Contribution short abstract:

A systematic empirical re-evaluation of the merit and impact of Western education on development in the global South through "technocrats"

Contribution long abstract:

Economic policy models coined in North America and Western Europe have been a powerful feature of globalization and policy diffusion across societies, spreading to developing countries through various channels and considerably influencing their development trajectories. Education in Western countries has been one such channel. A thriving literature provides fascinating accounts of the impact of Western-educated “technocrats” in their developing countries, regarding them as agents in this diffusion of ideas. But how do the policy ideas, attitudes and identities of these elites differ, if at all, from those of their peers without Western degrees? Do these differences translate into dissimilar impacts? What historical, institutional, and social factors affect the agency of Western-trained technocrats in local battles for power over economic policy?

The present study investigates these questions through a mixed-method comparative historical study of post-independence economic policymakers in Azerbaijan and Georgia. These two countries provide a fertile ground for exploring these ideas because they were considerably similar under the Soviet rule but embarked on distinctly diverse economic and political paths since the USSR’s collapse and Western-educated policymakers played strikingly different roles in them. The evidence is based on 60 in-depth elite interviews, four focus groups with experts, and an original dataset of biographical information on 100+ economic policymakers over time. Through an in-depth, systematic and historically-grounded comparison, this study remedies key conceptual and methodological shortcomings of existing research by examining purported causal links, calibrating the actual agency of Western trainees, and tackling endogeneity concerns.