End of Term

So the first term is over. Ten weeks, 20 subjects, 1,500 pages of reading, six learning journals, two term papers, 1 presentation and a 3.5 hour exam … yes, that is writing, with a pen, for three and a half hours. We received the paper two days before the exam, which in theory means it should have been a piece of cake, right? Well no. The questions were of course meant to test our understanding of a concept – just repeating the reading wasn't going to help.

The three questions I answered (in case any one is interested) were:

1. Take an example of “personal rule” within a government/organisation, explain how power was exercised and discuss the advantages and disadvantages for the country/organisation.
   1. I wrote about Mahathir in Malaysia who used the country's democratic institutions to do his authoritarian bidding …
2. Choose one of Nancy Birdsall's “seven deadly sins”. Explain its relevance in a particular country or donor organisation and make some suggestions about how to fix it.
   1. The seven sins are donor failings. I chose sin #1: Impatience, and looked at how the international community's impatience with institution building, impatience to see results and impatience to spend money had impacted on real progress in Afghanistan. I had few suggestions about how to fix it though, with the international community on their way out and the Taliban on their way in …
3. Is good governance necessary for economic development?
   1. This was a tricky question as “good governance” is one of those nebulous, hard to pin down concepts (as most are in political science) and which varies according to the academic or donor. But the crux of this question is that “the suits” (ie: the World Bank and IMF) have tied lending to developing countries to a transition to democracy and open markets, yet there is plenty of evidence to suggest that these policies are not necessary for growth. China, Singapore, Taiwan, S. Korea and even Hong Kong all developed under authoritarian rule with their infant industries protected by trade barriers until they were ready to compete. What's more, what the Bank and IMF fail to mention is that the US, UK and other developed countries also had very protectionist policies to mollycoddle their infant industries back in the early 20^th century and I certainly don't think anyone but the elite in Britain had a say in politics … so it's a great question to waffle on about how disingenuous donors are when they preach open markets and democracy to developing countries.

With that over, wrists aching and head pounding, it was off to a group meeting to discuss a project for an impact evaluation course, (the demobilisation programme of Taliban militants in Afghanistan) and then a brief introduction to some field work we need to do for a course next term: Empowering Society.

Finally. It was the bar, and the panto, an IDS tradition where the students mock the teachers, and everyone mocks the industry. Based on the occupy Wall Street and everywhere else movement, it featured a crew of hippy “occupistas” camped at IDS; a researcher intent in studying their participatory-led community-based sanitation; throw in a Lady Ga Ga number and a West Side Story style dance off between the "suits" (see above) and the occupistas, and that, was the end of term.