The Bottom Billion: Why the Poorest Countries Are Failing and What Can Be Done about It (review)

This book is part of the growing genre of literature that seeks to deepen our understanding of the causes of poverty and how to address it. The author, Paul Collier, is Professor of Economics and Director of the Centre for the Study of African Economies at the University of Oxford and a former director of development at the World Bank. He notes that while global poverty is declining, several dozen countries—mostly in Africa and home to about a billion people—are engulfed in increased and appalling poverty. He argues that these countries are ensnared by one or more of four traps: the conflict trap, the natural resource trap, the trap of being landlocked with bad neighbors, and the trap of bad governance in a small country. Consequently, they have diverged from the rest of the world.

Writing with force and erudition, Collier proposes four instruments—aid, military intervention, laws and charters, and preferential trade policies—all of which he believes will help lift the bottom billion people out of poverty. Some of his arguments are illuminating, but others are dubious. His discussion that an abundance of natural resource can become a curse or a trap, for example, is insightful. Similarly, while the challenges of development for landlocked countries are daunting, reliance on poor neighbours for international trade complicates matters. Instability in neighboring countries spawns additional problems. His discussion of the economic devastation wrought by civil wars is illuminating. One might question the precision with which he calculates how economic growth or decline reduces or increases the risk of civil war, but the basic thrust—that civil wars are costly—is apposite. The same cannot be said, however, of his analysis of the causes of civil war. His contention that civil wars bear no relation to colonialism flies in the face of a large body of evidence. In Africa, colonial officials politicized and heightened ethnic differences and created conditions that bred instability. In this regard, James O'Connell's thesis, "The Inevitability of Instability" (1967), remains apt. Decolonization plunged Congo into civil war. Nigeria followed suit. Collier's assertion that civil wars are driven by greed, not grievance, is also dubious. Charles Taylor, Laurent Kabila, and others may have been driven by the lure of wealth, but this hypothesis cannot be generalized. Some groups have bona fide grievances that were created by colonialism and exacerbated by postcolonial leaders. Recent violence in the Rift Valley of Kenya is a prime example. Grievance figured in the civil war in Sierra Leone (Abdullah 2004). To dismiss grievance is therefore hardly helpful.

The poverty traps that Collier identifies are not exhaustive. Of course, no single book can discuss all traps, but the omission of some traps is notable. An example is neocolonialism, long recognized as harmful. In Collier's scheme, which reflects a broader theme of his book, the woes of the bottom billion are self-inflicted. Surely some problems are internally derived, but neocolonialism is a vicious trap. Foreign powers have intervened in ex-colonies to secure their own interests, and have often reversed progress. Further, the way in which neoliberalism has been implemented in the bottom billion arguably constitutes a trap. It is hardly coincidental that most Africans, for example, are poorer today than they were in the 1960s and 1970s. Also, the debt overhang arguably amounts to a trap.

Collier's instruments for tackling poverty are interesting and thoughtprovoking, but also debatable, too sanguine, and probably impractical—at least not any time soon. I share his view that aid is a palliative, not a cure for poverty. He admits that military intervention is controversial, but necessary to save failing states. He wants to see the enactment of laws and charters against corruption. Last, he asks rich countries to lift tariffs and open their markets.

Military intervention is predicated on the flawed notion that benevolent Westerners would dislodge "villains" and...