Development as Freedom (1999)

Read for class.

Very interesting book, discussing the idea of societal independence and personal freedom to be most necessary for development. Provides excellent examples and reasoning.

Finally, I'd like to add that the author sounds like a genuinely good person and I'd love to have a pleasant discussion with him over lunch. ( )

The overarching ideas in this book are solid. Sen argues that individual freedom is both the means and the end of economic development, and that development shouldn’t simply be measured by Gross National Product or absolute wealth levels. His economic ideas are an unexpected synthesis of Adam Smith and Karl Marx (amongst others) that result in what I’d call gentle capitalism. I appreciate both the evidence he supplies and his careful analyses of opposing viewpoints.

Unfortunately, like his biggest influences, Sen has an unrealistically rosy view of human nature. We humans may not be inherently nasty or selfish, but neither are we perfectly rational beings who always know what is best for ourselves and our neighbors. There is certainly plenty of room for improvement in the world, and I’m confident that the world is improving now thanks in part to people like Sen. However, he too often seems to ignore the difference between the way the world SHOULD be and the way the world CAN be. ( )

Sen looks to lay down the theoretical foundations for a new economics of development. In some ways this is a fascinatingly ambitious work, as it really attempts to incorporate the theoretical basis of economic thought (Aristotle, Smith, Marx, Mill) as well as the latest findings. (Although since the book came out in 1998, that is less crucial.)

The theory developed in the book is that freedom isn't just a means of achieving economic development (though it is that) but should be considered as the principal goal of a countries development. That is that the success of any project of economic development should not be judged by GNP increase or level of industrialization but by the options available to the people within that society.

Sen describes the freedoms in terms of political freedoms, economic opportunities, and social opportunities. In doing this he includes access to food, education, and medical services as crucial freedoms. I suspect anyone who holds to the libertarian concept of a laissez faire economic policy might object to that, but Sen makes a strong case for why his view is closer to Smith's.

Among the topics covered: how democracies never suffer famines (though they can allow populations to experience cronic malnutrition), the important role of social constraints in economic behavior (like corruption), the importance of the education and empowerment of women to development, and challenging the believed Western monopoly on human rights.

The last one came as a particular revelation in today's political climates, when it seems to have become popular among some intellectuals to claim that Islam and/or Middle Eastern culture are completely autocratic traditions. Sen's focus is farther east, especially the Asian Tigers, since their success was shown as proof of the necessity of autocratic government for economic development. Sen points out that those making these statements often represented autocratic regimes or their allies, and gives a fair hearing to philosophical traditions of India and China vis a vis their Western counterparts to show how both democratic and authoritarian concepts have existed in those traditions.

I do have a couple of reservations about recommending the book. Though there is no math involved, there is a degree of economic theory behind it. (Such as Pareto optimality, partial ordering, etc.) The second arises from the first, since the book does deal largely in theory, those looking to get more concrete prescriptions might find it a bit disappointing.

Still, if neither of those are a turn-off, and you are interested in economic development, I highly recommend the book. ( )

This is Amartya Sen's, Nobel Prize winner in Economics and collaborator of Martha Nussbaum, most famous work. In "Development as Freedom" he gives a broad and general overview of his views on development economics, and in particular on the priorities that must be made in creating social and economic policy in the developing world. The general thesis of the book is that many economic advisors have far too much relied on measurements of real income alone, and ignored the fact that income and wealth are a means to an end, and that this end is freedom (broadly defined as capacity); and that for this reason any policy which increases income but decreases freedom must be rejected. This thesis of itself is strong and well-made, and a deserved rebuttal to the ideas of many Asian development economists and politicians who see a right-wing dictatorship à la Lee Kwan Yew as the most effective way to create economic growth, and therefore desirable.

But that is, unfortunately, the only point of the book. Sen's actual discussion of which economic policies would lead to the results of increasing freedom is so general as to be practically unusable. He has a completely unwarranted faith in the capacity of markets (albeit interventionist ones) to create these increases in freedom, and incorrectly claims that the proof is overwhelmingly in favor of markets leading to growth on their own, when the evidence is in reality wildly conflicting and the strongest proofs are against markets. What makes this even worse is his ignorant conflating of markets as such with capitalism, which leads to such silly canards as dismissing criticisms of capitalism as not understanding freedom, since after all, what can be more free than freedom of exchange? In this way, his defense of mainstream development policy is worse than undergraduate level.

Moreover, the very greatest part of the book is filled with meaningless and saccharine rhetoric of the most astonishingly unintelligent kind. In each short chapter addressing some major aspect of development economics and its problematic, he will, after much talk, come to such stunning conclusions as "take the middle road" and "there are arguments for and against interventionism and we must consider both", as well as the whopping conclusion that we need to take the whole spectrum of effects on people into account when suggesting policies. One hardly needs to have a Nobel Prize to come to these 'insights'.

To add insult to injury, his discussion of past economic policies and economists in general is incompetent and historically dubious. He claims that no democratic state has experienced famines, but then qualifies this by excluding colonies of such states, without however giving any reason for this - creating a wholly ad hoc argument for an unproven link between 'democracy' (which apparently includes pre-Reform Bill Britain) and well-being. Similarly, he constantly cherry-picks quotes from Adam Smith to cast him as a concerned and judicious proponent of development, while a more objective look at the entirety of Smith's oeuvre would quickly reveal the degree to which he appeared as a propagandist for the Glasgow mercantile and industrial interests. It must be said in Sen's favor though that he does recognize that famines can easily occur where free markets are present, which at least puts him at a level above most apologetics for economic orthodoxy.

On the whole this book is a major disappointment. Sen's vague and hand-waving rhetoric is useless for any kind of policy purpose and yet fills most of the book, even obscuring the one point he does have about freedom as end and means. With the idea he originally had, he could have done a lot better, but his unwarranted support for mainstream economics and its equivocations has made this impossible. ( )

http://www.odilejacob.fr/catalogue/index.php?op=par_auteur&auteur=764&ca... ( )