Political Sciences student, Universidad EAFIT, Colombia
There is
one thing that is usually forgotten when someone design a complex system to
give a population the key to development, especially when those designs are
made by a mostly economic perspective. For instance, assuming that the
individuals are rational and that they are circumscribed to an institutional
frame were actors –collective or not- are constrained to certain rules, which
determine the actions that could be done, it would be naive statement.
This column
is not pretending that the economic perspective lacks on value to the
development thought, but it, by itself is not enough. There they left the
sociological and political structure of the peoples they’re willing to help without
attention, and that course they attempt to failure.
Let me
explain myself with a real example. Professors Oughton, Landabaso and Morgan
make a significantly contribution to the institutional thought of development
in their joint paper The RegionalInnovation Paradox (2002). There they sustain that for acquiring a greater impact
in helping people develop there should be more governmental support to programs
“promoting inter-organizational learning, improving existing regional
innovation capacity and exploiting possibilities for investment and innovation
activity”, going further the mainstream programs that rely on the increase of
external inversions, and the isolated attempts of the public sector and
universities to give the region an opportunity of growth (Oughton, Landabasoand Morgan, 2002).
That’s
quite a point. If the state promotes ways in which regions actually learn how
to innovate in coordination with universities and, the private and public
sector, there for sure are the creation of a functional program for
development. But, what the authors of the paper left behind are the
social-political character of the regions they study. All are place in the EU:
the most highly develop regional political institution, which have the capacity
to intervene in its on jurisdiction with little resistance of the folk. That
would give the paper and its conclusions reduce space of validity for a global
application.
It is not,
that what is done by de European Union in Europe could be done in other region.
For example, the UNASUR has got low power to help intra-state region develop,
and even if it has a way to actually intervene, the people of South America
wouldn’t react so softly due to their political customs and social
constitution. There, in Europe, the people have gain used to obey the institutional
actors: organizations with little link to the person. But here, we are used to
see people as the power and the closer the person in power is, the more
obedient the folk are. In these sense, if national leaders as presidents are
incapable of gaining the control of its entire legal jurisdiction, something as
far as UNASUR couldn’t be more irrelevant in order to organize, or even help society.
As a short
coming conclusion the institutional agreement proposed by Oughton, Landabasoand Morgan (2002) could only be applicable to Europe due to the sociological
political structure of the region and can’t easily be transported to other
global regions, just as one would think, they pretended. Each region requires a
deep study of the social and political structure before proposing a development
scheme. It would be premature to said so, but South America needs the state to
stop pretending a transliteration of external programs and start figuring out
how to use the human factor that actually exists.
Reference:
Oughton, Christine; Landabaso,
Mikel & Morgan, Kevin (2002). The Regional Innovation Paradox:
Innovation Policy and Industrial Policy. The Journal of Technology
Transfer. Vol. 27(1), pp. 97-110.
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