The White Man's Burden: Why the West's Efforts to Aid the Rest Have Done So Much Ill and So Little Good. By William Easterly

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I

William Easterly's Burden is an exercise in frustration. It frustrates because its main message is that contemporary international efforts to alleviate global poverty and encourage development through financial aid are futile. Moreover, it is at times a frustrating read because this otherwise straightforward and legitimate (though by no means uncontroversial) argument is needlessly complicated by a set of uncharacteristically unsophisticated political and historical contextual claims that add neither substance nor credence to the central argument; and by intellectual chips that Easterly (formerly a senior research economist at the World Bank and currently a professor of economics at New York University and a senior fellow at the Center for Global Development) seems to carry on his shoulder.¹ Nevertheless, much of Easterly's depiction of the failure of aid is persuasive and international lawyers interested in international development will find in Burden a convenient entry point to some of the central debates of the development field, one that is both thought-provoking and accessible. Aimed at influencing general public opinion on official development aid, the book is written in popular ‘Hardcover Nonfiction’ language and format, and is replete with descriptive and occasionally illuminating sketches that reflect Easterly's extensive knowledge, both analytical and experiential.