The Dynamics of Growth Ideas Untrapped

In this podcast episode, Tobi interviews Rasheed Griffith - who is the CEO of The Caribbean Progress Institute, and host of The Rasheed Griffith Show explores the adaptability and policy implementation in smaller countries compared to larger ones, noting that smaller nations can change more swiftly due to simpler institutional structures. Rasheed contrasts this with larger countries like China and India, where changes, although rapid, are often driven by cultural homogeneity and authoritarian governance, which may not be desirable in Western democracies. The discussion also touches on the impact of leadership and institutional capacity on economic development, emphasizing that the quality of governance often outweighs the mere structure of political systems in influencing a country's developmental trajectory.
You can listen to episodes of Rasheed's brilliant podcast (The Rasheed Griffith Show) here. You can also subscribe to the Carribean Progress Institute newsletter here, where you can read many interesting and important writings.

Transcript
Tobi;
Welcome to the show, Rasheed.
It's great to talk to you.
I want to start with something that you mentioned in our first conversation, which has stayed with me. I haven't been able to stop thinking about it since, which is that small countries are somewhat more amenable to change than big countries. You know, when we talk about ideas and policies and economic development,
I just want you to expand on that a bit. I know I'm paraphrasing, but I want you to expand on that a bit.
Why do you suppose that is?
Rasheed;
Small countries have less people to influence politically, economically, socially. So ideas can spread faster and ideas can spread deeper in small countries. So for example, if you have a country like Nigeria, you have over 200 million people, you have vast, vast institutions that are captured or incentivized in very radically complex ways.
Compare that to a country like Saint Lucia that has 180,000 people. Very small institutions, very small number of schools, very small number of just social actors.
For the difficulty of idea spread and idea capture, it's a lot less in a very small place, and yet these are still essentially independent sovereign UN vote countries that have as much rights in that league as Nigeria.
You know, Walmart...Walmart in the US has more employees than all of Saint Lucia has population. Or even Saint Vincent, or even Trinidad, Walmart has more employees.
So, when you talk about turning the ship of these small countries, it's a lot less complicated than trying to influence Nigeria or Ethiopia or the US or Canada.
Tobi;
I want to square that a bit with what we saw in China in the last 40 years.
China is obviously a very large country and some people would say that it went through a process of rapid change, I mean, after the 1978 reforms. How did a country like China and to some extent what we are seeing in India recently, do you think that having, even if you're a big country, having a homogenous culture, language, ethnic population, does that also help speed up the process of change.
China, obviously, communism being the central guiding ideology and of course, majority of the population is Han Chinese. And we're seeing Modi, you know, rally around Hinduism as the national identity of the country. So, how does homogeneity play in here? And you see some pretty screwed up small countries, you know, Haiti…
What are the constraints and what are the catalysts?
Rasheed;
So China is obviously a good example, but China didn't just transform itself via ideas. It transformed itself via a dictatorship. And I think most people would not want that trade-off. You know you go to Shanghai, [which] I've been to many times, you go to Shanghai and you say “it's so great here, the transportation is fantastic the skyline is amazing, all this happened in 30 years” but then the problem is this; the way [and] how it's done, the effects, the results are quite spec