Development Undone: Weber, Kafka and the Organisation of Supply-Side Vested Interests

Abstract

Based on primary empirical evidence from six Asian countries at different stages of development, it is argued, first, that at the national point of delivery supply-side development assistance, organisations routinely behave in a manner that is antithetical to development, contradict their stated intentions and the principles of good governance that they claim to uphold (bureaucratic misrepresentation and anomie) and waste resources on technical ‘remedies’ that they know to be ineffective (bureaucratic misdirection); second, that these things are done to serve national and/or personal vested interests on the supply-side; third, that this can lead to internal conflict and alienation in supply-side organisations; fourth, that contrary to conventional wisdom, in many ways, supply-side behaviour mirrors the behaviour of vested interests on the demand-side and that they are mutually reinforcing; fifth, that Kafka’s notion of organisation explains such supply-side and demand-side behaviour much better than Weber’s does and sixth, that the dominance of neoliberal and Weberian thinking in our political and educational institutions and the Kafkaesque nature of development agencies at the national level make it likely that development in the interests of poor people by well-intentioned and well-informed technocrats will continue to be severely curtailed. JEL: F35, F51, F54, F55 O19, O57, P48