Interdepartmental Programs
International Development Studies Gets a New Chair
Kirsten Bording Collins 
Interview with political scientist Michael Ross on his plans for the popular undergraduate degree program and his take on the problems of the developing world.
It is a very exciting and varied program and we really want to get students out there to experience first hand the problems and the issues of development
Michael Ross, Assistant Professor, Political Science, was recently named Chair of the UCLA International Institute's International Development Studies (IDS) program, an undergraduate level interdisciplinary degree program that offers UCLA students a bachelor's degree specializing in the critical issues and problems of the developing world. The IDS program was founded in 1987.
Michael Ross received his Ph.D. in Politics from Princeton University in 1996. Prior to joining UCLA's Political Science faculty in 2001. Ross was an Assistant Professor in the Political Science Department at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor and a Visiting Scholar at the World Bank in Washington D.C. and Jakarta, Indonesia.
The IDS program is a large interdisciplinary major that currently has about 320 students and is growing very quickly. In this program students learn about the problems of developing countries and how these countries differ among themselves and from Western countries. The program prepares students for further studies or "to do work that hopefully has some real impact in the developing world," Ross said.
The program requires students to take six quarters of a relevant foreign language, basic classes in economics and statistics, several courses in research methodology, and a number of courses chosen from an approved list in Anthropology, Sociology, History, and Political Science. Theses will now be supplemented by two new courses taught by Ross and Andrew Apter, an anthropologist and historian who has just joined the UCLA faculty. The course taught by Ross is on the political economy of developing states and will explore topics such as the uneven distribution of the world's wealth, unequal growth, and reasons why some countries are poorer than others. The course taught by Andrew Apter will be a cultural and historical introduction to the third world that will touch on the colonial experience and the importance of understanding this colonial history to explain problems today. New perspectives, materials, research, and cutting-edge ideas will be introduced into these two new courses, which Ross said he is very excited about.
The IDS program is open to all undergraduate students and has proven to be very popular. "UCLA students seem to be getting more and more interested in the problems of the third world, global inequality, and the consequences of globalization. All of these are problems that students can learn more about through the IDS program," Ross said. Students are also encouraged to study abroad during their third year at UCLA through the Education Abroad Program in which they have a large choice of programs that includes developing countries on every continent of the world. "It is a very exciting and varied program and we really want to get students out there to experience first hand the problems and the issues of development," Ross said. The IDS program also tries to help students find jobs and internships.
A First-Hand View of Poverty in Egypt
Ross first became interested in development when he was an undergraduate at UC Santa Cruz and traveled to Egypt where he was fascinated by how a developing country worked politically and economically. "I have never forgotten how great the divide was between the wealth that I was raised with and the poverty that many people there experience every day, " Ross said. The most important question in Michael Ross' research is what can be done to better alleviate poverty. "It is a question that cuts across the fields of both economics and politics. Economists have traditionally studied the field of economic growth and economic development, but political scientists have had rather little to say. Ironically many economists now have come to realize that the most important factors that hold back development, that retard growth, that increase poverty, are political factors--factors that fall outside their traditional realm of study." Ross consequently tries to address issues that cut across economic and political boundaries and that will have some bearing on the condition of the poor.
Ross has both an issue interest and a regional interest. His regional interest in Southeast Asia, particularly Indonesia, while his issue interest is in something called the "resource-curse." The "resource-curse" stems from the observation that the countries around the world with the most natural resource wealth also tend to be the poorest and have the most dysfunctional governments. "It is a paradox," Ross said, "why should countries with this additional wealth be worse off than resource poor countries?" Ross has been working most closely in this area for the last couple of years. He is interested in natural resources and civil war, natural resources and democratization, and natural resources and economic growth. Ross is one of the few political scientists working in this area: "often I go to conferences and meetings where I am the only or one of the few political scientists in the room." This, however, is an area of growing interest in the political science field according to Ross.
According to Ross, the parts of the developing world that are facing the greatest trouble today are Africa, economically, and the Middle East, politically. "Africa is the only region of the world where incomes have actually fallen over the past few decades," Ross said "the Middle East is the only region of the world that has made almost no progress towards democracy and human rights and women’s rights." These two regions are similar and distinguished from other developing regions because they are both overly dependent on the export of natural resources, such as oil and other kinds of minerals such as diamonds, copper, and aluminum, Ross said. There is good evidence that the problems of these regions are caused by government misuse of revenues from the sale of these natural resources. These industries are distinguished from other industries because they are usually owned by governments, unlike, for example, the textile or software industry, which are generally privately owned. "There is something about the way these governments handle this revenue that seems to adversely affect their development path" Ross said.
In his new role as Chair of the IDS program, Ross wants to make it easier for students to go abroad and he is working with the International Institute to develop ways to make it easer for students to get credit for the classes they take abroad and need to complete the IDS program. Ross also has a strong belief in the importance of careful and methodologically sound research, which he will emphasize in his class. The class will stress the importance of using basic statistics and other tools of the social sciences to shed light on the problems and issues of third world development.
Several other of the International Institute's Interdepartmental Degree Programs have also seen the appointment of new chairs. These include:
- African Area Studies (MA, Minor): Andrew Apter
- East Asian Studies (MA, BA): Richard Baum
- Islamic Studies (MA, Ph.D.): Afaf Marsot
- Latin American Studies (MA, BA): Jose Moya
- Middle East and North African Studies (BA): Claudia Rapp
- Southeast Asian Studies (BA): Geoffrey Robinson