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Why the Poorest Countries are Failing and What Can Be Done About It
Oxford University Press
May 2007
On Sale: April 27, 2007
224 pages
ISBN: 0195311450
EAN: 9780195311457
Hardcover
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Non-Fiction
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.
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