Book Report: The Bottom Billion

I read Paul Collier's The Bottom Billion a while ago, but never published this post. I did however publish a joint book report on this book and The End of Poverty over at the short-lived human rights blog. I have been reading (slowly) all of the popular books on development, and this was the one I started with.

To summarize quickly, Collier takes a very pro-growth position on how to improve the countries in the bottom billion - the worst performing countries. He uses statistical modeling to look at what factors affect growth, and he finds that being landlocked, resource rich (oil or diamonds for example), recent conflict or coups, and poor democracy - especially lack of an open press all have negative correlations with growth.

His solutions therefore are to promote democracy, export diversity, and international intervention during / following conflicts. I can agree with all of these, especially intervention. I firmly believe that more peacekeeping missions are both good for stability (obviously) but also a moral necessity to protect the victims of conflict. Sound democracy is hard to argue against also, since it can lead to pressure on the government to make good decisions. And countries with one major commodity can see their revenue misused and their exchange rates harmed (international aid can have the same impact).

I fear that I am oversimplifying, as well as leaving things out. I don't have the energy right now to really get into the details of his economic proposals. The point though is that he analysis made sense, but it seemed both too broad and quick, as well as somewhat cold in its tone. His arguments were all about economics, to the point that his main concern was to see positive growth that might get these countries out of their horrible situation over 20 years or so. What he didn't focus enough on was what to do right now to improve their situation. Their conditions are so horrible that we need equal focus to long term solutions and short-term fixes and I felt that his book was mostly focused on the long term.