middle East, Asia, Africa, and Latin America...
...It is dated and has lost all of its conceptual usefulness...
...What has remained mysterious, seemingly unknowable, is how everything comes together to move 40 n DISSENT / Spring 2006 countries forward, politically and economically...
...But the most conspicuous front was probably intellectual: how do societies "modernize...
...Porter is not widely read outside of business circles, but his writing is extremely influential...
...And these new members were overwhelmingly poor...
...Infant mortality and maternal mortality have decreased...
...Another upbeat, optimistic term is "developing countries...
...The World Bank reports that life expectancy in the last forty years has gone up by twenty years in poor countries...
...The puzzle is explaining the distribution of progress, most prominently among nationstates, but also among regions of individual countries...
...Noel was being funny, but he was also being honest...
...The richest Mexican state, Nueva Leon, has a per capita income ten times that of the poorest state, Chiapas...
...Markets, especially international markets, are fickle—and sometimes just plain cruel...
...Most of Latin America became independent in the first half of the nineteenth century, but the Cuban Revolution in 1959 prompted a questioning of national identity and direction throughout the region...
...A lot has been learned about facets of development...
...After awhile I leaned over and asked my neighbor, Noel Ramirez, then president of Nicaragua's Central Bank, if Nicaragua was an emerging country...
...Why have some countries held themselves together— even prospered—while others have stagnated...
...But maybe not...
...Although he commands staggering consulting fees, he is not a household name...
...Who is in the market and what are they doing...
...The nonalignment movement grew and established itself as an institution in 1961...
...He whispered back, "submerging...
...How can we conceptualize their place vis-à-vis each other and the more prosperous countries of the world...
...For example, Jordan and Syria— as independent nation-states—were created in 1946...
...But what should replace it...
...The import of the idea was to suggest that development was easy...
...Some organization for the Third World was provided by the "nonaligned movement," which began in 1955 with a meeting in Indonesia of representatives of twenty-nine countries spread throughout Asia, the Middle East, and Africa...
...Liberalism is in vogue...
...No country is competitive in every industry...
...The "birth" of Ghana came in 1957...
...ARGUABLY, THOUGH, the real importance of the Third World was as an idea that shaped attitudes and values, and so shaped, too, crucial decisions about how to organize state and society...
...But the World Bank also reports that malnutrition and disease still claim the lives of millions of young children, and that millions more never receive a primary education...
...Unfettered markets may be dominated by powerful economic actors, most likely from rich countries...
...It is the reign of "the business model...
...Politics was all-important in this era...
...The inability to answer these two questions with generalizations, despite all the field work and scholarship on "development," is a mortal blow to the concept of the Third World...
...There were also questions of just who was included and who was not: were China and Cuba, for example, part of the Second World or the Third World...
...It is hard to believe we have heard the last word about how best to spur economic development— or that politics has forever receded...
...The effort had many fronts, from agriculture to health care to institutional development...
...Contributors range from Fernando Henrique Cardoso, former president of Brazil, to Montek S. Ahluwalia, former secretary of India's Department of Economic Affairs, to Zhou Xiaochuan, governor of the People's Bank of China...
...Ultimately, countries succeed in a particular industry (be it bananas or tourism or steel) because their home environment is the most dynamic and challenging for that industry...
...Nicaragua has stagnated, even fallen backward, for the last quarter of a century "Emerging countries" is a hopeful expression, but it is far from an accurate description of what is going on in every poor country of the world...
...Productivity is the basis of "competitiveness...
...Moreover, even after decades of meetings and speeches at the United Nations and elsewhere, there was no visible reordering of the international economy to favor poor countries...
...What shorthand notation can we use to refer to the poorer countries of the world...
...When this atom's nucleus is smashed the thermal energy released will have really tremendous power...
...Paradigms were hatched, debated vigorously, and when exhausted, gave way to other paradigms...
...The value of the sugar on the international market is about 12 cents, though the carton, which boasts "since 1837," sells for $5.99...
...Does selling plastic bags of cold water at Managua's intersections count...
...There are just markets and market shares...
...But there is no first, second, or third world...
...Everything else is just parades and grandstanding...
...Countries of the Third World were not inexorably poor, they were victims...
...The most persuasive answers we have to these questions are offered by Michael Porter...
...This conception, however, is especially misleading...
...They just needed to pull themselves together—if necessary by a militant, vanguard party—and receive their due compensation from those who had bullied them...
...The agenda was not neutrality in the conflict between East and West...
...Yes, there are rich countries and there are poor countries...
...Porter begins by acPOLITICS ABROAD knowledging the importance of a sound macroeconomic, political, and legal environment...
Vol. 53 • April 2006 • No. 2
