The Bottom Billion: Why the Poorest Countries are Failing and What Can Be Done About It, By Paul Collier
Published by Oxford University Press, 2007, 224 pp.

Large amounts of aid increase the risk of a coup, plentiful natural resources are economically damaging and democracy does not much help to recover a destitute country. Raising eyebrows with these findings and more, Paul Collier's new book The Bottom Billion: Why the Poorest Countries are Failing and What Can Be Done About It, is an unapologetic call to break the traditional mold of development ideology and concentrate efforts on assisting those at the very bottom.

At the very bottom are the underrepresented, overlooked failing states. They are the one billion people, of which 70 percent are in Africa, that inhabit the fifty poorest countries of the world. These are the countries that have experienced virtually no modern economic progress while the rest of the world develops at an unprecedented
rate.

Besides the jeopardized well-being of one billion humans, Collier warns of the dangers posed to the developed countries if the world carries on business-as-usual. To demonstrate, Collier likens the bottom billion to living in fourteenth-century conditions plagued with disease, war and ignorance in coexistence with a modern, upwardly-mobile majority. The ready potential for harmful clashing is not hard to see.

Large amounts of aid increase the risk of a coup, plentiful natural resources are economically damaging and democracy does not much help to recover a destitute country. Raising eyebrows with these findings and more, Paul Collier's new book The Bottom Billion: Why the Poorest Countries are Failing and What Can Be Done About It, is an unapologetic call to break the traditional mold of development ideology and concentrate efforts on assisting those at the very bottom.

Besides the jeopardized well-being of one billion humans, Collier warns of the dangers posed to the developed countries if the world carries on business-as-usual.

At the very bottom are the underrepresented, overlooked failing states. They are the one billion people, of which 70 percent are in Africa, that inhabit the fifty poorest countries of the world. These are the countries that have experienced virtually no modern economic progress while the rest of the world develops at an unprecedented
rate.

Why is this sub-population stuck? The author's main answer lies in the existence of four traps related to conflict, natural resources, geographical disadvantages and poor governance. The thread that ties the bottom billion countries together is that they all possess one or more of these debilitating unifiers. Such factors condemn these countries to their current status and, if left unchecked, define their future.

Decades of study led Mr. Collier to this book. He is a Professor of Economics and Director of the Center for the Study of African Economies at Oxford University. In addition, he was the director of development research at the World Bank and advisor to the British government's commission on Africa. As an academic, he knows the slim appeal of stiff, technical papers, and graciously takes a different route. He uses no foot-notes, avoids specialized terminology, and somehow condenses his opinions, rooted in mountains of peer-reviewed research papers, into a 200-page summary. As a result, the text is accessible to professor and proletarian alike.

Although accessible, it is not a light read. Idealists may be wary through the first half that the book is out to condemn the poorest to an eternity of misery. Indeed, many of Collier's grim findings suggest just this. For example, he documents that once having escaped a trap—as countries can and will do—they have a mere 1.6 percent chance of staying out. Among other crushing facts, no landlocked, resource-scarce country has ever made it to middle income status and the average civil war lasts seven years, costs 64 billion USD and pushes a country economically-backward by 15 percent.

But this is the status quo after decades of mismanagement by aid groups, military leaders and policymakers, exactly the point the book drives home. If the world keeps its course, there is no hope. If the world acts, there might be hope. This is optimism according to The Bottom Billion. He argues the way to enact change is through the proper execution of four instruments to counteract the four traps: aid, military intervention, laws and charters, and trade policy. Applying each of the instruments to each trap, Collier exposes the areas where change has the most potential for success and finds other areas where they are nearly useless.

Aid can be effective but is overemphasized as the "solution."

Aid can be effective but is overemphasized as the "solution." Military intervention, the most controversial proposal, can and does keep a country from sliding back into civil war. Laws and charters provide a cheap way to present universal protocol in the place of policy that is currently made up on the spot. And trade policy that positions Africa favorably over Asia can kick-start the mighty engine that is the market, a gravely needed component to the success of the bottom billion.

It is the constant play between great hope for this marginalized sector and near despair that makes The Bottom Billion a compelling read. Collier shows there is a black hole that countries are falling towards, and offers a way out. He shows that most countries are making little progress if any, and the efforts that have ‘aided' them thus far are misguided and futile. He explains that most of the world is already infinitely better off than a hundred years ago, but this only makes it worse for the part of the world on which he focuses.

Stressing the horror that is 20 percent of humanity living in squalor and what we can do about it, Collier offers a vital service. The text drives the middle lane between Jeffrey Sachs' big-aid-advocating flagship The End of Poverty and William Easterly's aid-denouncing The White Man's Burden, a reality check for overspending on poor governments. Borrowing arguments from both camps, a stop-you're-both-right (and wrong) chord is struck that showcases Collier's rare ability to pool ideas from diverse schools of thought.

In the opening pages, Collier claims the problems of the bottom billion today are less daunting than twentieth century problems of fascism, communism and disease. This is a bold statement to say the least, but one that speaks volumes to Collier's belief in the power of world movements to realize significant change. If weighed against other evils that humanity's collective efforts have fought and won, Collier pushes the notion that the unfortunate minority at the bottom represents an entirely surmountable situation. Though a comforting idea to walk away with, the last word is that the bottom billion needs fast and major attention. Whether this will happen is an altogether less comforting picture.




Book review contributed by Dave Zook, a Portland, OR based writer for Global Envision.

To learn more about alleviating poverty among the world's poorest people, see Alleviating Poverty with Cultural & Intellectual Creativity.



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