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Contributions from
the Column
Focus
Development policy and development research
How helpful is academia for politics? – A round-table discussion
Friends and Critics – Think Tanks and the United Nations
African studies and Africa policy – a precarious relationship
1/2004
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Development policy and development research
How helpful is academia for politics?
A round-table discussion
Intermediary between the worlds
Ihne: We need the type of the intermediary between the worlds. Why cannot one design a kind of exposure programme for academics, who for example would temporarily join the BMZ administration, the German World Bank office or the German Federal Parliament and work in the decision-making processes to learn all that?
Messner: And in reverse. For mutual understanding to grow, we also need people from the executive and the political arena in general spending some time for 'tanking up' in our institutes, finding orientation and working on their subjects and then returning to their institutions. But I have often failed in such attempts, such as trying to invite people from the BMZ to come to the INEF and work with us on a problem for a week or even one month. The administration's routines do not permit that. Nor do ours. If we were asked if one of us could not at some time work continually on an issue for six weeks at the BMZ I would first of all also say no, that is not possible. We are not geared for that. However, we need an exchange in both directions.
Ihne: The ministries must be more open vis-à-vis academia. They must be willing to allow academics to sit in on internal consultation talks as well, confidentially, of course, so that the latter get to know the processes up close and can then write their expertise much nearer to reality.
Hofmann: We are making efforts to find a solution for something like that. But we are living at a time of staff cuts. So it is hardly possible to organise an exchange between a ministry and academia if that means removing people from their work. What is important is that there must be people who can move easily in both worlds. And that, indeed, has always been one of the functions of the GDI in shaping its courses by exchange with the practice in such a way that the graduates are enabled to do that. Nowadays, there are young people who have spent a few months at a research institute or have worked in a company and then in a ministry, and they are very much called for. It becomes difficult when they have begun a career, for then there is no longer an incentive for them to change.
Luhmann: We have done that at the Wuppertal Institute by having sent academics with several years' experience in our institute to the Foreign Office’s planning staff for several months to work on climate policy, a relatively exotic subject for the Foreign Office people. For the academics, that was a revelational experience, and, for us, a very important investment.
Ihne: At Bonn University’s ZEF institute, we are aiming for a similar cooperation in reverse. In agreement with the Ministry we offer BMZ staff the opportunity to gain further academic qualification with us, for instance by doing their doctorate with a thesis arising from their work. It's something like a job-accompanying PhD.
Hofmann: So far, we have only discussed German research, and I have complained that in terms of development subjects the German academic scene is thinned-out. However, I would like to point out that Europe is increasingly becoming our benchmark. An academic networking at European level is also and in particular taking place in our subjects. That means that on the one hand we can also find expertise outside Germany, and on the other that German academics must also think about how they can contribute their ideas in a European context.
At the same time, we are increasingly seeing that developmental processes and decisions are taking place more and more on-site in the developing countries – the European Union calls its reaction deconcentration, the World Bank names it decentralisation. So we must have an interest in our research institutes cooperating with institutes in developing countries in order to promote the respective know-how there as well as to benefit from their know-how. We need to achieve exchange and discourse.
Research with reduced funds
D+C: That raises again the question of funds. The African institutes are usually very poor, and the German ones do not have enough money to support them. And when one follows the current discussion on the thinning-out of regional research on development economics and social sciences at German universities – 13 African language chairs compared with only one sociological chair and one of political science – then it also cannot be seen where in Germany the partners for the African academics would be. My impression is that there is an undesirable trend here at German universities. Why does not the BMZ say something and point that out?
Hofmann: Yes, we have a concrete case with the planned closure of the Agriculture faculty at the Humboldt University in Berlin, which has always been an important partner for us at the BMZ due to its training programme at the Seminar for Rural Development. But we can't take compensatory action because our mission is, after all, to fund measures in the developing countries, not in Germany.
Luhmann: Mr Hofmann, even if the BMZ can say nothing about it, could not the German government in general do so? The question is after all: how does the government function in the field of communication with academic policy? What attitude should politics take when such wrong university policy priorities arise?
Hofmann: But who is responsible here? We talk to the Federal Education Ministry, of course, but the federal states also have sovereignty here. There is also university autonomy, and there is academia, which, as we have said, is a self-referential system.
Luhmann: And the Academic Advisory Board reinforces this principle; it allows no-one to tell it what to do. Nevertheless, the question is how does politics actually communicate with these central institutions of academia? My point is: It can be foreseen that something uncoordinated is taking place in each university, and we ask ourselves if there is a possibility of coordination.
Ihne: The Development Ministry could sweeten the competition between the universities on such subjects with incentives. That would not be centralistic dirigisme.
Messner: Britain’s Department for International Development has done something like that. In exchange with academia, it is making efforts to define the relevant issues for international cooperation in which Britain should play a part. About 10 subject areas have been identified, such as 'The future of the state in the context of globalisation' and 'what shape should finance systems in the least-developed countries take'. 'Centres of Excellence' among British universities are sought by means of calls for tenders. Such a centre costs one million pounds per year, which is not incredibly expensive – for it results in valuable soft-power capacities. Universities can then develop in a corresponding direction if they believe it is relevant. We could also do with such instruments in Germany. When the BMZ says knowledge is a strategic resource for it, then it can promote it in this way.
Hofmann: In Germany, the development has taken a different course. Here, the political foundations, the churches and the NGOs, plus GTZ and KfW, are seen as the real Centres of Excellence. Some German NGOs have assumed the tone-setting role and not only demand concepts but present them. I note that the NGOs have also attracted many interesting people who otherwise would work in think-tanks, if we had them – qualified people, some of whom could do a good job within the administration. We have a very good cooperation with NGOs because much expertise is concentrated in them.
Ihne: The NGOs have indeed filled a gap and the cooperation between them and the research institutes, the implementing organisations and the managerial offices in the ministries functions well – at the project level. But there is a shortcoming at the strategy level, at the level of overall consultation. Academia is holding back because, they say, they would no longer be neutral, they would be politically monopolised, and they do not want to be an institute of the Social Democratic Party (SPD) or the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) or Greens. I think it's a mistake to avoid the strategic subjects for fear of political commitment. Whoever shies from getting close to politics will also be unable to influence it.
Only goals, no strategies
D+C: We have observed more and more often in recent years that in international terms, not only in Germany, no actual strategies are announced any more, but only goals – such as halving world poverty by 2015, or increasing the number of children attending school, or boosting the number of vaccinations. These are not strategies, they are statistical objectives. Does that have to do with the fact that academia no longer formulates strategies?
Hofmann: I believe that what has emerged recently on the international political scene is a reasonably good process: laying down agreed goals for 2015 and then working towards them – including with competing approaches. After all, we argued for decades over what the right strategies were, and there was never agreement.
Luhmann: That is management experience, which comes mainly from the Anglo-Saxon countries, translated to politics. However, you must then also transfer that completely, and the method for that is called rolling pursuit of goals. But that does not happen in Germany.
D+C: But we think that something else must come before the pursuit of goals: placing things on an operational basis. And all too often that is lacking. After all, you can only achieve a goal if the path to it is described.
Messner: I believe this observation is correct and at the same time that it is also not so. What is right is that development policy is focusing ever more strongly on orienting itself on goals, and thereby at times forgets the strategies. In addition, we have to deal with a proliferation of goals, Millennium Goals and Poverty Reduction Strategies and sustainable development, and whatever else they are called. But at the same time I do not believe that the strategies get lost amid them. What has been lost are the grand approaches, which believed they knew exactly how they could solve development problems with a holistic approach. That is history. What we need, and in part are also doing, however, is to set ourselves goals in the direction we aim to take. Then there will be a competition between ideas and strategies on how you get there. These would turn out differently in different countries, but this competition on strategies and concepts in order to achieve goals would be relevant.
Hofmann: I am very optimistic in this respect. Think of the PRSP, the Poverty Reduction Strategy Papers. The process by which they are developed means, after all, that strategic approaches in society are discussed and worked on in a different way from what was done earlier. Previously, a planning authority (seldom as successfully as in South Korea or Singapore), laid down a strategy for a country. Now we have a participatory process, and the proposed concepts must be discussed with various actors. Even the World Bank knows that it can no longer come along with a blueprint from Washington, but must take part in the local discussion process. So the strategic debates most certainly are continuing, but on a much greater political level. The most important thing is that we are talking about a process that takes place in the countries themselves. In principle, the Post-Washington Consensus means that there must be country-specific answers, and they must be developed in the countries themselves.
Ihne: Now we are coming back to the World Bank, because it – together with the IMF – is implementing this process. However, in contrast to the research institutes that we represent here, the World Bank is a think-tank with operational power, and it is in this duality that its opportunities lie. It has a division where analyses are carried out and concepts drafted, and on the other hand it has operational divisions by which it can co-determine measures on-site. That is exactly what we lack here: our academia sits totally isolated at the green table. We need a greater integration of academia in political decision-making processes in Germany.
Luhmann: Science Policy Interface is the academic key term for this integrated form of organisation. That has been established to a great extent in environmental policy. That the air pollution control process in Europe has been so successful is due to the fact that academia was integrated in the political processes in a very different way than is usual in climate protection policy. Academia is a process by which to generate information. And some of the information can only be obtained by those who participate in the discipline.
Hofmann: But for that you need a certain type of academic, one that wants to take part in change and shaping processes. You cannot make someone who has set himself up in an ivory tower a political adviser because he is structurally unsuitable for that.
D+C: And we need suitable institutions for this process. That has become clear in this discussion: our institutions as they are today hinder cooperation more than they enable it.
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Dr Michael Hofmann, head of BMZ Directorate-General 3 (Global and sectoral tasks; European and multilateral development policy; Africa, Middle East)
hofmann@bmz.bund.de
Dr Hartmut Ihne, Managing Director of the International Academic Forum Bonn (IWB), which includes the Centre for Development Research (ZEF) and the Centre for European Integration Research (ZEI)
ihne.cicero@uni-bonn.de
Dr Hans-Jochen Luhmann, Deputy head of the Climate Policy Department of the Wuppertal Institute, Member of the Chamber of the German Protestant Church for Development and the Environment
jochen.luhmann@wupperinst.org
Dr Dirk Messner, Director of the German Development Institute
dirk.messner@die-gdi.de
Moderator: Reinold E. Thiel, Editor E+Z/D+C
reinold.thiel@fsd.de
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