Despite Good Intentions

Why Development Assistance to the Third World Has Failed

Books section
Thomas W. Dichter: A well-informed critique of the development
assistance industry, written by a longtime insider

For more than thirty-five years, Thomas W. Dichter has worked in the
field of international development, managing and evaluating projects
for nongovernmental organizations, directing a Peace Corps country
program, and serving as a consultant for such agencies as USAID, UNDP,
and the World Bank. On the basis of this extensive and varied
experience, he has become an outspoken critic of what he terms the
"international poverty alleviation industry." He believes that efforts
to reduce world poverty have been well-intentioned but largely
ineffective. On the whole, the development industry has failed to serve
the needs of the people it has sought to help.

To make his case, Dichter reviews the major trends in development
assistance from the 1960s through the 1990s, illustrating his analysis
with eighteen short stories based on his own experiences in the field.
The analytic chapters are thus grounded in the daily life of
development workers as described in the stories.

Dichter shows how development organizations have often become caught up
in their own self-perpetuation and in public relations efforts designed
to create an illusion of effectiveness. Tracing the evolution of the
role of money (as opposed to ideas) in development assistance, he
suggests how financial imperatives have reinforced the tendency to
sponsor time-bound projects, creating a dependency among aid
recipients. He also examines the rise of careerism and increased
bureaucratization in the industry, arguing that assistance efforts have
become disconnected from important lessons learned on the ground, and
often lessons of world history.

In the end, Dichter calls for a more light-handed and artful approach
to development assistance, with fewer agencies and experts involved.
His stance is pragmatic, rather than ideological or political. What
matters, he says, is what works, and the current practices of the
development industry are simply not effective.