The rise of the randomistas
On the Experimental Turn in International Aid
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 2159759 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Kevin P Donovan (0000-0002-3922-236X, University of Michigan) |
| Year | 2018 |
| Volume | 47 |
| Issue | 1 |
| Pages | 27-58 |
| Publication date | 2018-01-02 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | No |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Economy and Society (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0308-5147 • E-ISSN: 1469-5766 |
| Publisher | Informa UK Limited (PUBLISHER • GB) |
| DOI | 10.1080/03085147.2018.1432153 |
| OpenAlex | W2793642730 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 52 |
| References cited | 93 |
In recent years, the use of experimental methodologies has emerged as a central means of evaluating international aid interventions. Today, proponents of randomized control trials (so-called randomistas) are among the most influential of development experts. This paper examines the growth of this thought collective, analysing how uncertainty has become a central concern of development institutions. It demonstrates that transformations within the aid industry – including the influence of evidence-based policy, the economization of development and the retreat from macro-planning – created the conditions of possibility for experimentation. Within this field, the randomistas adeptly pursued a variety of rhetorical, affective, methodological and organizational strategies that emphasized the lack of credible knowledge within aid and the ability of experiments to rectify the situation. Importantly, they have insisted on the moral worth of experimentation; indeed, the experimental ethic has been proposed as the way to change the spirit of development. Through causal certitude, they propose to reduce human suffering. The rise of experimentation has not, however, eliminated accusations of uncertainty; rather, it has redistributed the means through which knowledge about development is considered credible
Aid effectiveness · Developing country · Economic growth · Economics · Epistemology · Field (mathematics · Law and economics · Macro · Political science · Positive economics · Rhetorical question · Sociology · Variety (cybernetics · Computer Science · Evaluation and Performance Assessment · International Development and Aid · Poverty, Education, and Child Welfare
When randomistas rule the field
‘Sticky knowledge’
Verdeckungen
To adjust, reform, or transform? Criteria for distinguishing efforts to change knowledge practices in global health
Corridors of Opportunity
Getting It Right in Rural Development Initiatives
Seeing Through the Template
Verhaltenspolitik im Wohlfahrtsstaat
Foetal programming meets human capital
Interdisciplinarity and the future of development studies after the 2019 Nobel Prize in economics
Royal Society report
The Rise and Spread of Behavioral Public Policy
The rise of “behavioral man”
What Do Practitioners Want from Research? Exploring Ugandan and American Development Practitioners’ Interest in Research
Hybrid knowledge production and evaluation at the World Bank
Nobel Rebels in Disguise — Assessing the Rise and Rule of the Randomistas
Political Instrumentalism and Epistemic Communities in Global Governance a Network Analysis of the International Organization for Migration
Education as capital? A critical discourse analysis of the investment discourse in international research on Chinese rural education
Experimental approaches in development and poverty alleviation
The embodied counterfactual
The gendered effects of investing in physical and social infrastructure
Reading development failure
Behind the scenes of science in action
The Double Bind of Evidence
Randomized Control Trials in the Field of Development
Who are behavioural public policy experts and how are they organised globally
Opening Up the Black Box of Knowledge Production in International Development
From Multiple Deprivations to Exploitation
Credibility revolution and the future of Russian studies
A new epistemology of evidence-based policy
Making Gender Known
De-biasing democracy. Behavioural public policy and the post-democratic turn
Let's Not Have the Perfect Be the Enemy of the Good
Outsourcing the Business of Development
A rusting gold standard
Evidence for a Yeti? A Cautionary Tale from South Africa's Youth Employment Tax Incentive
Promising careers? A critical analysis of a randomised control trial in community health worker recruitment in Zambia
Reaching millions
Rents, Experiments, and the Perpetual Presence of Concessionary Weather Insurance
Survivors, users, or peers? Translating identities and decolonizing mental health in China
Privileged observers and colonial continuities
The gift of free money
Methods Regimes in Global Governance
Exclusivity and Circularity in the Production of Global Governance Expertise
Crowdfunding care in Kenya
Incommensurate abstractions and the (re)quantification of monetary amounts
Acceleration, development and technocapitalism at the Silicon Cape of Africa
Recentring the margins
What makes randomized controlled trials so successful-for now? Or, on the consonances, compromises, and contradictions of a global interstitial field
The rise of randomized controlled trials (RCTs) in international development in historical perspective
The work of class
Effective or expedient
Marxism and literature
Thinking Small
The Road from Mont Pèlerin
The Spectatorship of Suffering
An Epistemology of the Concrete
Pharmaceutical Reason
Machine Dreams
From Political Economy to Economics
The Good Project
Monitoring Movements in Development Aid
Clinical Labor
From Economics Imperialism to Freakonomics
Capitalism and the Origins of the Humanitarian Sensibility, Part 1
Instruments, Randomization, and Learning about Development
Six Randomized Evaluations of Microcredit
How Experiments End
Experiments versus models
Field experiments in economics
The Dappled World
Randomise This! On Poor Economics
Genesis and Development of a Scientific Fact
Distant Suffering
Powers of Freedom
Governance by Indicators
An Anthropological Critique of Development
The Experimental Approach to Development Economics
Unintended Effects of Anonymous Resumes
The Anthropology of Ignorance
Trust in Numbers
When Experiments Travel
Fixing the Economy
Trust in Numbers
Economy and Society
Are RCTs the Gold Standard
Entangled evidence
Economics Imperialism under the Impact of Psychology
Is Impact Evaluation Evaluation
Profitable failure
Pharmaceutical Controversies and the Performative Value of Uncertainty
The new randomised controlled trials (RCT) movement in public policy
Far-Fetched Facts
Reforms as experiments
We Have Never Been Modern
The Social Scientist as Methodological Servant of the Experimenting Society
Popular Development Economics—An Anthropologist among the Mandarins
Introduction
From Critical Social Theory to a Social Theory of Critique
Material Markets
Science on Stage
The institution of critique and the critique of institutions
Social and public experiments and new figurations of science and politics in postcolonial Africa1
Accounting for State Intervention
Do economists make policies? On the political effects of economics
Mechanism Experiments and Policy Evaluations
The Superiority of Economists
On Critique
Leviathan and the Air-Pump
Colonial Aphasia
After Justification
A Tale of Two Sociologies
The Sociology of Critical Capacity
Formation Stories and Causality in Sociology
The 'Social Life of Methods
For a Sociology of Expertise
Why Has Critique Run out of Steam? From Matters of Fact to Matters of Concern
Behavioural economics, experimentalism and the marketization of development
Strategic unknowns
| Unique citing works | 52 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 6,5 |
| Citation span | 2018 - 2026 (9) |
| Citation velocity | current |
| Highly cited | No |
| Citation types | Neutral: 50 |