This paper explores the problems of development assistance that focuses on knowledge instead of capital. The vision of the World Bank as a “Knowledge Bank” is a case in point.

There are a number of themes that converge to suggest “Hirschmanian” alternatives to centralized top-down social engineering models of reform, social change, and development. Hirschman responded to the balanced growth, big push, and development planning models with an alternative framework of “unbalanced growth.” The limited powers of cognition and implementation of central authorities in the face of the complexity of organizational, institutional, and social realities do not give much hope for social engineering approaches. Learning, experimentation, and a one-size-does-not-fit-all pragmatism are basic to any alternative to the planning, command, and control models of development.

Not really. If the goal of development assistance is to foster autonomous development, then most aid and “help” is actually unhelpful in the sense of either overriding or undercutting the autonomy of those being “helped.” The two principal forms of unhelpful “help” are social engineering and charitable relief. The World Bank is the primary example over the last half century of the failures of social engineering to “engineer” development.