Bringing in the Future Earns
Professor Bill Ascher the
2010 Levine Book Prize

William Ascher, the Donald C. McKenna Professor of Government and Economics, has been awarded the 2010 Levine Book Prize for his book, Bringing in the Future: Strategies for Farsightedness and Sustainability in Developing Countries (University of Chicago Press, 2009). The prize is awarded to a book that makes a contribution "of considerable theoretical or practical significance in the field of public policy and administration, takes an explicitly comparative perspective, and is written in an accessible style."
In announcing this year's winner, award committee members noted how sustainability is already a "well-accepted world agenda and no country or government would oppose it as a matter of principle." However, they said, environmental protection and sustainability is as political as any other issue in international politics. "Developed nations and developing ones face different problems in different political, social and economic contexts, and engage in different costs-benefits calculus. Farsightedness is no doubt much in demand for governmental efforts on sustainability, but what is needed is concrete advice to navigate one's way through the myriad of uncertainties, recalcitrance and shortsightedness built into both cognitive prejudice and institutional inertia."
Award committee members called Ascher's book "highly readable," and said it "precisely addresses these practical problems, with clear categorization of problems and strategies, and hints on how to manage the process."
Ascher says the impetus for writing Bringing in the Future was the obvious point that shortsighted, short-term actions often stand in the way of sound long-term development. "This is one of the main reasons why most developing countries, which are the main focus of the book, have remained underdeveloped, although shortsightedness is clearly a serious problem for developed countries like the United States as well," he says. "In most countries, whether developed or not, long-term environmental protection and conservation are neglected, as are opportunities for long-term improvements in economic productivity and in physical infrastructure. People engage in economically and physically risky behavior for immediate benefits, and often pass up opportunities to improve their own neighborhoods because they are unsure of the benefits."
Ascher says he found many examples of government officials, other leaders, and families showing remarkable farsightedness and willingness to make sacrifices for the long-term benefit of others. "So the question," he noted, "was: How can an understanding of shortsightedness and farsightedness yield strategies to promote long-term improvement?"
The practical basis of the book, Ascher explains, "rests on cases of successes and failures that I have been accumulating over more than 30 years of studying developing countries, but a good many of the cases are based on the research assistance of CMC students since I came here in 2000.
"The theoretical basis of the book, he adds, "comes from trying very hard to be interdisciplinary, drawing on the policy sciences, behavioral economics, psychology, legal theory, and institutional design."
Again, with the help of CMC research assistants as well as classroom discussion, "I identified the root causes of shortsighted thinking and action, which range from impatience and selfishness to uncertainty and vulnerability," Ascher says. "Once this framework was developed, it was fairly easy to take the experiences that had already been documented as successes, explain how they could overcome the obstacles, and add other examples to flesh out the strategies that have some potential for promoting farsighted actions."
Ascher says it is gratifying that the prize committee found the book to be readable and practical. "This is largely due to beginning with a commitment to the problem orientation,'" he says, "which requires focusing on how real-world problems can be addressed, rather than simply asking: How do things work?"
That commitment, he says, in turn, makes it "much easier to produce a readable bookeach of many dozens of strategies for promoting farsighted actions can be described in rather concrete terms, examples can be given, and the limitations can be presented. It also doesn't hurt to rewrite every paragraph many times until it is a lot clearer than the first attempt."
The Levine Prize was established in 2004 by the IPSA Committee on the Structure and Organization of Government (SOG), and named for Charles H. Levine, an accomplished member of SOG who served on the editorial board of Governance, an international journal of policy, administration, and institutions.
A list of previous winners can be found on the Governance Web site.