Book SummaryThe White Man's Burden, by William Easterly

1-Page Summary1-Page Book Summary of The White Man's Burden

In The White Man’s Burden, economist, New York University professor, and Brookings Institution senior fellow William Easterly argues that the global humanitarian aid system is fundamentally flawed. His main critique is that the international aid system prioritizes top-down, centralized, and tightly directed aid distribution—all controlled by rich countries far from the developing world they mean to serve. Because the aid community is so disconnected, it creates big plans and sweeping missions completely unsuited for the reality on the ground, overlooks local concerns, and rarely holds itself accountable.

Specifically, Easterly argues that:

• The Western-dominated, top-down approach to global aid and economic development does little to serve the needs of people living in poverty in the developing world—and that these efforts reflect a neocolonial mindset on the part of the West.
• Attempts by Western-dominated institutions like the International Monetary Fund and World Bank to impose free-market reforms in countries from Russia to Afghanistan through “shock therapy” have resulted in crony capitalism, the subsidization of bad government, and chronic poverty and indebtedness.
• Most of the social, economic, and political problems in the developing world stem from bad governments—and the West and the aid community lack the power to simply impose better governments upon these countries.
• The major aid organizations are saddled by inefficient and unaccountable bureaucracies that lack accountability, overlap or compete with one another, and don’t have clearly defined goals.
• The aid community botched the initial response to the AIDS crisis in Africa during the 1980s and, since then, has misspent resources by focusing on expensive and ineffective treatments rather than prevention.

In this guide, we don’t cover some of the more discursive and...

The White Man's Burden Summary Top-Down vs. Bottom-Up Aid Models

Easterly argues that, however well-intentioned, efforts undertaken by the world’s wealthy countries to aid the global poor have had a dismal track record.

According to Easterly, the $2.3 trillion in aid that Western governments and nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) distributed to the developing world from the 1950s through 2006 (when The White Man’s Burden was published) has had almost zero effect on global poverty, mortality rates, or overall quality of life.

To Easterly, this is evidence of one thing—the global humanitarian aid system is fundamentally flawed.

The Refugee Crisis and the Humanitarian System

These criticisms have only gotten stronger since the book was published in 2006. In a 2017 paper, Paul Spiegel, a former top official at the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), argues that the existing humanitarian aid system is no longer suited to deal with the problems of the 21st century—especially the global refugee crisis that has seen over 65 million people around the world forcibly displaced from their homes due to conflict and environmental...

The White Man's Burden Summary Imposed Free-Market Reforms Aren’t the Answer

Easterly writes that free-market capitalism can be a powerful force that drives economic growth, stimulates the development of a robust civil society, and serves as a foundation for a democratic society. However, Easterly also argues that the broader social and cultural conditions that enable the development of a free-enterprise system must arise organically within a community—and that these conditions are all too often ignored by Western governments or Western-dominated NGOs when they attempt to impose free-market capitalism on emerging economies.

According to Easterly, nearly every attempt to impose free enterprise anywhere in the world has led to decidedly poor results, largely because the development community ignores or fails to understand precisely what makes capitalism viable.

The Virtues of Markets

Easterly notes that the freedom to produce, buy, and sell what we want gives people a strong incentive to develop specialized skills that they can exchange in the market for the things they can’t directly produce themselves.

Further, **voluntary exchanges make everyone better off because they rationally allocate scarce resources and enable people to make their...

The White Man's Burden Summary The West Can’t Change Bad Governments

Easterly writes that what’s true for capitalism is also true for democracy. They are both good systems that, in the long run, lead to superior outcomes over their alternatives. But in poorly run countries, they cannot be imposed in the top-down manner favored by Western aid organizations. To put it another way, foreign aid is not going to change bad governance, nor will it be effective if given to bad governments to distribute.

Easterly argues that corrupt and authoritarian governments play a big role in causing and sustaining poverty, because their pattern of extortion, incompetence, graft, and selective enforcement of the law makes their countries politically risky places in which to invest or form businesses. In contrast, stronger democracy and political freedoms are positively correlated with significantly greater growth than found in authoritarian regimes.

Easterly argues that democracy actually works in a bottom-up rather than top-down fashion, because it favors local responsiveness to local demands. It creates a system of accountability for government officials: Good politicians who deliver for the public get rewarded through reelection, while bad ones...

The White Man's Burden Summary The Dysfunctional Aid Bureaucracy

Easterly extends his critique of the prevailing foreign development aid model to the structure of the aid organizations themselves. He writes that the major aid organizations are saddled by inefficient bureaucracies that lack accountability, overlap or compete with one another, and don’t have clearly defined goals.

Lack of Accountability

Easterly contrasts the behavior and incentives of the aid bureaucracies with those of the private sector. Private-sector bureaucrats (like managers, customer service agents, and salespeople) are responsive because of market incentives: Customers will take their business elsewhere if they don’t feel they're being treated well.

But international aid workers lack this accountability mechanism, largely because they tend to be based in the rich countries themselves—far away from the places they’re meant to be helping. This means that they are responsive to politicians, voters, and donors in the rich countries—not to the impoverished people they ostensibly serve.

The Aid Community and the Principal-Agent Problem

The competing incentives of the aid community—the need to please the rich donors in their home countries while...

The White Man's Burden Summary The AIDS Crisis: The Price of Utopian Thinking

Easterly writes that public health is one area where international aid actually has achieved real, measurable success, possibly because it is a subject that lends itself well to defining clear goals and measuring direct impact—in terms of vaccines administered, patients treated, new hospitals built, and other metrics. However, he adds that public health is where the international aid community has also suffered some of its greatest public failures.

Easterly writes that the AIDS crisis in Africa has been one of the world’s greatest humanitarian disasters since the 1980s. He argues that the aid community’s response to the AIDS pandemic has been marred by the same utopian, top-down, impractical thinking that has compromised its efforts elsewhere.

Explaining the Higher Rate of HIV/AIDS Infection in Africa

The numbers show the true scale of the AIDS catastrophe in Africa—and the devastating price humanity has paid for the world’s failure to properly address it. In the small African nation of Botswana, a full 40% of sexually active adults are HIV-positive, with similar figures in other sub-Saharan...

Shortform Exercise: Evaluate Aid Purposes and Criteria

Explore how and why international aid should be distributed.

What do you see as the appropriate rationale for providing international aid? Should the reasons be moral, pragmatic, or strategic?

Shortform Exercise: Explore Free-Market Reforms

Explore how free markets come into play in global development.

Do you think free markets are a force for good that enhances personal and economic freedom, or do you think they exploit society’s most disadvantaged people? Why?