1.0 Introduction
The term “Development” in itself is one that is not easily defined. Over time, the understanding of development has varied and been modified numerous times. In a broad sense, development has been characterized with economic growth, poverty eradication, gender issues, and environmental issues – to mention a few. Each failure in the field has led to an extension of what development actually means. These wavy definitions of development by extension raise questions on who determines the best strategies towards achieving development and what informs the nature of development research.
Much of the literature on development expatiates on the economic, political, spatial and social factors that influence the practice of development research. However, there has been little emphasis on the importance of ideologies and how subjective perceptions affect choices, practices and development research as a whole. Using case study of a prominent development research organization – The World Bank which has been characterized with its utilization of neoclassical economics for its research and neo-liberal ideology in its advocacy (Ferguson 2007), the paper attempts to examine the influence of ideological and institutional interests on the techniques and methodologies that shapes development research. The paper concludes that although it is necessary to have an overarching ideology to frame research, development is too much of a diverse field to be informed by a single discipline. Hence, to make development research more effective, it is necessary to make ideological frameworks more flexible.
2.0 Literature Review
What informs the nature of development research?
Jutting 2003 refers to institutions as the apparatus through which ideologies transform into realities. Ideologies are the motive forces. “An ideology is a consistent and integrated pattern of thoughts and beliefs, or thoughts converted into beliefs, explaining man’s attitude towards life and his existence on society and advocating a conduct and action pattern responsive and commensurate with such thoughts and beliefs’ (Lowenstein 1953:691). Institutions commensurate a set of ideologies, in other words, Institutions cannot exist consciously or unconsciously without having overarching ideologies. Healey (1991:35) contends that the principles of institutional organizations oversee the ways in which resources are utilized. The ideological interests and strategies of actors in the way they define and develop research projects however influence these principles. Similarly, Lebowitz (2004) points out that economic theories that are used by development researchers are not neutral and are subject to underlying assumptions embedded in each theory. These assumptions however are a reflection of ideologies and structure how these organizations devise strategies.
Therien (1999) gives an analytical example of how ideological interests shape development research. He argues that a major divergence in ideological approaches can be seen in the case of the Bretton wood paradigm- neoliberal policies, and the U.N paradigm. The Bretton Woods paradigm views underdevelopment and poverty as a result of poor economic decisions by national governments, while the UN paradigm underscores the absence of global cooperation. These contrasts in ideologies result in profoundly different development projects. The Bretton Woods worldview favors free market liberalization. Some authors refer to this as ‘embedding neoliberalism’ (Harrison 2004), while the UN advocates the need for a world economy that targets social inclusiveness and sustainable development.
Drawing from the Bretton woods ideology towards development, the next section uses the World Bank as a case study to analyze the role of ideological interests in shaping development research.
2.1 Case study: The World Bank
The World Bank is the most prominent and biggest publicly funded actors in development research. With 93 researchers and over 30 support staff and almost 3 percent of its total budget spending on research, it is the largest group of research analysts in development discourse (Banerjee et.al 2006).
The Deaton evaluation affirmed that the world banks research is generally of high quality but raised some controversial issues as regards the skewed nature of its research towards its institutional interests. These critiques on the World Bank incorporates an entire scope of issues yet, most of which revolve around concern about the methodologies embraced by the World Bank towards development research, and the way they are represented. More specifically, critics have pointed out the role of the Bretton woods neoliberal and econometrics ideologies in shaping development and the World Bank’s research projects and reports. They also highlight the need for development research to reflect diversity as opposed to ideologically specific research (Rao and Woolcock 2007).
The World Bank has been accused of “policy-based evidence” in its research. Although it prides itself to be neutral, the World Bank’s research has been suitably overhauled to serve the interests of neoliberalism. The World Bank assumes a subjectively diverse role from the IMF but still, it reinforces Structural Adjustment Programmes (SAP) enforced by the IMF by concentrating on development loans for particular projects that they view as essential for economic growth (Thistle 2000). Furthermore, the World Bank publishes a series of journals to circulate its research. Its goal to be a knowledge bank projects that the World Bank is objective and neutral. Nevertheless, as Metha 1999 points out, knowledge is socially constructed and influenced by various perspectives depending on the framework of knowledge of the researcher.
Although it is necessary for the World Bank to defend its policies, tailoring its research to validate these policies may have a negative impact on the quality of its research. Much of these observations stem from the fact that economic experts mainly dominate the bank and these pro-economics perspectives towards development might undermine other alternatives towards development discourse (Bretton woods Project 2005) and perhaps leave out non-economic aspects that influence development. Scholars like Gilbert and Vine (2000) argue that the World Bank provides knowledge that is more comprehensive and professional. A positive side to the use of economics is the simplicity in interpreting results in terms of statistics; however this is only the case depending on one’s understanding on what ‘comprehensive’ is. As Bayliss et al. (2011) points out, econometric representation of data may give the illusion of strong empirical context but may not engage effectively with realities as it lacks context and strong analytical frameworks. Research that is mainly characterized with economic ideology may consequently lead to the rounding up of social dimensions in research into statistical econometric analysis.
A prominent example is the World Bank’s research on aid. The World Bank supposedly spent $1million on its aid research and circulated a report, which in fact showed that aid affected growth positively as long as specific policies were in place (Dollar 2000). Waeyenberge (2011) observes that this report was largely based on econometric techniques and statistical analysis. In addition, the report concluded that the allocation of aid could only have a positive impact on growth provided there were certain policies in the recipient country. Furthermore, the way the World Bank’s research is done and projected reinforces a sort of paradigm maintenance of the neoliberal ideology. The outcome of the aid research translated into an ‘ideational’ dimension towards the allocation of aid to countries the World Bank deemed fit to have appropriate policies (Waeyenberge 2011). This was widely criticized by a lot of academics that argue that the aid research was biased, ignores contextual factors and represents only the interests and ideologies of the World Bank as opposed to a broader representation of the wide array of the literature on aid.
The World Bank has acknowledged the need to include experts from other disciplines in their research whilst still reflecting its economic based testable theories in order to achieve more empirical development research (Gelb et al., 2010). It is however important to note that Research staffs are not necessarily monolithic in the sense that they may sometimes digress from the overarching ideological interests of the World Bank, but this may not be promoted. Institutions may comprise of divergent interests and varied behaviors of the actors involved (development researchers), however results that are circulated may still be skewed in favor of the overarching institutional interests. In the case of the World Bank, research that projects development issues in a wider context as opposed to economic analysis may be discarded or tweaked to fit the ideology in place (Denning 2000:143).
Finally, it is probable that research may be chaotic when there’s no overarching ideology behind the methodology and implementation of development research policies, but also noteworthy is the fact that ‘Institutional bottle necks’ may negatively affect the effectiveness of development research. Development is a very diverse field and that makes it difficult for it to be informed by a single discipline or ideology.
3.0 Conclusion
The paper has argued that development research as a field is subject to ideological perspectives in the execution of research strategies and what policies work best. In this light, the World Bank’s research is largely based on its econometric methodology and neoliberal ideologies. However, in order to make development research more empirically grounded and effective, it is necessary to make ideological frameworks more flexible as a particular one may not fit into particular contexts.