Ian Boyne, Contributor

As we approach a general election campaign when there will be an intense battle for our minds - though primarily our emotions - it is important that non-propagandists committed to evidence-based research take centre stage in the national interest.

Last Thursday, precisely such a group of persons launched the Jamaican Economy Project. Comprising a group of 60 academics, primarily Jamaicans, from across the world and with the key involvement of one of the sharpest minds at the University of the West Indies, Dr. John Rapley, the group has just completed its multidisciplinary study of the Jamaican economy. The study has thrown up some surprising, counter-intuitive findings.

The philistines will dispute the findings and find all kinds of political duppies under the bed, accustomed as they are to 'faith-based' conclusions rather than rigorous scientific analysis. And in our tribalised political culture, if the research does not match the political agenda, then your job as a tribalist is to discredit the researchers, typecast them and dismiss the research findings. Theirs is an important work and a critical mission in this society which has not shown much appreciation for scholarship.

Says the Taking Responsibility document launched last week: "Of course, there is plenty excellent research on the Jamaican economy. The problem is that the research is then discussed in policy and academic circles with reports ending up in bookshelves. What the technocrats learned was not filtered to the rest of the country, so talk shows and newspaper editorials carried on without being aware of new information on Jamaica."

But the problem is not just a Jamaican one. Even policy elites in the developed countries are not keeping abreast of research from the academy and the think tanks the way they should. The Summer 2006 issue of the Harvard International Review has a cover feature, 'Do Ideas Matter?' focusing on the link between policy and research. Says one of the essays, 'Access to Power: Research in International Policymaking' by Professor John Wilkinsky: "It is not yet second nature for policymakers to consult systematic reviews of the relevant research." Information is a critical component of power and the less our elites are given to reading and research, the poorer our societies will be and the more vacuous our public discourse.

It is good that this group of largely young academics have decided to do the hard work of research and analysis, and that they have done such an excellent marketing job of publicising their project. They took their research to the streets (specifically Emanci-pation Park) not to the Pegasus or the Knutsford Court, and this was a very important symbolic gesture.

One of the particularly impressive things to me about their approach to their research is their multidisciplinary approach. Their observations are spot on: "The research on Jamaica, while of high standards, is very disjointed. Economists look at macro-economic issues, criminologists look at crime, sociologists look at anti-social behaviour and so on." Excellent point.

Intellectually credible think tank

The group should make its findings available to the political parties and create a dialogue with them. Jamaica desperately needs a non-partisan, intellectually credible think tank. As the first part of its project, the group has looked at the Jamaican economy since independence.

They have found that the Roaring Sixties were not as glorious for the people as the economic growth rates might suggest.

For those acquainted with political and development economics, it would come as no surprise that the '60s was a period of growth without development - which was the case for the entire Latin American region which followed the standard capitalist path.

The 1970s, unfortunately, represented development without growth - which meant that eventually any development would be derailed, for while you can have growth without development, you can't sustain development without growth. Today, interestingly, is the anniversary of the birth of Michael Manley, and one of finest thinkers and writers on the Third World, Manning Marable, is here to deliver the Michael Manley lecture.

Manley undertook some necessary social reforms and put the poor at the centre of development, but the failure of economic management, as well as Manley's failure to reassure the upper classes, plus the hostility of U.S. imperialism at a heightened period of the Cold War crushed the democratic socialist experiment. But Manley defused the social time bomb which had been created by the end of the '60s when capitalism failed to trickle down the social benefits to the masses.

But a key finding of the Jamaican Economy project was that the 1980s under Edward Seaga was not as radically different from the 1970s in terms of economic strategy. The rhetoric was certainly different as Seaga was pro-capitalist while Manley was a socialist. The ruling class rallied around Seaga and the conservative masses welcome the 'deliverance from communism'. But Seaga was as much a statist as Manley.

An objective analysis of the Seaga administration shows that Seaga never accepted this laissezfaire, neoliberal view of capitalism which is now known as the Washington Consensus. Seaga believed in a developmentalist, activist state, not a minimalist state. Seaga believed in a directed and managed capitalism. He believed in picking winners in industry. And that is why one of the biggest industrial expansions took place under his regime in the 1980s when the apparel sector took off. International comparative economic research bears out that Seaga's approach to economic strategy was more sensible than that of the neoliberal purists.

But Seaga was forced by the World Bank to carry out structural adjustment programmes which crippled the manufacturing sector. The imposed IMF conditionalities did considerable damage to the fragile, highly import-dependent and structurally deficient economy.

Manley's sheer brilliance

While Seaga did not grasp Manley's sheer brilliance in analysing the global economy and its stranglehold on the domestic economy, he was to realise in the 1980s through hard experience how the myopia of the IMF and the World Bank could constrain development. At one time Seaga famously rebuffed an IMF team, refusing to follow their prescriptions.

Studies were later to be done by the World Bank and the IMF themselves showing that many of their programmes in the developing world failed to achieve targeted growth. And Joseph Stiglitz, former chief economist at the World Bank, was to produce his damning critique of the failures and incompetence of the bank and the misguidedness of its policy recommendations.

Jamaica suffered in the 1980s not just because of the failure of the JLP administration but because of ruinous policies forced on the country by the Bretton Woods institutions. Indeed, an analysis of our economy since Independence will yield the indisputable fact that external conditions have been far more influential in our growth, or lack of it, than internal factors, which Wilmot Perkins will rail in opposition to all week. (This is not to say that internal factors are not very important).

In what would be surprising to many, the project document makes the point that, "The decade of the 1990s is one of the more dynamic periods of Jamaica's economic history. The market reforms that had got off to a slow start in the 1980s accelerated in the 1990s." In other words, the 1990s PNP administration was a more faithful follower of the neoliberal capitalist model than the Seaga regime of the 1980s. The rehabilitated Manley was more capitalist than Edward Seaga, in other words! Such is the usual case with turncoats.

Whatever one wants to say, it has to be admitted that the economies which have grown over the last few decades have been those which have carried out significant trade reforms and implemented some Washington Consensus policies. My quarrel is not with the growth strategies as much as with the fact that those strategies have failed to deal with the development and poverty challenges of developing countries.

Poster child for neoliberalism

The managing director of the IMF, Rodrigo de Rato captured this dilemma in capitalist 'development' when he addressed the conservative Cato Institute in Washington on November 30 on the topic, 'Economic Policy in Latin America: Addressing Inequality While Promoting Growth'. Latin America has been the poster child for neoliberalism and, yet, millions are still languishing in poverty, illiteracy and marginalisation.

Says the IMF managing director himself in that November 30 address to neoliberals: "Despite this solid progress in a number of countries in Latin America there is dissatisfaction with the outcomes produced by these policies, especially the distribution of economic power and wealth." Manley was insightful to see these inadequacies from the 1970s, and that is why he strongly resisted the IMF path then. But in the real world where there is very little policy space, Manley found himself between the devil and the deep blue sea, as it were, in the late 1980s.

The capitalist model has produced dazzling successes.

Economic giants

In 1950 Japan's per capita income was less than one-third that of the United States, yet between that time and 2003 real per capita GDP grew 11-fold. Likewise, South Korea's GDP grew 11-fold between 1960 and 2003. The little city-state of Hong Kong saw its per capita grow eight-fold between 1960 and 2003 when it reached per capita income of US$26,000. Singapore has also been impressive, as have late industrialisers such as Malaysia and Thailand, not to mention to economic giants China and India.

But apart from Hong Kong and to a lesser extent Singapore, most of the successful industrialisers in the emerging economies did not use standard neoliberal prescriptions being forced down our throats now, as the brilliant Harvard economist Dani Rodrik has demonstrated. They used a combination of neoliberal and state-managed policy prescriptions, which is precisely the Seaga model.

We are overdue for some serious scholarly, non-partisan, evidence-based analysis of the Jamaican economy. I congratulate and salute the Jamaican Economy Project for seeking to raise the level of our discourse. Let the partisans eat their hearts out!

Ian Boyne is a veteran journalist who may be reached at ianboyne1@yahoo.com.