It is a lesson that (development) economists need to relearn every generation: stuff is complicated and "best practices" don't always work. Keynes said it in 1951 in his Essays in Biography: "we are faced at every turn with the problems of organic unity, of discreteness, of discontinuity-the whole is not equal to the sum of the parts, comparisons of quantity fail us, small changes produce large effects, and the assumptions of a uniform and homogeneous continuum are not satisfied." And long-forgotten development economist Albert Lauterbach emphasized a related point more than half a century ago: "the necessity of applying Western experiences and 'rational' methods only with great caution and with a real effort to understand the culture, value system and social structure of each population group that is to be exposed to a development policy." But in a well-meaning attempt to find universal solutions to (seemingly) intractable problems, the development industry does seem to like proclaiming new panaceas, however poorly the last panacea played out.
I'm a card-carrying member of the "stuff is complicated" party-it is one big reason why cross-country regressions haven't taught us terribly much about the causes of economic growth. If you need more convincing, read Lant and Justin's brilliant paper noting that interventions "proven" to work by a randomized control trial in one setting don't always have the same impact-or work at all-in another (start with Justin's parable).
At the same time, it is important to emphasize that a counsel of complexity should not be taken as a counsel of ...
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