Overview
Siffin, W.J.
Rural development The interplay of analysis and action: 3-10
1975
DOI: 10.1107/97809553602060000804Document Number: 378981
The paper quotes from and discusses the World Bank's Rural Development Sector Policy Paper which describes a vast and confounding problem, sketches a set of policies and programmes and lays out the Bank's own commitment. It is also a political document designed to stir concern and influence effort by presenting an argument about the importance of rural development, by indicating judgments about appropriate lines of action, and by announcing the commitment of money. The ideal instrument for those who would design action systems or arrangements to accomplish some specified objective is effective, explicit, systematic analysis, prior to action in so far as possible, and also as it proceeds. The root property of such analysis is reliable and relevant description and prediction. The availability of such analysis in the field of rural development is limited. Knowledge of causal relations affecting the prospects for rural development is modest. And the major decisions and decision-making arrangements for setting goals and choosing means of rural development are political. In making its own decisions and in participating with borrowers in shared decisions, the Bank will utilize economic analysis in a key role. Yet, whenever projects are designed to serve multiple objectives, they are less susceptible to economic evaluation. Many rural development projects are of this nature. In the World Bank, AID, and other agencies engaged in promoting such aims as rural development, there are dual tasks of promoting desired action on one hand and of bounding it within a guiding rationale on the other. Systematic and semi-systematic (sometimes pseudo-systematic) analyses serve as important instruments in this complex domain of action. Experience suggests that some of the most common errors and inadequacies of a priori analysis are: (1) Faulty delineations of the problem to be attacked; (2) analytical scholasticism; (3) ignoring organizational factors; (4) inadequate organization of the design processes.