Over at Teekay’s

Been busy with a client report for a donor government on local institutes that do policy-relevant research. (That may explain the scarce posting over the last couple weeks — that and the fact that I finally managed to finish my prospectus, though my committee doesn’t know that yet.)

It’s been an interesting job, but the bit of research I did also confirmed some of my worst fears relating to what Ignatieff calls (in Empire Lite)

the contrast between the international rhetoric of capacity building and the reality of capacity confiscation.

He’s talking about many things here: the fact that local UN drivers often make three times as much as high court judges or cabinet ministers in such countries; that the UN and other agencies preach transparency to local government while resolutely refusing to be governed by the same rules and principles; the

illusion of self-government joined to the reality of imperial tutelage;

In short, the whole complex of imperial hypocrisy that Ignatieff says is a necessary of contemporary intervention, or what he calls “Empire lite.”

Here, the international overseer has for the last nine years been the main authority not just politically, but also legislatively: most laws concerning issues that were of interest to the international peace implementation mission were shaped by his office — in fact, very often, the laws were simply drafted by internationals and then submitted to parliament to be rubber stamped. If parliament proved reticent, the law would be imposed.

One effect of this is that there’s almost no serious policy research in the country. There are two international groups that have critically monitored peace implementation, the International Crisis Group and the European Stability Initiative, though the latter are nowhere near the caliber of the former. But in terms of indigenous capacity almost nothing has happened. (I’m not talking about advocacy NGOs or so-called intellectuals, of which there are rather too many here, since they usually don’t do serious research and have a tendency to criticize without proposing feasible alternatives.)

Another effect is that government doesn’t get the concept of outsourcing policy development, or involving outside actors in other capacities. Most laws are not even submitted for consultation to civil society or interest groups.

Unfortunately, Igantieff is rather better on the diagnosis than the therapy. How can a history of passive receiving be overcome and replaced with an attitude of providing and producing?