Tyranny of Experts

The Tyranny of Experts: Economists, Dictators, and the Forgotten Rights of the Poor by William Easterly, 351 pages

In The Tyranny of Experts, development expert William Easterly describes how development orthodoxy was born during the last stages of colonialism, then proceeded to pass unquestioned from justifying European imperialism to supporting the autocracy of indigenous strongmen.  The result, he claims, is a system that supports the well-being of nations over the rights of individuals, and in the process fails both.

Easterly is handicapped by too narrow a view - he does not consider the extent to which bureaucratic management rules the West as well as the Rest.  In part this results from his own foreshortened historical perspective - beginning with late nineteenth century colonialism rather than tracing the origins of the "benevolent autocrat" back to the "enlightened despot" of the Enlightenment - Louis XIV and Frederick the Great play no part in his historical analysis, which comically imagines Tudor England to be less absolutist than Hapsburg Spain.  More seriously, Easterly's simplistic identification of collectivism and autocracy leads him to his own form of postmodern hubris.  His analysis castigates as oppressive any group in which membership is not deliberately chosen - a category that includes nations, ethnicities, religions, and families.  This ignores the extent to which the most meaningful relationships are given rather than chosen, and seems to favor the neo-colonial imposition of Western rootlessness on the poor of the world, all in the interest of liberating them from their communities.