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Fergus Hanson and Alex Oliver - The Australian - October 27
A REPORT finds that education really matters in the stability of developing countries.
BY 2015-16, Australia will spend up to $9 billion a year on aid. This year alone, it will spend more than $1bn in the Pacific and East Timor, and we are leading two interventions in Solomon Islands and East Timor that have cost millions. To what end?
A recent Lowy Institute conference report on accelerating the Millennium Development Goals concluded: "As a group, the Pacific Island countries have been unsuccessful -- regressing or making no progress on the MDGs, and advancing only slowly for infant and under-five mortality."
If you are a taxpayer ripping your hair out right now, you might be tempted to hold aid donors responsible.
But what about the role of human agency? Are the leaders of these countries not important? And is the complex relationship between the Australian government, its agencies and the leaders of the countries it is trying to assist working in the best way?
In developed nations like Australia, the selection, election and performance of leaders attracts mass attention and is invested with almost religious significance. In this country, you are even fined for not participating in the democratic process. There is persuasive evidence that leaders matter, and given the fragile state of civil society and institutions in many developing countries, there are grounds for believing leaders to be even more important in the way these countries perform.
It is hard to imagine an independent East Timor without the agency of charismatic leaders like Xanana Gusmao or Jose Ramos-Horta, yet almost the only time the leadership in developing countries is seriously considered is in the context of corruption. There has been little systematic attempt to look beyond such blanket explanations for poor development results, to map the leadership in our region and understand how it might affect or progress development outcomes.
The latest report from the Lowy Institute has attempted just such an overview. The project interviewed nearly 100 leaders in Samoa and East Timor from the Prime Minister and President down: Samoa, because it is heralded as one of the region's few success stories, and East Timor because it is one of the world's poorest and newest nations, brought into existence, in part, through an Australian intervention. The first area where the results yielded intriguing data was in the area of corruption. It is often assumed that extensive patronage networks and informal social security systems make Pacific countries unavoidably corrupt. Leaders surveyed certainly had large families to support and significant numbers of dependants. But corruption indicators in Samoa and East Timor are widely different.
Samoa does better than any other Pacific country on Transparency International's Corruption Perceptions Index, ranking 56th in last year's report, whereas East Timor ranked 146th (equal with, among others, Zimbabwe and Sierra Leone). Traditional obligations and extended family networks do not appear to go hand in hand with high levels of corruption. Instead, the results suggest that leaders need to have an environment conducive to generating legitimate additional income to fund their extensive obligations.
The second finding is that education really matters, but perhaps not always in the way you might expect. In Samoa, all but two of the 36 leaders surveyed had undertaken tertiary education -- that compares with just 11 per cent of the Samoan population generally. In East Timor, 84 per cent of the leadership sample (52 of 62 respondents) had undertaken tertiary education, compared with just 15 per cent nationally. In almost every case, the leader had undertaken the study overseas, and often with the benefit of a scholarship.
Overseas universities and scholarships clearly play an important role in educating elites in our region. But there also appear to be dividends for donors. In Samoa, the most common sources of scholarships, by far, were New Zealand and Australia. And asked to describe their experience abroad? All said it was either very good (91 per cent) or good (9 per cent) and all described their feelings towards Australia the same way. In Timor-Leste, only a handful of respondents had been educated in Australia and feelings towards Australia were often more ambivalent.
The findings also offer insights as to how donors' education and scholarships funds could be better targeted (Australia is spending $1.4bn on scholarships over five years). For example, despite the importance of tertiary study abroad for leaders, most studied at local primary and high schools (many private), suggesting the need for at least some high-quality local schools to allow the next generation of elites to get the education they need to make the transition to higher studies.
The educational background of elites' families might also offer an insight into a country's stability. In politically stable Samoa, leaders' parents were educated to a much higher level than the average population. In the more fragile East Timor, only one leader's parent had any tertiary education. But when asked about their hopes for their children, 73 per cent hoped for a good education.
Leaders in developing states are too often neglected in the development equation, despite persuasive evidence that they matter a lot. As Australia ramps up its aid, the leadership, present and future, in the countries to which it is giving aid deserves a lot more attention if we are to spend our money wisely.
Fergus Hanson and Alex Oliver are Research Fellows at the Lowy Institute and au
.
Fergus Hanson and Alex Oliver - The Australian - October 27
A REPORT finds that education really matters in the stability of developing countries.
BY 2015-16, Australia will spend up to $9 billion a year on aid. This year alone, it will spend more than $1bn in the Pacific and East Timor, and we are leading two interventions in Solomon Islands and East Timor that have cost millions. To what end?
A recent Lowy Institute conference report on accelerating the Millennium Development Goals concluded: "As a group, the Pacific Island countries have been unsuccessful -- regressing or making no progress on the MDGs, and advancing only slowly for infant and under-five mortality."
If you are a taxpayer ripping your hair out right now, you might be tempted to hold aid donors responsible.
But what about the role of human agency? Are the leaders of these countries not important? And is the complex relationship between the Australian government, its agencies and the leaders of the countries it is trying to assist working in the best way?
In developed nations like Australia, the selection, election and performance of leaders attracts mass attention and is invested with almost religious significance. In this country, you are even fined for not participating in the democratic process. There is persuasive evidence that leaders matter, and given the fragile state of civil society and institutions in many developing countries, there are grounds for believing leaders to be even more important in the way these countries perform.
It is hard to imagine an independent East Timor without the agency of charismatic leaders like Xanana Gusmao or Jose Ramos-Horta, yet almost the only time the leadership in developing countries is seriously considered is in the context of corruption. There has been little systematic attempt to look beyond such blanket explanations for poor development results, to map the leadership in our region and understand how it might affect or progress development outcomes.
The latest report from the Lowy Institute has attempted just such an overview. The project interviewed nearly 100 leaders in Samoa and East Timor from the Prime Minister and President down: Samoa, because it is heralded as one of the region's few success stories, and East Timor because it is one of the world's poorest and newest nations, brought into existence, in part, through an Australian intervention. The first area where the results yielded intriguing data was in the area of corruption. It is often assumed that extensive patronage networks and informal social security systems make Pacific countries unavoidably corrupt. Leaders surveyed certainly had large families to support and significant numbers of dependants. But corruption indicators in Samoa and East Timor are widely different.
Samoa does better than any other Pacific country on Transparency International's Corruption Perceptions Index, ranking 56th in last year's report, whereas East Timor ranked 146th (equal with, among others, Zimbabwe and Sierra Leone). Traditional obligations and extended family networks do not appear to go hand in hand with high levels of corruption. Instead, the results suggest that leaders need to have an environment conducive to generating legitimate additional income to fund their extensive obligations.
The second finding is that education really matters, but perhaps not always in the way you might expect. In Samoa, all but two of the 36 leaders surveyed had undertaken tertiary education -- that compares with just 11 per cent of the Samoan population generally. In East Timor, 84 per cent of the leadership sample (52 of 62 respondents) had undertaken tertiary education, compared with just 15 per cent nationally. In almost every case, the leader had undertaken the study overseas, and often with the benefit of a scholarship.
Overseas universities and scholarships clearly play an important role in educating elites in our region. But there also appear to be dividends for donors. In Samoa, the most common sources of scholarships, by far, were New Zealand and Australia. And asked to describe their experience abroad? All said it was either very good (91 per cent) or good (9 per cent) and all described their feelings towards Australia the same way. In Timor-Leste, only a handful of respondents had been educated in Australia and feelings towards Australia were often more ambivalent.
The findings also offer insights as to how donors' education and scholarships funds could be better targeted (Australia is spending $1.4bn on scholarships over five years). For example, despite the importance of tertiary study abroad for leaders, most studied at local primary and high schools (many private), suggesting the need for at least some high-quality local schools to allow the next generation of elites to get the education they need to make the transition to higher studies.
The educational background of elites' families might also offer an insight into a country's stability. In politically stable Samoa, leaders' parents were educated to a much higher level than the average population. In the more fragile East Timor, only one leader's parent had any tertiary education. But when asked about their hopes for their children, 73 per cent hoped for a good education.
Leaders in developing states are too often neglected in the development equation, despite persuasive evidence that they matter a lot. As Australia ramps up its aid, the leadership, present and future, in the countries to which it is giving aid deserves a lot more attention if we are to spend our money wisely.
Fergus Hanson and Alex Oliver are Research Fellows at the Lowy Institute and au
.
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