I began this book ready to hate it for what I assumed would be a ignorance of colonialism's legacy and a hardheaded prescription that blames the vi... (show more)
The Bottom Billion: Why the Poorest Countries are Failing and What Can Be Done About It
Global poverty, Paul Collier points out, is actually falling quite rapidly for about eighty percent of the world. The real crisis lies in a group of about 50 failing states, the bottom billion, whose problems defy traditional approaches to alleviating poverty.
In The Bottom Billion, Collier contends that these fifty failed states pose the central challenge of the developing world in the twenty-first century. The book shines a much needed light on this group of small nations, largely unnotic... (show more)
Global poverty, Paul Collier points out, is actually falling quite rapidly for about eighty percent of the world. The real crisis lies in a group of about 50 failing states, the bottom billion, whose problems defy traditional approaches to alleviating poverty.
In The Bottom Billion, Collier contends that these fifty failed states pose the central challenge of the developing world in the twenty-first century. The book shines a 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. A struggle rages within each of these nation between reformers and corrupt leaders--and the corrupt are winning. Collier analyzes the causes of failure, pointing to a set of traps that
snare these countries, including civil war, a dependence on the extraction and export of natural resources, and bad governance. Standard solutions do not work against these traps, he writes; aid is often ineffective, and globalization can actually make matters worse, driving development to more
stable nations. What the bottom billion need, Collier argues, is a bold new plan supported by the Group of Eight industrialized nations. If failed states are ever to be helped, the G8 will have to adopt preferential trade policies, new laws against corruption, and new international charters, and
even conduct carefully calibrated military interventions.
As former director of research for the World Bank and current Director of the Center for the Study of African Economies at Oxford University, Paul Collier has spent a lifetime working to end global poverty. In The Bottom Billion, he offers real hope for solving one of the great humanitarian crises
facing the world today. (show less)
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Reviews (See all 123) Write a reviewfor this
It's a hit!
No, it's a flop!
The book starts with an analysis of the causes of underdevelopment.
While it claims to be nonpartisan and though some points that are made cannot... (show more)
The book starts with an analysis of the causes of underdevelopment.
While it claims to be nonpartisan and though some points that are made cannot be denied, there still is an underlying ideology. As an example, the IMF Structural Adjustment Policies are acclaimed and their failure due to a bad implementation of the reforms rather than to the reform itself. Lets remind that these highly neoliberal reforms resulted in humanitarian catastrophes and even within the IMF they are today considered as being counter productive.
In the analysis phase, there are also some unbelievable shortcuts : You will for example learn that China is a ethnically homogeneous country...
The book is all about generating growth for the bottom 50 countries, overlooking the impact of growth on poverty of these countries population. While growth undeniably has a spillover effect to reduce poverty, it still depends how it is used.
In fact, the author admits himself : "while growth is not a cure-all, lack-of-growth is a kill-all", though we could reverse the order of that sentence.
Don't expect a look on poverty from a humanitarian point of view, this is after a book about economy.
So this book is definitely not about the bottom billion people, but about the bottom 50 countries and how to generate growth in them.
Nevertheless, it is interesting and important reading and you can't disagree on the proposed solutions as an indispensable step towards poverty reduction. (show less)
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This book is a dry, bloated, academic journal article masquerading as a popular press book. If you are not an PhD in Economics (or intimately involved in African development efforts) I suspect you are going to find this book seriously, arduously technical. There is no way this book compares to Jeffrey Sachs' The End of Poverty--that book was made accessible through case studies, graphs, and tables. Paul Collier doesn't givethe reader any of that! Collier has some interesting ideas--that a... (show more)
This book is a dry, bloated, academic journal article masquerading as a popular press book. If you are not an PhD in Economics (or intimately involved in African development efforts) I suspect you are going to find this book seriously, arduously technical. There is no way this book compares to Jeffrey Sachs' The End of Poverty--that book was made accessible through case studies, graphs, and tables. Paul Collier doesn't givethe reader any of that! Collier has some interesting ideas--that aid is not enough to end poverty, we need to think about lifting trade barriers, preventing coups, etc. But the most worrisome thing about the book is that some of his research is "too new" and hasn't undergone peer-review yet (why not wait to write the book, then?) Overall, I wasn't sure what audience he was writing for--is was too dry and laden with Economic jargon to be accessible to the lay reader and probably doesn't include enough references for the academics. I recommend The End of Poverty for a better overview on this topic. (show less)
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The perfect balance between the idealism of lthe eft (i.e. Sachs) and the pessimism of the right (i.e. Easterly). I wish there were more pragmatic, balanced (and brilliant) minds like Collier's. Does a great job of condensing a wealth of academic research into a nicely organized, easy-to-read book with a clear thesis. I also appreciated some of his solutions, some of which I had never given much thought to (i.e. international laws and charters). Great read for understanding underdevelopment i... (show more)
The perfect balance between the idealism of lthe eft (i.e. Sachs) and the pessimism of the right (i.e. Easterly). I wish there were more pragmatic, balanced (and brilliant) minds like Collier's. Does a great job of condensing a wealth of academic research into a nicely organized, easy-to-read book with a clear thesis. I also appreciated some of his solutions, some of which I had never given much thought to (i.e. international laws and charters). Great read for understanding underdevelopment in the "bottom billion" (Africa+, as he also calls it), but not the other countries stuck in less tragic levels of poverty. (show less)
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