ABSTRACT
This chapter explains the most effective strategy for using lessons of past assessment studies for the benefit of future programs. It analyzes the cognitive dissonance displayed by planners in governments and donor agencies vis-a-vis the negative social effects of development-caused displacement. This cognitive dissonance destroyed the “normal” relationship between supply and demand of knowledge. The chapter describes the history and considers the content of the World Bank’s policy regarding involuntary population resettlement. It also discusses some of the methodological lessons to be derived about how to convert social theory and research into policy, given the institutional transactions intrinsic to development bureaucracies. The chapter reviews some of the actual effects of the new resettlement policy at two levels: policy replication and project planning and execution. Government agencies in charge with projects causing displacement tended to belittle the estimates of dislocation losses and relocation costs.
