Poverty Reduction in the Age of Globalization
If you have picked up this book, you are probably among the millions of Americans who are concerned about global developments and about America’s place in the world. Leaders and citizens alike want to know whether attempts by American citizens and their government to promote democracy and free enterprise are having any positive effect.
The Rise of Global Civil Society is designed to reach a broad general audience that is interested in global trends affecting the future of freedom and our way of life. It draws from my experience in senior positions at the White House, at USAID (United States Agency for International Development), the nation's primary agency for relief and development, and at the State Department, including a term as a senior advisor in Baghdad—as well as conversations with many of the nation’s top policy leaders, scholars, and advocates—to provide a firsthand view of economic development and democratic nation building around the world today. This book also attempts to answer some basic questions: Are the forces of progress and democratic values winning? If so, where and how?
The news is dominated by terrorism and extremism, as well as a bungled and seemingly open-ended conflict in Iraq. Is there any good news anywhere? America’s reputation abroad, we are reminded again and again by ubiquitous polling, is at an all-time low, and many citizens are embarrassed and frustrated by the fact that a country so closely identified with the highest democratic ideals could be so unpopular in so many places. Why, they ask, are we so broadly despised?
Given the tumultuous conditions in many regions of the world, many have come to doubt that efforts to improve the lot of humanity in the Third World can succeed in the face of sectarian conflict, Islamic radicalism, and anti-Americanism. Perhaps we should just return home and concentrate on building secure borders.
Many others, however, sense that behind the more troubling news there may be a promising new global era emerging, although they are uncertain what form it is taking and how it will affect them as Americans. Globalization, for good or bad, is shifting the tectonic plates. It is also bringing innovative approaches to advancing democracy and confronting poverty.
Conventional efforts by elite policy experts and bureaucracies to bring about prosperity in the twentieth century have mostly failed. As a result, confidence in "top-down," bureaucratic solutions is declining, while confidence in "bottom-up" innovation by business and nonprofits is growing. The twenty-first century will see more social entrepreneurship, private philanthropy, public-private partnerships, and grass-roots linkages involving the religious and civic communities. There will be less of the traditional approaches to "helping," and more partnering with and empowering of indigenous institutions. The key to meeting development challenges in the future will be to harness the best of both the public and the private sector so as to foster experimentation with approaches that rely on markets and on civil society, and that engage the poor as partners.
The work of building and maintaining the democratic state must involve citizens operating in their own communities. This book examines recent efforts by policy leaders in Washington to transfer more responsibility for social welfare to local and nongovernmental institutions. Private voluntary organizations, faith-based partnerships, and a proliferating array of NGOs—aided by communications technology and unprecedented mobility—are spreading real capacity as well as the norms of civic community and private enterprise around the globe.
In the new era, business too has an expanding role in generating technical innovations that are directly and powerfully beneficial to the poor. American business ingenuity will help the poor in the most remote Third World villages.
In the midst of these promising trends, there is also much to be sobered by, especially the problems that arise from ethnic and sectarian division. In the Arab Middle East and other traditional Muslim societies, there is a resurgence of tribalism and identification with religious factions. Dozens of nations are at or near civil war conditions. This book addresses the deeper questions of religion in relation to civil society, particularly in the Islamic world.
In this context, the rush to democratize strikes many as misguided. Democracy cannot be instituted simply by forcing elections on nations that remain in a state of underdevelopment. Moving hastily to achieve the symbolically satisfying results of an election can even produce "illiberal" outcomes. Genuine democracy is not possible without democratic citizens. Moreover, the experience of recent years suggests that the U.S. government is ill positioned to push democracy on a reluctant world. The institutions and values of democracy are most likely to advance through the continued outflow of assets from the American private sector, including business, civic, philanthropic, academic, and faith-based organizations.
Chapter One details the first global "associational revolution," involving an explosive growth of nonprofits, NGOs, and thousands of civic, professional, and advocacy-oriented groups, many of them tied together by technology and promoting democratic values worldwide. This movement, I argue, is America’s most consequential export, and it presents the greatest hope for economic and political progress. The tendency to join or create voluntary associations, which Alexis de Tocqueville identified as distinctive to America and a key to its democratic success, is now also a trend on every continent, thanks to the increasing connectedness of the world. This global web of civil society is providing the world’s destitute in remote locations with information and knowledge relevant to improving their condition.
Chapter Two surveys the strategies that are now being used successfully to reduce poverty and build healthy communities at home and abroad. The problems of community are similar in every location. Strategies to bring about "comprehensive community transformation" domestically are the same strategies that are being adopted to transform conditions in Third World countries. The approach is to replace top-down, state-dominated programs with broad partnerships involving flexible organizations working within the communities. The essential ingredients are local ownership and innovation.
Chapter Three reviews the great foreign aid debate. America is in the process of reassessing what works and what doesn’t work in the area of government aid programs to the developing world. Many have accused the United States of being stingy, but without taking into account the massive outflow of private assistance in the form of philanthropy, university partnerships, NGOs, and even remittances. What really matters, this book argues, is whether a particular intervention —private or governmental—is producing results in poverty reduction and effective institution building.
Chapter Four describes the shift that is under way in how the U.S. government delivers assistance to the world. Neither traditional aid nor aid agencies have a monopoly any longer. Instead, there is a growing role for public-private partnerships and private aid alliances, as well as a movement of private businesses into such areas as emergency assistance and relief. Numerous partnerships with local poor communities involving private sector players are yielding results that traditional aid programs cannot replicate.
Few trends are more promising for the future of global prosperity and democracy than the emergence of international movements promoting corporate citizenship and social responsibility. Chapter Five discusses the corporate citizenship practices of volunteerism, community partnerships, and targeted philanthropy. Many corporations see the call to citizenship as inseparable from their pursuit of a stronger bottom line and have made it a part of their branding and marketing. Philanthropy is also being transformed by the "social entrepreneur" —a socially concerned business person who offers his expertise and business acumen for solving a particular social problem.
The capital that already exists in poor countries far exceeds the combined value of foreign aid, investment by the private sector, and philanthropy. Trillions of dollars are currently held by the poor, but this wealth is trapped in the underground economies of poorly managed Third World nations. Chapter Six describes how such innovations as microenterprise and microfranchising are tapping native capability at "the bottom of the pyramid."
The Third World is in the midst of a bottom-up revolution in entrepreneurial capitalism that is bringing economic opportunity and hope to millions of poor families. Fueling this movement are hundreds of NGOs that are establishing microlending and business development programs, including rural co-ops and credit unions. Local and regional economies in places like India are growing from the seed-planting success of microenterprise initiatives. Numerous private organizations are promoting legal and institutional reforms to strengthen property rights and establish sound business regulation. The poor will no longer be ignored when they are finally seen as producers and consumers.
Drawing from my experience as the director of private assistance for tsunami reconstruction at the State Department, I describe in Chapter Seven the phenomenal growth of private emergency relief and reconstruction assistance being offered to communities in crisis. While U.S. government assistance after the Asian tsunami disaster of 20 04 totaled $657 million, private donations from individuals and corporations approached $2 billion. A new global e-philanthropy contributed greatly, with funds for victims raised almost instantly via the Web. Faith-based programs got worldwide support for their relief efforts, and American business stepped up to provide hands-on assistance of the kind once offered exclusively by government emergency relief programs.
Of all the major trends in world affairs, perhaps the most consequential has been the prominent role of religion and culture in national and regional affairs, particularly in Asia and the Middle East. Chapter Eight analyzes religion as a factor in generating the best and the worst of civil society. What emerges is a hopeful view that while extremist movements may gain short-term advantages, most citizens desire more freedom and prosperity, and they will push for more open societies. Attention is given to the complex currents within the Islamic faith affecting such values as tolerance, diversity, and openness to innovation.
Chapter Nine aims to make sense of the stunning rise of anti-Americanism. While America stands at the apex of influence, and while American products and ideas are known everywhere, animosity toward America has reached unprecedented levels. This chapter examines how America’s private sector and civil society may be far more effective than its government officials and policies in spreading American values throughout the world. In many ways, direct government efforts are the least effective means of advancing America’s interests.
Even where hostilities toward official America are high, local attitudes toward the American people remain largely positive. On the other hand, America’s cultural exports often have a negative influence on international opinion, especially in traditional Islamic communities. Chapter Nine suggests that more efforts be made at promoting people-to-people, institution-to-institution ties, in order to expose the world to the real America.
Chapter Ten explains how civil society is the foundation stone of democratic nation building. There are no shortcuts to building democratic nations. It is not possible to build viable democracies from the top down or from the outside in. Instead, democratic habits, skills, and aspirations must be cultivated inside societies to support the formal institutions of democracy. Traditionally, it has been the voluntary associations of civil society that afford individuals the opportunity to practice in their daily lives the values and habits of trust, collaboration, and mutual respect. A rush to formal democracy can actually create space for undemocratic elements to move in and dominate the process.
Chapter Eleven visits the vexing problems of conflict and reconciliation in the context of nation building. The horrifying experience of the Rwandan genocide in 1994, and the subsequent attempt to build a viable democratic state there in the heart of Africa, illustrate a range of internal transformations that are required for democracy to take root, along with political institutions and rule of law. This chapter describes the work of reconciliation and building trust in Rwanda, and the broad effort to replace an ideology of ethnic hatred with a moral vision of citizenship wherein ethnic categories are eliminated.
Chapter Twelve makes the case that the only path to free and prosperous nations is by way of cultivating democratic citizens. Democracy as it is understood in Western political theory is not merely about politics and the state; it is about civil society and local community habits. Too many attempts at building formal democracy sidestep the difficult issues of culture, religion, race, ethnicity, and a variety of attitudinal factors that often militate against liberal democracy. Building the seedbed for democracy requires promoting a global civic culture to incubate the attitudes and habits that produce healthy democratic societies.
The concluding chapter offers a guide for a variety of actors across all sectors—government, business, philanthropy, NGOs, and private individuals—on how to apply the observations and recommendations that flow from the previous chapters. It is presented as a roadmap to encourage more effective efforts at promoting freedom, democracy, and prosperity around the world by individual Americans and their civic, educational, business, and philanthropic organizations.
The Rise of Global Civil Society is designed to reach a broad general audience that is interested in global trends affecting the future of freedom and our way of life. It draws from my experience in senior positions at the White House, at USAID (United States Agency for International Development), the nation's primary agency for relief and development, and at the State Department, including a term as a senior advisor in Baghdad—as well as conversations with many of the nation’s top policy leaders, scholars, and advocates—to provide a firsthand view of economic development and democratic nation building around the world today. This book also attempts to answer some basic questions: Are the forces of progress and democratic values winning? If so, where and how?
The news is dominated by terrorism and extremism, as well as a bungled and seemingly open-ended conflict in Iraq. Is there any good news anywhere? America’s reputation abroad, we are reminded again and again by ubiquitous polling, is at an all-time low, and many citizens are embarrassed and frustrated by the fact that a country so closely identified with the highest democratic ideals could be so unpopular in so many places. Why, they ask, are we so broadly despised?
Given the tumultuous conditions in many regions of the world, many have come to doubt that efforts to improve the lot of humanity in the Third World can succeed in the face of sectarian conflict, Islamic radicalism, and anti-Americanism. Perhaps we should just return home and concentrate on building secure borders.
Many others, however, sense that behind the more troubling news there may be a promising new global era emerging, although they are uncertain what form it is taking and how it will affect them as Americans. Globalization, for good or bad, is shifting the tectonic plates. It is also bringing innovative approaches to advancing democracy and confronting poverty.
Conventional efforts by elite policy experts and bureaucracies to bring about prosperity in the twentieth century have mostly failed. As a result, confidence in "top-down," bureaucratic solutions is declining, while confidence in "bottom-up" innovation by business and nonprofits is growing. The twenty-first century will see more social entrepreneurship, private philanthropy, public-private partnerships, and grass-roots linkages involving the religious and civic communities. There will be less of the traditional approaches to "helping," and more partnering with and empowering of indigenous institutions. The key to meeting development challenges in the future will be to harness the best of both the public and the private sector so as to foster experimentation with approaches that rely on markets and on civil society, and that engage the poor as partners.
The work of building and maintaining the democratic state must involve citizens operating in their own communities. This book examines recent efforts by policy leaders in Washington to transfer more responsibility for social welfare to local and nongovernmental institutions. Private voluntary organizations, faith-based partnerships, and a proliferating array of NGOs—aided by communications technology and unprecedented mobility—are spreading real capacity as well as the norms of civic community and private enterprise around the globe.
In the new era, business too has an expanding role in generating technical innovations that are directly and powerfully beneficial to the poor. American business ingenuity will help the poor in the most remote Third World villages.
In the midst of these promising trends, there is also much to be sobered by, especially the problems that arise from ethnic and sectarian division. In the Arab Middle East and other traditional Muslim societies, there is a resurgence of tribalism and identification with religious factions. Dozens of nations are at or near civil war conditions. This book addresses the deeper questions of religion in relation to civil society, particularly in the Islamic world.
In this context, the rush to democratize strikes many as misguided. Democracy cannot be instituted simply by forcing elections on nations that remain in a state of underdevelopment. Moving hastily to achieve the symbolically satisfying results of an election can even produce "illiberal" outcomes. Genuine democracy is not possible without democratic citizens. Moreover, the experience of recent years suggests that the U.S. government is ill positioned to push democracy on a reluctant world. The institutions and values of democracy are most likely to advance through the continued outflow of assets from the American private sector, including business, civic, philanthropic, academic, and faith-based organizations.
Chapter One details the first global "associational revolution," involving an explosive growth of nonprofits, NGOs, and thousands of civic, professional, and advocacy-oriented groups, many of them tied together by technology and promoting democratic values worldwide. This movement, I argue, is America’s most consequential export, and it presents the greatest hope for economic and political progress. The tendency to join or create voluntary associations, which Alexis de Tocqueville identified as distinctive to America and a key to its democratic success, is now also a trend on every continent, thanks to the increasing connectedness of the world. This global web of civil society is providing the world’s destitute in remote locations with information and knowledge relevant to improving their condition.
Chapter Two surveys the strategies that are now being used successfully to reduce poverty and build healthy communities at home and abroad. The problems of community are similar in every location. Strategies to bring about "comprehensive community transformation" domestically are the same strategies that are being adopted to transform conditions in Third World countries. The approach is to replace top-down, state-dominated programs with broad partnerships involving flexible organizations working within the communities. The essential ingredients are local ownership and innovation.
Chapter Three reviews the great foreign aid debate. America is in the process of reassessing what works and what doesn’t work in the area of government aid programs to the developing world. Many have accused the United States of being stingy, but without taking into account the massive outflow of private assistance in the form of philanthropy, university partnerships, NGOs, and even remittances. What really matters, this book argues, is whether a particular intervention —private or governmental—is producing results in poverty reduction and effective institution building.
Chapter Four describes the shift that is under way in how the U.S. government delivers assistance to the world. Neither traditional aid nor aid agencies have a monopoly any longer. Instead, there is a growing role for public-private partnerships and private aid alliances, as well as a movement of private businesses into such areas as emergency assistance and relief. Numerous partnerships with local poor communities involving private sector players are yielding results that traditional aid programs cannot replicate.
Few trends are more promising for the future of global prosperity and democracy than the emergence of international movements promoting corporate citizenship and social responsibility. Chapter Five discusses the corporate citizenship practices of volunteerism, community partnerships, and targeted philanthropy. Many corporations see the call to citizenship as inseparable from their pursuit of a stronger bottom line and have made it a part of their branding and marketing. Philanthropy is also being transformed by the "social entrepreneur" —a socially concerned business person who offers his expertise and business acumen for solving a particular social problem.
The capital that already exists in poor countries far exceeds the combined value of foreign aid, investment by the private sector, and philanthropy. Trillions of dollars are currently held by the poor, but this wealth is trapped in the underground economies of poorly managed Third World nations. Chapter Six describes how such innovations as microenterprise and microfranchising are tapping native capability at "the bottom of the pyramid."
The Third World is in the midst of a bottom-up revolution in entrepreneurial capitalism that is bringing economic opportunity and hope to millions of poor families. Fueling this movement are hundreds of NGOs that are establishing microlending and business development programs, including rural co-ops and credit unions. Local and regional economies in places like India are growing from the seed-planting success of microenterprise initiatives. Numerous private organizations are promoting legal and institutional reforms to strengthen property rights and establish sound business regulation. The poor will no longer be ignored when they are finally seen as producers and consumers.
Drawing from my experience as the director of private assistance for tsunami reconstruction at the State Department, I describe in Chapter Seven the phenomenal growth of private emergency relief and reconstruction assistance being offered to communities in crisis. While U.S. government assistance after the Asian tsunami disaster of 20 04 totaled $657 million, private donations from individuals and corporations approached $2 billion. A new global e-philanthropy contributed greatly, with funds for victims raised almost instantly via the Web. Faith-based programs got worldwide support for their relief efforts, and American business stepped up to provide hands-on assistance of the kind once offered exclusively by government emergency relief programs.
Of all the major trends in world affairs, perhaps the most consequential has been the prominent role of religion and culture in national and regional affairs, particularly in Asia and the Middle East. Chapter Eight analyzes religion as a factor in generating the best and the worst of civil society. What emerges is a hopeful view that while extremist movements may gain short-term advantages, most citizens desire more freedom and prosperity, and they will push for more open societies. Attention is given to the complex currents within the Islamic faith affecting such values as tolerance, diversity, and openness to innovation.
Chapter Nine aims to make sense of the stunning rise of anti-Americanism. While America stands at the apex of influence, and while American products and ideas are known everywhere, animosity toward America has reached unprecedented levels. This chapter examines how America’s private sector and civil society may be far more effective than its government officials and policies in spreading American values throughout the world. In many ways, direct government efforts are the least effective means of advancing America’s interests.
Even where hostilities toward official America are high, local attitudes toward the American people remain largely positive. On the other hand, America’s cultural exports often have a negative influence on international opinion, especially in traditional Islamic communities. Chapter Nine suggests that more efforts be made at promoting people-to-people, institution-to-institution ties, in order to expose the world to the real America.
Chapter Ten explains how civil society is the foundation stone of democratic nation building. There are no shortcuts to building democratic nations. It is not possible to build viable democracies from the top down or from the outside in. Instead, democratic habits, skills, and aspirations must be cultivated inside societies to support the formal institutions of democracy. Traditionally, it has been the voluntary associations of civil society that afford individuals the opportunity to practice in their daily lives the values and habits of trust, collaboration, and mutual respect. A rush to formal democracy can actually create space for undemocratic elements to move in and dominate the process.
Chapter Eleven visits the vexing problems of conflict and reconciliation in the context of nation building. The horrifying experience of the Rwandan genocide in 1994, and the subsequent attempt to build a viable democratic state there in the heart of Africa, illustrate a range of internal transformations that are required for democracy to take root, along with political institutions and rule of law. This chapter describes the work of reconciliation and building trust in Rwanda, and the broad effort to replace an ideology of ethnic hatred with a moral vision of citizenship wherein ethnic categories are eliminated.
Chapter Twelve makes the case that the only path to free and prosperous nations is by way of cultivating democratic citizens. Democracy as it is understood in Western political theory is not merely about politics and the state; it is about civil society and local community habits. Too many attempts at building formal democracy sidestep the difficult issues of culture, religion, race, ethnicity, and a variety of attitudinal factors that often militate against liberal democracy. Building the seedbed for democracy requires promoting a global civic culture to incubate the attitudes and habits that produce healthy democratic societies.
The concluding chapter offers a guide for a variety of actors across all sectors—government, business, philanthropy, NGOs, and private individuals—on how to apply the observations and recommendations that flow from the previous chapters. It is presented as a roadmap to encourage more effective efforts at promoting freedom, democracy, and prosperity around the world by individual Americans and their civic, educational, business, and philanthropic organizations.
