A capability analysis of Rwandan development policy: calling into question human development indicators

Abstract

This article provides a capability analysis of Rwandan development policy. It is motivated by impressive progress on human development indicators in combination with highly centralised policymaking, giving ambiguous signs regarding a capability approach. It is based on extensive original empirical material, along with large numbers of official documents and academic sources. The analysis is structured around three issues that concern the relation between individual agency and government policy, and that are debated among capability scholars as well as in relation to Rwandan development policy: participation, transformation and paternalism. The finding that Rwandan development policy reflects an approach very different from a capability approach is not surprising, but establishes that the assumed link between human development indicators and the capability approach needs to be questioned. This brings our attention to shortcomings in any quantitative measurements of development, or in the use of and importance attached to them, as well as to the problem of assuming that certain outputs go hand in hand with certain processes. While this is valid for contexts far beyond Rwanda, it also sheds light specifically on the polarisation that exists in the scholarly debate on Rwanda.

Keywords:

• Capability approach
• human development
• participation
• transformation
• paternalism
• Rwanda

Acknowledgements

The author is grateful to an anonymous reviewer for fruitful suggestions.

Notes

1. UNDP, Human Development Report 2016.

2. Ibid., 204.

3. Alkire, “Using the Capability Approach”; Comim, “Measuring Capabilities,” 160; Telleria, “Power Relations?,” 4; cf. UNDP, Human Development Report 1997, 15–23.

4. eg Sen, “Development as Capability Expansion”; Sen, Development as Freedom.

5. eg Nussbaum, Creating Capabilities; Deneulin, “Perfectionism, Paternalism and Liberalism”; Robeyns, “Capabilitarianism.”

6. Clark, “Adaptation, Poverty and Well-Being,” 22.

7. HDCA, Human Development and Capability Association.

8. eg Alkire et al., “Introduction,” 14; Alkire, “Capability Approach and Well-Being Measurement.”

There is indeed a critical debate on the quantification of development results, including the HDI. Telleria, “Power Relations?” for example discusses the contradictions within the human development framework in terms of de-politicisation, ie the portrayal of underdevelopment as a technical rather than a power issue. The conclusions of this article will feed into that debate, but it starts out from the assumed link between the capability approach and the HDI. Within the capability approach, too, limitations of quantification and measurement are acknowledged and discussed (eg Alkire et al., “Introduction”; Comim, “Measuring Capabilities”; Anand et al., “The Measurement of Capabilities”). The point here is that the capability approach still serves as an inspiration and foundation of the HDI.

9. Booth and Golooba-Mutebi, “Developmental Patrimonialism?,” 384; Jones, “Between Pyongyang and Singapore,” 228.

10. Booth and Golooba-Mutebi, “Developmental Patrimonialism?,” 385, 392; Crisafulli and Redmond, Rwanda, Inc; Dfid, Operational Plan 2011–2015, 3; RoR, Economic Development & Policy Reduction, 7; UNDP, Human Development Report 2013; World Bank, Rwanda Economic Update, 2.

11. Desrosiers and Thomson, “Rhetorical Legacies of Leadership,” 438; Purdeková, “Civic Education and Social Transformation”; Ansoms, “Large-Scale Land Deals”; Hintjens, “Land Reform, Social Justice”; Pritchard, “Land, Power and Peace.”

12. eg Straus and Waldorf, “Introduction: Seeing Like.”

13. Booth and Golooba-Mutebi, Developmental Patrimonialism?, 15.

14. Jones, “Between Pyongyang and Singapore.”

15. Beswick, “Aiding State Building,” 1925; Ingelaere, “What’s on a Peasant’s Mind?”; Hasselskog, “Rwandan Developmental ‘Social Engineering’”; Hasselskog, “Rwandan ‘Home Grown Initiatives.’”

16. Harrison, “Rwanda: An Agrarian Developmental State?”

17. Hasselskog, “Rwandan Developmental ‘Social Engineering’”; Hasselskog, “Participation or What?”; Hasselskog, “Rwandan ‘Home Grown Initiatives’”; Hasselskog and Schierenbeck, “National Policy in Local Practice”; Hasselskog et al., “National Ownership”; see also Hasselskog, Development Intervention on the Ground on large-scale transformation in development work.

18. Above the umudugudu (village/neighbourhood) in the Rwandan administrative set-up is the cell, then the sector, the district and the province.

19. Thomson, “Getting Close to Rwandans”; Begley, “The RPF Control Everything!.”

20. eg Nussbaum, Creating Capabilities; Deneulin, “Perfectionism, Paternalism and Liberalism”; Robeyns, “Capabilitarianism.”

21. eg Sen, Development as Freedom; Alkire, Valuing Freedoms; Crocker, “Deliberative Participation in Local Development”; Pellissery and Bergh, “Adapting the Capability Approach,” 285–286; Evans, “Constructing the 21st Century Developmental State,” 43–45; Davis and Wells, “Transformation Without Paternalism.”

22. eg Mansuri and Rao, Localizing Development; Hasselskog, “Participation or What?”

23. Cornwall, Beneficiary, Consumer, Citizen.

24. eg Ibid.; Hickey and Kothari, “Participation,” 86.

25. Mansuri and Rao, Localizing Development, 18; Mosse, “‘People’s Knowledge’, Participation and Patronage”; Cornwall and Fujita, “Ventriloquizing ‘the Poor’?”; Cooke and Kothari, Participation: The New Tyranny?

26. eg Arnstein, “Ladder Of Citizen Participation.”

27. Alkire, Valuing Freedoms; Pellissery and Bergh, “Adapting the Capability Approach.”

28. Sen, Development as Freedom.

29. Pellissery and Bergh, “Adapting the Capability Approach.”

30. Evans, “Constructing the 21st Century Developmental State,” 43–45.

31. Crocker, “Deliberative Participation in Local Development.”

32. Davis and Wells, “Transformation Without Paternalism.”

33. Ibid., 3, 11.

34. Ibid., 5–8.

35. Ibid., 2, 10; Carter, “Is the Capability Approach Paternalistic?,” 82.

36. Claassen, “Capability Paternalism”; Deneulin, “Perfectionism, Paternalism and Liberalism.”

37. Carter, “Is the Capability Approach Paternalistic?,” 85.

38. Claassen, “Capability Paternalism.”

39. Carter, “Is the Capability Approach Paternalistic?”

40. Deneulin, “Perfectionism, Paternalism and Liberalism.”

41. Ibid., 510; cf. Nussbaum, Women and Human Development, 227.

42. Robeyns, “Capabilitarianism,” 4–6.

43. cf. Claassen, “Capability Paternalism.”

44. Ibid., 62.

45. cf. Carter, “Is the Capability Approach Paternalistic?” 82.

46. Sen, Development as Freedom; Alkire, Valuing Freedoms; Nussbaum, Creating Capabilities; Claassen, “Capability Paternalism”; Davis and Wells, “Transformation Without Paternalism.”

47. Other aspects, too, would have been relevant for a capability analysis of Rwandan development policy. The issue of human rights, for example, is thoroughly debated as an element of the capability approach. Nussbaum, Women and Human Development; Sen, “Human Rights and Capabilities”; Vizard, “Idea of Justice”; Vizard et al., “Introduction: The Capability Approach and Human Rights”; while Rwandan development policy is not rights based, which limits the population’s capabilities. Similarly, the issue of inequality is discussed in relation to the capability approach (eg Burchardt and Vizard, “‘Operationalizing’ the Capability Approach”), and is, as noted, a concern to scholars who are critical of Rwandan development policy. While these aspects are not included in the current analytical frame, it is thus likely that an analysis of them would point in the same direction of Rwandan development policy not following a capability approach.

48. RoR, Rwanda Vision 2020, 12.

49. RoR, National Decentralization Policy, 11.

50. Ibid., 8.

51. RoR, Rwanda: Joint Governance, 56–60; cf. Hasselskog and Schierenbeck, “National Policy”; Hasselskog, “Participation or What?”

52. Silva-Leander, “Danger and Necessity of Democratisation,” 1,602; Hayman, “Rwanda: Milking the Cow”; Hayman, “From Rome to Accra”; Zorbas, “Aid Dependence and Policy Independence,” 108.

53. Rwanda Governance Board, “A Viewpoint of Rwanda’s Governance.”

54. RoR, Economic Development & Poverty Reduction, xiii, 73; RoR, Local Democracy and Local Governance; Rwanda Governance Board, “A Viewpoint of Rwanda’s Governance; Rwanda Governance Board, “Home Grown Initiatives Documentation”; Hasselskog, “Rwandan ‘Home Grown Initiatives.’”

55. eg Ansoms and Rostagno, “Rwanda’s Vision 2020,” 442; Ingelaere, “The Ruler’s Drum,” 74.

56. Hasselskog, “Rwandan ‘Home Grown Initiatives.’”

57. Hasselskog, “Participation or What?”

58. RoR, Concept Note on Imihigo, 1; RoR, National Decentralization Policy (Revised), 17; RoR, “Central and Local Government Leaders.”

59. eg RoR, Rwanda: Joint Governance.

60. The Rwandan Patriotic Front, “Family Imihigo”; The New Times, “Performance Contracts Extended to Households.”

61. Hasselskog, “Participation or What?”

62. The Rwandan Patriotic Front, “Family Imihigo”; The New Times, “Performance Contracts Extended to Households”; The New Times, “Family Contracts to Improve Welfare”; Hasselskog, “Participation or What?”

63. cf. Purdeková, “Even if I Am not Here,” 485.

64. eg Cornwall, Beneficiary, Consumer, Citizen.

65. Hasselskog, “Participation or What?”; Hasselskog, “Rwandan ‘Home Grown Initiatives.’”

66. Davis and Wells, “Transformation Without Paternalism.”

67. Alkire, “Valuing Freedoms”; Pellisery and Bergh, “Adapting the Capability Approach.”

68. RoR, Rwanda Vision 2020, 9.

69. RoR, Rwanda Vision 2020, 23; RoR, Government of Rwanda Poverty Reduction, 30, 36; RoR, Economic Development & Poverty Reduction, 44; Booth and Golooba-Mutebi, “Policy for Agriculture and Horticulture.”

70. RoR, Strategic Plan for the Transformation of Agriculture; RoR, Updated Version; RoR, National Decentralization Policy (Revised); cf. Ansoms and Rostagno, “Rwanda’s Vision 2020,” 435, 441; Musahara and Huggins, “Land Reform, Land Scarcity”; Pritchard, “Land, Power and Peace.”

71. RoR, Government of Rwanda Poverty Reduction, 53; RoR, Updated Version, 26; RoR, Strategies for Sustainable Crop Intensification, 15; RoR, Economic Development & Poverty Reduction, 41; cf. Newbury, “High Modernism at the Ground Level.”

72. cf. Hasselskog, “Rwandan Developmental ‘Social Engineering’”; Straus and Waldorf, “Introduction: Seeing Like.”

73. Ingelaere, “Living the Transition,” 454; Ingelaere, “The Ruler’s Drum,” 68.

74. Ansoms, “Re-engineering Rural Society,” 299; Ansoms, “Rwanda’s Post-genocide Economic Reconstruction,” 240.

75. Thomson, “Reeducation for Reconciliation,” 333; Thomson, “Peasant Perspectives on National Unity,” 96.

76. Reyntjens, “Rwanda, Ten Years on,” 196.

77. RoR, Community Development Policy, 19; RoR, Crop Intensification Program (CIP).

78. RoR, Rwanda Vision 2020, 11; RoR, Government Programme 2010–2017, 13, 19, 21, 50.

79. Purdeková, “Civic Education and Social Transformation.”

80. Hasselskog, “Rwandan Developmental ‘Social Engineering.’”

81. Claassen, “Capability Paternalism.”

82. Ansoms, “Re-engineering Rural Society”; Ansoms, “Large-Scale Land Deals”; Desrosiers and Thomson, “Rhetorical Legacies of Leadership”; Purdeková, “Civic Education and Social Transformation”; Hintjens, “Land Reform, Social Justice”; Pritchard, “Land, Power and Peace.”

83. IRIN, “Rwanda: Cows Take up Residence”; The Independent, “Umuganda under the Spotlight”; ODI, Delivering Maternal Health; cf. Ingelaere, “The Ruler’s Drum,” 74; Ansoms and Rostagno, “Rwanda’s Vision 2020,” 74.

84. eg Huggins, “Agricultural Policies and Local Grievances,” 299.

85. Hasselskog, “Participation or What?”; Hasselskog, “Rwandan ‘Home Grown Initiatives.’”

86. Hasselskog, “Rwandan Developmental ‘Social Engineering.’”