The Bottom Billion: Why the Poorest Countries are Failing and What Can Be Done About It

The Bottom Billion: Why the Poorest Countries are Failing and What Can Be Done About It | Paul Collier | Spectacular and Informative Read

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The Bottom Billion...

	The Bottom Billion: Why the Poorest Countries are Failing and What Can Be Done About It Paul Collier Oxford University Press, 2007 - 224 pages average customer review:based on 51 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

The End of Conventional Thought

The man who brought us the phrase "Diamonds are a guerilla's best friend." has now delivered the best book on development. Paul Collier is a researchers' researcher, but often writes like he's preparing ad copy. He distills mountains of data and years of analysis into less than 200 pages of easily (and enjoyably) read lessons and results of what the causes of poverty really are and what can realistically be done to overcome them. The strength of the book is that it reveals what the data say, without bending to preconceived notions or ideologies. Collier is direct and holds no punches, whether it be against Zimbabwe's Robert Mugabe, USAID, or NGOs. He's not looking to support politically-correct positions or vested interests, he simply goes after the truth, as revealed by empirical evidence, to answer the difficult questions about what are the causes of poverty, and how to go about best helping the people and societies that most need it.

The book will challenge you. Think that military intervention has no role in supporting the bottom billion? Think again. Although difficult in today's Iraq war environment, Professor Collier does an admirable job of trying to convince the reader that under certain circumstances military intervention is very helpful.

Collier identifies four traps that most of the 50 failing states fall into, often repeatedly. He shows why most standard development prescriptions don't work, and why. He asks difficult, direct questions (e.g. Does aid finance military spending?), finds and analyzes data to answer them (sorry, I don't want to spoil it). Most of the answers do not follow conventional thought.

But the best is saved for last: Professor Collier has a number of explicit suggestions, again, mostly unconventional, for an agenda for action to help the societies of the bottom billion. If you work in development, are interested in what the empirical data and research say about difficult development questions, or are just curious about the debates on development, especially in Africa, read this book. You will learn much and will be challenged.

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Spectacular and Informative Read

If you have no knowledge whatsoever on world poverty, international aid, and the various means of development, and you want to learn, read this book. If you do have that knowledge...read this book. It's written clearly and argued succinctly, with enough references at the end - and not larded throughout the text - to stimulate further interest in the subject. Prof. Paul Collier does an outstanding job of identifying that a certain number of countries have not participated in the stellar growth of world GDP over the last few decades. By re-defining the language on the issues of world poverty and world growth, he allows everyone to think and speak more clearly and less politically about the critical issues in foreign policy. Perhaps the best thing that can be said about this book is that it is a very quick read that leaves you very energized, if not outraged, by its incontestable conclusions. Only somebody with something truly important to say could get you to sit up and take notice in such a short time.

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Superb insightful analysis - and real recommendations for action

This superb book gives really convincing insights into what is going wrong and what we need to do about it. Although the majority of the 5-billion people in the "developing world" are getting richer at an unprecedented rate, a group of countries (mostly in Africa and Central Asia but with a smattering elsewhere) are stuck. Collier suggests that development assistance should be focused heavily on them. These countries typically suffer from one or more development traps:
* The Conflict Trap - civil wars (which cost c $100bn each) or coups.
* The Natural Resource Trap - excessive dependence on natural resources which can stifle other economic activity and lead to bad governance and coups/conflict.
* Landlocked with Bad Neighbours - poor landlocked countries with poor neighbours find it almost impossible to tap into world economic growth.
* Bad Governance in a Small Country - terrible governance and policies can destroy an economy with alarming speed.

Collier offers a number of relatively inexpensive but institutionally difficult changes:
1. Aid agencies should increasingly be concentrated in the most difficult environments, accept more risk. Ordinary citizens should not support poorly informed vociferous lobbies whose efforts are counterproductive and severely constrain what the Aid agencies can do
2. Appropriate Military Interventions (such as the British in Sierra Leone) should be encouraged, especially to guarantee democratic governments against coups.
3. International Charters are needed to encourage good governance and provide prototypes.
4. Trade Policy needs to encourage free-trade and give preferential access to Bottom Billion exports. At present "Rich-country protectionism masquerades in alliance with antiglobalization romantics and third world crooks"

I entirely agree with the many reviewers in published sources, that this is a book that everyone who is seriously interested in development should read. And if politicians and NGO leaders took the actions that he recommends, there would be real hope for hundreds of millions of people.

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Excellent macro level review

An excellent macro level review of the problems facing the bottom of the global heap. Good intro to the lingo and to historical results of some approaches.

Yes, but....

Overall, this is a very good book, and 21 earlier reviews on Amazon.com successfully summarize its good points. There are some really major problems, though.
One is that the situation of the bottom billion is even worse than Collier says, and worsening even faster. He does not take into account the rapid environmental collapse that has ruined farmers, fishermen, loggers, and subsistence producers in general. (One reviewer thinks that sector is still healthy; no, it isn't.) Rapid population increase, overfishing, rampant unregulated logging by rich-nation firms, oil extraction, soil erosion, water pollution, and so on have led to catastrophic decline for the rural majority in these countries. Collier's only comment is a dismissive one about "sacred" environmental issues (p. 108; "sacred" is a BAD word for economists, which tells you something about the breed).
I fear this is partly because the First World is at fault in much of this, and, though Collier does pillory the First World on occasion (notably its oil corporations and trade subsidies--he's very good on these), he generally has little to say about its shenanigans. Giant international logging, construction, fishing, mining, commodity, and above all armaments firms have done plenty to keep the bottom billion down, as Collier knows perfectly well. Above all, Collier is naturally kind to his former home, the World Bank, which kept loaning money to the Marcos dictatorship, the Mobutu Sese Seko government, and others of that nature, long after everyone knew what those governments were doing with it. The WB has also kept building large dams, though their own analysts have pointed out (in reports--and some to me personally, in more pungent language) that these dams are disastrous for local poor and rarely or never have favorable cost-benefit ratios. Collier is also high on "structural adjustments," without a word about those that led governments to close down schools and health care while continuing to feed bloated military establishments.
His dismissal of fair trade is a pretty good sample. He says it is a "charitable transfer." It is not, if it's done right. It's going around monopolistic (technically, oligopsonistic) commodity firms to get fair prices directly to producers. He then says all it does is keep the beneficiaries producing their products. Well, sure; it's supposed to. Coffee, his example, is something I happen to know a lot about. The small producers that grow good coffee rarely have an alternative, and can get really good prices for their stuff from fair trade. The ones who get fair-trade recognition generally produce the best. If they can go round, or even through, the five or six giant buyer/roaster firms and get reasonable prices, they SHOULD stay in coffee, unless they can find something better to do. Cheating people out of their livelihood and then making them pick up a nothing job is the alternative.
Here and elsewhere, Collier tends to use a dismissive style, often arguing by insult rather than by data. He frequently deploys the term "politically correct," a particularly mindless slur; it has no informational content at all, and prefaces many an unsupported point in this book. Recall, also, the slur use of "sacred." Lots more like that in here.
Collier has an excellent list of recommendations, and I agree with most of them, but if they are to work, we of the First World have to rein in not only our subsidies of our own (as he says), but also our adventuring and our giant firms above the law (not just oil, either). We also have to work on fair trade issues. The world talks of "free trade," but what we have now is subsidized giant firms, backed up and supported by military might (from Guatemala in 1954 to Iraq in 2003), bullying the bottom billion and everyone else.
Collier's ideas would help, even if this remained true--but none of his reforms are likely to be adopted in such a world.

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