Parochial Politics for whom?

Parochial politics? People in developing countries mainly vote along ethnic, gender and even racial lines. Development economists elude this to backwardness and a limiting factor to growth and development. The basic assumptions behind the development economists’ propositions is that people in developing countries are acting irrationally and therefore dumb so as to say. The development economists are quite wrong to think in such a way. Of course such voting isn’t good for progress but the real issue should be what actually causes such voting patterns to occur? Rushing to a premature conclusion of brandishing folks from developing countries is far from solving their problems. A simple but different take on the matter exposes the fallacies which have been preached in mainstream development economics for so many years. The conditions or environment, folks in developing countries find themselves in, is proof of how their resultant voting behavior isn’t of their choice or making entirely. I would look at this as an example of constrained voting behavior. It’s something development economists find difficult to stomach. Therefore why are policy-makers in these developing countries finding it difficult to solve this problem? It’s a dilemma which all actors and stakeholders find themselves in. It’s a kind of trap in which low incomes are the order of the day in these countries. The majority of the growth theories around like the endogenous, Solow, Harrod - Domar growth models have failed to explain the income divergence between developing and developed countries and the easier route to take for economists is to lay the blame on folks from developing economies. Even if the guys from developing countries have taken the prescriptions from mainstream developing organizations like the World Bank to disastrous consequences (like the SAPs), their failure has been blamed on folks from developing countries who “fail” to implement them. It’s laughable to say the least. In simple terms, unaffordability makes people in developing countries resort to the voting patterns being described as desperate. This unaffordability has been caused by years of various forms of colonialism, including the “diplomatic” neo – colonialism. The struggle for resources makes people vote in such a caste fashion because if they have their own in the power circles, some of the limited resource will be diverted to their backyards. It’s a sad but true picture. Therefore now is the time for these economists to view these issues in a fair and pragmatic manner in order to obtain effective solutions.