Development Projects Observed (A Brookings Classic) - Softcover

Hirschman, Albert O.

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0815726422 ISBN 13: 9780815726425

Verlag: Brookings Institution Press, 2014

Inhaltsangabe

Originally published in 1967, the modest and plainly descriptive title of Development Projects Observed is deceptive. Today, it is recognized as the ultimate volume of Hirschman's groundbreaking trilogy on development, and as the bridge to the broader social science themes of his subsequent writings. Though among his lesser-known works, this unassuming tome is one of his most influential.
It is in this book that Hirschman first shared his now famous ""Principle of the Hiding Hand."" In an April 2013 New Yorker issue, Malcolm Gladwell wrote an appreciation of the principle, described by Cass Sunstein in the book's new foreword as ""a bit of a trick up history's sleeve."" It can be summed up as a phenomenon in which people's inability to foresee obstacles leads to actions that succeed because people have far more problem-solving ability that they anticipate or appreciate.
And it is in Development Projects Observed that Hirschman laid the foundation for the core of his most important work, Exit, Voice, and Loyalty, and later led to the concept of an ""exit strategy.""

Über diesen Titel

Über die Autorinnen und Autoren

Albert O. Hirschman (1915-2012) was an influential economist who is widely regarded as one of the twentieth century's most extraordinary intellectuals. His other books include Exit, Voice, and Loyalty: Responses to Decline in Firms, Organizations, and States (Harvard University Press, 1970) and The Strategy of Economic Development (Yale University Press, 1958).

Michele Alacevich is associate professor of economic history at the University of Bologna. He is a former director of global studies at Loyola University Maryland and a research fellow at Harvard University, Columbia University, the Institute for New Economic Thinking (INET), and the World Bank.

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Development Projects Observed

By Albert O. Hirschman

Brookings Institution Press

Copyright © 2015 The Brookings Institution
All rights reserved.

ISBN: 978-0-8157-2642-5

Contents

Foreword: Albert Hirschman's Hiding Hand Cass R. Sunstein, vii, 
Author's Preface: A Hidden Ambition, xv, 
Author's Acknowledgments, xxi, 
Introduction 1, 
ONE The Principle of the Hiding Hand, 8, 
TWO Uncertainties, 32, 
Varieties of Uncertainties, 34, 
Supply Uncertainties: Technology, 35, 
Supply Uncertainties: Administration, 42, 
Supply Uncertainties: Finance, 52, 
Excess Demand, 54, 
Inadequate Demand, 60, 
Digression: The R&D Strategy, 69, 
Mitigation of Uncertainties, 75, 
THREE Latitudes and Disciplines, 79, 
Spatial or Locational Latitude, 80, 
Temporal Discipline in Construction, 87, 
Temporal Discipline from Construction to Operation, 95, 
Latitude for Corruption, 99, 
Latitude in Substituting Quantity for Quality, 103, 
Latitude in Substituting Private for Public Outlays, 110, 
FOUR Project Design: Trait-Taking and Trait-Making, 118, 
The Dilemma of Design, 120, 
Implicit Trait-Making: A Failure in Nigeria, 128, 
Entrained Trait-Making, 137, 
The Autonomous Agency as a Hybrid, 141, 
FIVE Project Appraisal: The Centrality of Side-Effects, 148, 
Side-Effects as Essential Requirements, 149, 
Pure and Mixed Side-Effects, 151, 
Smuggling in Change via Side-Effects, 156, 
Cost-Benefit Analysis and the Offensive Against Side-Effects, 161, 
Counteroffensives, 167, 
Modesty and Ambition in Project Planning, 172, 
Afterword: Albert Hirschman Observed Michele Alacevich, 175, 
Index, 191, 

CHAPTER 1

THE PRINCIPLE OF THE HIDING HAND

The karnaphuli pulp and paper mill is one of the earliest large-scale industrial enterprises to have been set up in Pakistan after Partition and Independence. Planned by the official Industrial Development Corporation to utilize the vast resources of the bamboo forests of the Chittagong Hill Tracts along the upper reaches of the Karnaphuli River in East Pakistan, the mill started to operate in 1953. It had perhaps more than its share of technical and managerial teething troubles, but considerable progress had been achieved by 1959 when its management passed into private hands. Soon thereafter, a major upset endangered the very life of the mill: the bamboo began to flower, an event entirely unforeseen and probably unforeseeable in the present state of our knowledge since it occurs only once every fifty to seventy years: given the resulting paucity of observations, the life cycle of the many varieties of bamboo is by no means fully known. In any event, the variety that supplied the Karnaphuli mill with some 85 percent of its raw material flowered and then, poetically but quite uneconomically, died.

It was known that flowering of the bamboo results in death of the whole plant and in regeneration from the seeds rather than, as normally, from the rhizomes; but it was not known that the bamboo that dies upon flowering would be unusable for pulping since it would disintegrate upon being transported and floated down the river. Another unpleasant surprise was the discovery that, once flowering was over, a number of years would have to pass before the new bamboo shoots would grow to a size fit for commercial exploitation. In its seventh year of operation the mill therefore faced the extraordinary task of finding another raw material base.

In a temporary and costly way, the problem was solved by importing pulp, but other, more creative responses were not long in coming. An organization was set up to collect bamboo in villages throughout East Pakistan (the waterways crisscrossing the country make for cheap transportation of bulky cargo), sundry lumber was cut in the tracts, and, most important, a research program was started to identify other fast-growing species that might to some extent replace the unreliable bamboo as the principal raw material base for the mill. Permission was obtained to plant an experimental area of six square miles with several of the more promising species, and plans to cover a much larger area are underway. Thus, the crisis of the flowering bamboo may in the end lead to a diversification of the raw material base for the mill.

Looking backward it may be said that the Karnaphuli mill was "lucky": its planners had badly overestimated the permanent availability of bamboo, but the mill escaped the possibly disastrous consequences of this error by an offsetting underestimate—or, more correctly, by the unsuspected availability—of alternative raw materials.

The question I wish to explore is whether this experience really was a matter of pure luck or whether there are reasons to expect some systematic association of such providentially offsetting errors. A similar phenomenon often occurs in successful irrigation and irrigation-hydroelectric projects: the river that is being tapped is frequently found not to have enough water for all the power, agricultural, industrial, and urban uses that had been planned or that are staking claims, but the resulting shortage can then often be remedied by drawing on other sources that had not been within the horizon of the planners: ground water can be lifted by tube-wells, the river flow can be better regulated through upstream dams, or the water of more distant rivers can be diverted. At present such plans are afoot for the San Lorenzo irrigation scheme in Peru, and for the Damodar Valley in India, among our projects; a similar overestimate of the waters available from the to-be-harnessed river which can, however, be corrected by "newly discovered" water from other rivers and areas has been reported for the Bhakra Nangal project in India "though no specific provision was made in the project for the investment on this account."

It would obviously be silly to expect that overestimates of the availability of a given material resource are always going to be offset by underestimates of alternative or substitute resources; but if we generalize a little more, we obtain a statement that no longer sounds wholly absurd: on the contrary, it is quite plausible and almost trite to state that each project comes into the world accompanied by two sets of partially or wholly offsetting potential developments: (1) a set of possible and unsuspected threats to its profitability and existence, and (2) a set of unsuspected remedial actions that can be taken should a threat become real.

The experience of several of the projects visited fits this very broad proposition. For example, the San Lorenzo irrigation project in northern Peru suffered serious, and at times exasperating, delays caused by political change and second thoughts on the kind of irrigation farming the project should promote. But the considerable economic losses implied by the delays were in part offset by the fact that, as a result of the second thoughts, the San Lorenzo irrigation eventually became a pilot project for the subdivision of land into small but viable family farms and for the granting of credit and technical assistance to previously landless farmers. The project thus set an entirely new pattern for Peruvian agriculture and turned unexpectedly into a breeding ground for administrators who could apply elsewhere in Peru the lessons learned in San Lorenzo.

The Uruguayan livestock and pasture improvement project also experienced extraordinary delays, first because of slowness in political and administrative decision making and then...

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: Brookings Institution Press
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2014
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 0815726422
• ISBN 13: 9780815726425
• Einband: Taschenbuch
• Anzahl der Seiten: 227
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: Nicht verfügbar
• Verantwortliche Person: gpsr@libri.de; gpsr@libri.de; ; Europaallee 1; Bad Hersfeld; 36244; Deutschland