He continuously digresses to make fun of 'Marxist' economists (which I think for him means anyone left of himself). The salient points are common sense propositions, interspersed with an extremely obvious free market bias that Collier refuses to back up with any evidence. There's plenty of room in the global manufacturing economy for everyone, and we just need to give a helping hand to the countries where the poorest billion people live so they can reach the lowest rung on the ladder.įor anyone who has read the news or the scholarly literature over the last 10 years, this book becomes laughable. His ideas are easy to understand (civil war = bad, natural resources trap = bad, bad governance = bad for investors, landlocked countries are disadvantaged) and present no challenge to the structure of the world economy that punishes the poorest countries, except for some passing criticisms of the global trade system.įor the elite, it's a reassuring narrative: Spend aid more effectively, don't be afraid to intervene militarily, don't feel guilty over the colonial past (which Collier completely ignores). Written by one of the world's most influential and respected development economists, Paul Collier, The Bottom Billion has become a sort of how-to guide, the Book for much of the ever-divided development community. In The Bottom Billion, he offers real hope for solving one of the great humanitarian crises facing the world today. Collier has spent a lifetime working to end global poverty. If failed states are ever to be helped, the G8 will have to adopt preferential trade policies, new laws against corruption, new international charters, and even conduct carefully calibrated military interventions. What the bottom billion need, Collier argues, is a bold new plan supported by the Group of Eight industrialized nations. Standard solutions do not work, he writes aid is often ineffective, and globalization can actually make matters worse, driving development to more stable nations.

Collier analyzes the causes of failure, pointing to a set of traps that ensnare these countries, including civil war, a dependence on the extraction and export of natural resources, and bad governance. A struggle rages within each of these nations between reformers and corrupt leaders-and the corrupt are winning. The book shines much-needed light on this group of small nations, largely unnoticed by the industrialized West, that are dropping further and further behind the majority of the world's people, often falling into an absolute decline in living standards. In the universally acclaimed and award-winning The Bottom Billion, Paul Collier reveals that fifty failed states-home to the poorest one billion people on Earth-pose the central challenge of the developing world in the twenty-first century.

The Bottom Billion by Paul Collier