I don’t always agree with Dani Rodrik — I don’t often agree with him — but he’s a provocative and interesting thinker. I found his latest Project Syndicate column particularly interesting. Basically, he’s addressing the controversy surrounding the various elite western academics and intellectuals who consulted for or visited with the Qaddafi regime in Libya. The Qaddafis invested considerable resources in cultivating court intellectuals, and many smart, decent people wound up taking advantage. As Rodrik explains, he came close to being one of them himself. He’s also very direct about his willingness to informally advise less-than-democratic regimes for the right reasons:
Most academics would jump at the chance to have a meeting with China’s President Hu Jintao. I haven’t heard much criticism of such contacts, which tend to be viewed as normal and unproblematic. And yet few would deny that China’s is a repressive regime that deals with its opponents harshly. Memories of Tiananmen are still fresh. Who is to say how the Chinese leadership would respond to a future pro-democracy uprising that threatened to undermine the regime?
Or what about a country like Ethiopia? I have had intensive economic-policy discussions with Prime Minister Meles Zenawi in Addis Ababa. I must confess to having enjoyed these talks more than most meetings I have in Washington, DC and other democratic capitals. I have no illusions about Meles’ commitment to democracy – or lack thereof. But I also believe that he is trying to develop his economy, and I offer policy advice because I believe it may benefit ordinary Ethiopians.
The conundrum that advisers to authoritarian regimes face is akin to a long-standing problem in moral philosophy known as the dilemma of “dirty hands.” A terrorist is holding several people hostage, and he asks you to deliver water and food to them. You may choose the moral high ground and say, “I will never deal with a terrorist.” But you will have passed up an opportunity to assist the hostages.
Food for thought. Part of what’s going on here is that very few westerners understood how loathsome the Qaddafi regime really was, particularly after it ended its efforts to secure WMDs and sought to curry favor with western governments. One wonders about the reckoning to come if some of the regimes Rodrik identifies ever collapse in democratic revolutions of their own.
I will say that Rodrik’s position vis a vis Prime Minister Zenawi parallels the views of many critics of sanctions against apartheid-era South Africa. Many believed that sanctions only injured South Africa’s indigenous minority by exacerbating their poverty and isolation. Multinational firms were also far more likely to provide indigenous workers with opportunities for economic advancement than domestic firms, which were more tightly controlled. This hardly settles the issue, but it does flip the political valence.