Take a break; the election is not the only thing happening.
This is a brief review of an excellent book by Professor Paul Collier on the various mechanisms that tend to hold the poorest billion people in a grip of non-advancement that has been broken by other countries, leaving a gap between the developing and non-developing countries that is more serious than the gap between developed and developing countries.
The Bottom Billion has received well-deserved praise in a number of thoughtful reviews as well as the 2008 Lionel Gelber Prize. I'm happy to add my acclamation and recommendation for this book to anyone who has the time and inclination to read through it. The description and thought I offer below are the merest sketch, so if you find this either interesting or provocative, I do definitely recommend reading the book yourself.
In this book, Professor Collier refocusses the discussion of world poverty on a set of countries that have been left behind by progress elsewhere. It used to be the classic description that 1 billion were rich and 5 billion were poor. Now, though, he finds a clearer distinction between the 1 billion who are seriously poor and not improving, and the remaining 5.5 billion of us. This is a situation which shows no sign of improvement under current approaches.
After a discussion of various thoughts and proposals on the development process and its difficulties, Collier introduces a set of four traps that hold back those countries in the bottom billion. His methods are heavily informed by statistical tests, and he seeks to identify causes and probes them for weakness using the contrast of countries in different locations and who have arrived at their circumstances for different reasons.
The four poverty traps he identifies for these coutries are:
The Conflict Trap
This is basically about civil war, or to a lesser extent coups d'etat. Collier identifies three characteristics that greatly increase a nation's statistical risk of civil war: low income, low growth, and reliance on primary commodity exports (oil, minerals etc). Added to this is a self-catalyzing effect that means that a nation that has experienced one civil war is much more likely than another in the same circumstances to fall again into war. He also considerers governance and grievances; but finds no support for their contribution.
The Resource Trap
In addition to its effect on the likelihood of civil war, a relative abundance of natural resource wealth can be a direct curse on their economy, as it inhibits development of the remainder of economic activity in the country - often known as the 'Dutch disease' - and opens the country to extreme shocks of variations in commodity prices. One exacerbating feature of this trap, unfortunately, is democracy without checks and balances.
The Landlocked Trap
This is a tough one. Poor countries that are landlocked, don't have significant primary resources, and are in the midst of other poor countries, have very little chance of spontaneously breaking free. Apart from the regional costs that any (quite likely) conflicts will impose, they do not have markets for export in theiur neighbors and cannot access bulk world markets. They have to focus on doing between in niche markets that are not particular special for their more connected neighbors, and make sure they are well plumbed into electronic and air transport networks.
The Bad Governance Trap
This is a slightly mixed message, because there are countries with unambiguously bad governance - Bangladesh was Collier's example - that are not stuck in a non-growth trap. But their statistical investigations showed that there was a strong tendency for this sort of growth to happen to a bottom-billion country only very rarely; he estimates less than a 2% chance per year. Ironically, recent conflict both helped and hindered the chances of breaking free of this trap - the fresh start provided a rare opportunity for change, but the instability made it likely to fail.
Collier's observations on aid were very interesting, about where it helped and where it didn't. This section is likely to prove provokative to anyone who already has strong opinions about what should happen with aid to different countries. One issue was the need to narrow the focus onto those countries which really need, which are often the most difficult for the aid workers themselves to live and work in, with higher chance of "failure", by current assessments, than areas which are less critical. In addition to better direction, selection and control of aid, he proposed three more assistance mechanisms to take advantage of the opportunities for breaking some of these traps:
Miltary intervention - serious intervention, characterized by a willing to take casualties and stay for a decade, at the invitation of the government in times of conflict, that is then transformed into an opportunity for development
Standard charters - international models for resource revenues, democracy, budgets, conflict recovery, and investment (his examples) that could be the "default" models and avoid new governments having to work out the best approaches to these topics from scratch, as well as introducing an element of challenge to variations from these.
Trade Policy - currently a double-ended problem, with barriers erected by both the trapped countries and their prospective markets, the WTO needs to extend its function to incorporate a one-way session in which the bottom countries are awarded trade deals on the basis of a gift rather than (as at present) a negotiation. They have nothing to negotiate with; and so for them at present the WTO is a purposeless body.
One passage worth quoting (among so many!) caught my eye from the closing chapter, "An Agenda for Action":
Popular thinking on development is fogged by lazy images and controversies: "Globalization will fix it" versus "They need more protection", "They need more money" versus "Aid feeds corruption", "They need democracy" versus "They're locked in ethnic hatreds", "Go back to empire" versus "Respect their sovereignty", "Support their armed struggle" versus "Prop up our allies". These polarizations are untenable
which leads into his closing discussion of What Needs to Happen.
Overall I was intrigued and impressed by the work that Professor Collier has done in assembling data and testing theories over the years leading to his book, and I hope not only that it will find a wide readership on Daily Kos but among the governments and all others concerned to improve the lot of our brothers and sisters across the globe.