Sebastian Mallaby, writing in The Atlantic, invokes the 12th-century example of Lubeck as he searches for historical precedents for the charter city concept Stanford economist Paul Romer is pushing as a tool to help poor countries improve their economic conditions.
Elegant, bespectacled, geekishly curious in a boyish way, Romer is not the kind of person you might picture armed with a two-handed flanged mace, cutting down Slavic marauders. But he is bent on cutting down an adversary almost as resistant: the conventional approach to development in poor countries. Rather than betting that aid dollars can beat poverty, Romer is peddling a radical vision: that dysfunctional nations can kick-start their own development by creating new cities with new rules?L?beck-style centers of progress that Romer calls ?charter cities.? By building urban oases of technocratic sanity, struggling nations could attract investment and jobs; private capital would flood in and foreign aid would not be needed. And since Henry the Lion is not on hand to establish these new cities, Romer looks to the chief source of legitimate coercion that exists today?the governments that preside over the world?s more successful countries. To launch new charter cities, he says, poor countries should lease chunks of territory to enlightened foreign powers, which would take charge as though presiding over some imperial protectorate.
Does the idea make sense? Well, Romer faces skeptics.?
?Paul is very creative,? says William Easterly, a development economist at New York University, ?and sometimes creativity can cross the line into craziness.? The way Easterly sees it, charter cities (like charter schools in American cities) may provide an alternative to incumbent government systems, promising experimentation, competition, and perhaps a new way forward. But Easterly also worries that Romer has fallen prey to an old siren song?the idea that you can slough off debilitating customs and vested interests by constructing a technocratic petri dish uncontaminated by politics.
If Easterly’s name sounds familiar, you might remember his presentation at N.C. State University on global poverty. In an interview with Carolina Journal Radio, he discussed the concept of “searchers” that he sees as the real key to economic growth in poor countries.
