POLI 260 Lecture Notes - Lecture 2: Potluck, Frugality, Merit System
Document Summary
There is no causal relationship between political/economical development and aid. Another world is simply too complex for aid to work. Aid givers need to understand the world they are getting into from the bottom up. Transparency and accountability are two important issues of aid. Facilitating political and economic development needs to be based on democracy. Never mind the chinese, taiwanese, or indian model, people need to have rights. But then some countries have corrupt regimes, and it is nearly impossible to ask to give freedom to people. The incentives might be constructed by legal system, culture, or merit system. Weber wrote a book on protestant faith and how it impacts british. It was because the protestants had stronger work ethics! So does culture play into national prosperity. Is it a dangerous question to get into, because then we are putting successes and failures on something some people are born into. Granted, culture does influence some ethics: time orientation.
