Klitgaard begins Tropical Gangsters by looking at the extreme views of aid vs. dependency, beneficence vs. autonomy. Are both extreme views correct? If aid creates dependency, not just seems to take away a state’s agency to develop but actually weakens the state’s ability, then does it cause more harm than good? For states, especially those that still remember colonialism vividly, how can aid be shaped so that it empowers the state to develop and take on the rains on its own? Klitgaard ends the first chapter with a quote he relates to helping without creating dependency, on giving and receiving:

It is so easy to give, so exquisitely rewarding. Receiving, on the other hand, if it be well done, requires a fine balance of self-knowledge and kindness. It requires humility and tact and a great understanding of relationships. In receiving you cannot appear, even to yourself, better or stronger or wiser than the giver, although you must be wiser to do it well.- John Steinbeck

A simple, yet important, lesson is given when Kltigaard and other World Bank staff were attempting to get an appointment to meet Equatorial Guinea’s Minister of Finance: get the secretary to talk about her hometown and which portrait of the President she preferred. Otherwise, dead end on getting an appointment; she would not have budged to the foreigners from the World Bank. Human courtesy and social smarts can do the trick.

Kltigaard extends this lesson when he presents the meeting with the Minister of Finance. In his own words on how the meeting might have been run differently:

Give the minister all the names and dates and numbers on a page or two. Present a briefing with three or four points. Talk about ten minutes, not forty-five. Have the right papers organized and ready in advance. Let the minister talk a lot more. (13)

Once again, it’s not so much about what needs to get accomplished or the facts, but how all this information is presented. The psychology of interacting with other human beings in order to reach a common understanding and plan of action is of crucial importance to Klitgaard. And a lesson for development?