 is a case study of Mali and the general question was what was is the impact on me when I when I went there The for the last time to do some interviewing and Visiting around the country for the for the project was about a little over a little less than a year ago was in July of 2011 and Mali was a stable quote-unquote democracy and Everybody I met said it's a stable democracy. So the first draft of this paper was It's a stable democracy. What has been the contribution of aid? and I took too long to finish the paper and Busy with other things and finally I sat down to work on it in February And I was more or less finished ready to send it to Danielle and then there was a put it down In Mali and suddenly I Had to change everything. So so now I've sort of it It is quite handy. I think for a case study Our book of case studies because this is the case where you know things went wrong We didn't have a case like that. That's very hard to say You know establishing that kind of counterfactual is very very hard to say but in retrospect, I was really struck by The sort of complacency of donors And there's sort of assumption that things were stable and for Reasons linked to my other research. I was very aware of the to our egg issues in the north of Mali And so the risk of instability Struck me as very real. I met some to our eggs and in the case of some other research And so so I was very surprised that the donors Basically didn't think the two eggs are an issue You know, they thought it was a minor little annoyance in the north and And certainly I I mean The dough I so I do think the donors could have done a lot more to address both the two to our grievances and generally imbalances in the country that that had I think Very deep But you know at the same time you don't want to be too critical of aid and I don't in general I'm not a person who thinks aid Can play more than a minor supportive role in the development process So since I believe that when things go wrong, you know, I don't when things go, right I tend not to give credit to the donors or when things go wrong. I'm not going to blame the donors but so there there are some Country like Molly has certain very specific structural problems Regional imbalances very high level of inequality Very very weak institutions deep deep Urban rule differences And what striking is is just how these haven't changed, you know If you look at donor reports from the 60s, they say they say they give this litany of issues You look at donor reports today. They continue to give this litany of issues. So I think that aid is very good at Providing services MDG campaign, but I think one of the real I think disquieting implications of This case study Is is that aid is not good at addressing the strategic issues, which may undermine I think that's and that you know, maybe it's too ambitious to expect aid to be able to resolve these things but They in some cases it's clear that they can't really play a role One of the issues in Molly is very very unusual for a democracy is the language of government Language that's in Parliament Is a language that only 10% of the people speak? I mean the language of government the language of the state is French but 85% maybe 90% of Molly install Don't really speak French so so that to me symbolizes this real Creevage between elite and masses So could aid have lessened this major cleavage Well in theory, yes, but then the mdg campaign has in fact spent an enormous amount of attention and resources on improving literacy Which would be a way to have get people to learn French but nonetheless if you look at that process of literacy and the conversion to French It's really slow here. We are 60 years after independence and it's still true, you know, so that's a case where Can you? should the donors Look at themselves and take blame for this. It's tough to say but another case may which strikes me as as clear every Report on the to our issue has said one of the problems is just how isolated and Marginalized the to our region is we need to build a road from Bamako to Kedel the road actually goes about halfway This has been true since 1960 since the first to our rebellion, you know in 1962 The two are one of the key to our grievances is build the road to Kedel It's still not built It's still not built I'm sure there are good reasons not to build it, you know, it's Kedel is a tiny little town. It's the deserts It's probably You know, I'm sure the World Bank economists have said that there are five roads that make more sense from an economic point of view But in terms of national unity in the political stability in the country, it's been a key investment And it's not been made Despite Six billion dollars of foreign aid in the last 20 years like the some debates now are, you know, how important is democracy or Should the donors impose conditionality about elections and those strike me as as secondary issues Mollings want democracy and they showed it again this time and and I don't think democracy Makes a huge difference, but I think it makes a positive difference. That's another conclusion of our project. So those debates that are still very present in the donor community strike me as second-order Issues on the other hand addressing these strategic underlining Dynamics that really threaten national unity in these countries That strikes me as as more urgent and and and the donors need to talk more about these issues Because ultimately if Molly's going to be an imperfect democracy for a long time There are going to be issues of corruption It's kind of inevitable but The current civil war could set Development back in my 10 years One thing that's really striking is is how centralized it is in in the capital and How how much the imprint of aid is Is urban bias that it's and capital bias and I and I do think That again a part that's inevitable, but I do think the donors need to look at themselves and And really push to Decentralize more to get out to the countryside to get out to the provinces The the parastatal Designed and funded by the donors to help develop northern Molly To address a Tory grievance that parastatal was in Bermacol a thousand miles from the north Because presumably because the people who work there wanted to live in Bermacol The but the failure of that parastatal to make any kind of difference Was a source of great unhappiness on the part of the party. I do think that in fragile countries They're probably this failure to address strategic issues and structural constraints, I think is Is probably something that a lot of good, you know, it's true in a lot of countries One one other I think Finding that I think is generalizable has to do with democracy assistance So not development assistance, but specifically aid that tries to improve democracy The the the numbers from Molly living in the numbers suggests that the donors only work on one dimension of the democracy problem and that is the enhancement of vertical accountability so the accountability of the government to voters to people right, and so so there are a lot of assistance goes to a Elections, but strikingly a lot of assistance goes to human rights to gender imbalances to civic and political rights voter registration, you know virtually no aid goes to mechanisms of horizontal accountability so and by that political scientists mean the judiciary and the legislative and Their relationship with the executive branch So there's very little money that goes into party support. There's very little money that goes into legislative support and Very very little money that goes into strengthening the independence of the judiciary But the last is there's a bit more money, but strikingly there's nothing very very small amounts of money Going to Parliament so in Molly out of you know, 800 million dollars a year going to Molly One half a million went to the legislative branch And and I think mechanisms of horizontal accountability are key to the survival of democracy and to the quality of democracy just as much as elections and and horizontal of her vertical and so and my senses and Danielle agrees and this comes out in the other projects is I think this is generalizable It has to do with we don't like political parties. We think in legislatures there, you know, as we say in America It's like a sausage factory. You don't want to look at how the sausage is made so So I think there's just a natural distaste for for parties Poor barrel politics in the legislature and so the donors don't they just are not present there and I think that's a mistake in general, I mean, I'm not even broader finding I think is is that The aid to democracy should be increased In the case of Molly as far as I can tell it's One or two percent of total hate flows the data is not good But I think it should be five six seven fundamentally the problem of democracy in low-income countries Is that the executive branch is too powerful? vis-a-vis the other branch of the government and vis-a-vis the people and Both both horizontal and vertical accountability are very important you do leave you have a real cleavage between elite and masses you you you don't want the elites to all be it, you know together in a kind of elite cartel and not have Not be accountable to the masses through elections and vertical accountability, right? but that at an institutional level the ability to check the power of the executive branch to make sure that There's not corruption to make sure that Decisions are thought through and act upon to give a voice to opposite viewpoints You really need the legislature So in this case of Molly The the the read one of the main reasons for the coup was just the lack of a response by the government Two events in the north and mollions were very unhappy You Took the pulse of the street in Bamako Friends were telling me six weeks before the coup the government has to do something This is deeply unpopular that that they're losing all these battles in the north and I think if If that unhappiness have been voiced in in parliament It would have led the government to act more aggressively and that might have then staked off the coup Hard to know but that's what I mean by why you want the system of checks and balances You know within the national political institutions of the country I feel very very strongly that Part of this complacency about strategic issues has to do with this myth of Of non-interference and an apolitical the apolitical nature of politics every donor decision ever in a country like Molly has political implications and Maybe I mean maybe that's the most to me the most obvious implication is donors need to be aware of the political implications of what they do and as we move to democracies So as we move to systems in which there are elections in which there is civil society in which there are oppositions Then It is even less if you in an authoritarian system For the an authoritarian system to be legitimate It has to make a claim that it represents a hundred percent of the population You know in a democracy it doesn't it has to claim that it represents 51% of the population And so in a democracy If if you're assisting the development you're assisting the 51% you're not necessarily assisting with 49 you know unless we protect the rights of minorities and So I'm worried about a horizontal vertical accountability So I think this mythology of a kind of technocratic apolitical foreign aid is dangerous dangerous But I'm a political scientist So You know I think politics is important