Paul Collier (1)Críticas

One great takeaway for me was that when experts(should apply to everyone) argue for their case they should explicitly scrutinize the potential side effects and risks their policy suggestions may induce. This is crucial for maintaining trust and preventing the rise of anxieties, ideology and populism when crisis hits.

Therefore I would have wished Collier to address atleast a chapter or two for the elephant in the room: the climate and ecological crisis. I was looking forward to his arguments on what should be done to decouple gdp growth from the growth of resource usage, moving towards carbon neutrality and eventually a regenerative economy, but found none that specifically tackle this crisis. I regard this as the biggest weakness of the book and a reason why many climate concerned readers will wholly disregard the arguments of this book for fixing capitalism in favor of replacing it. I suspect Collier is going to be challenged on this front and look forward to reading his take on this anxiety inducing subject matter.

Other than that the book has valuable points about the mismanagement of capitalism, that has created anxieties and rifts in our society, as well as ideas on how to fix them. This would be a three star book if Collier had not presented very valuable suggestions on how to get society and capitalism back on better track. In fact this is why I will recommend the book because we need to bring the suggestions Collier makes into the public debate.

Die deutsche Flüchtlingspolitik eines kopflosen Herzens.

Die Flüchtlingspolitik Deutschlands wandelte sich in 2015 vom herzlosen Kopf hin zur Politik des kopflosen Herzens, so die Meinung der beiden Autoren. Besser kann man die deutsche Vorgehensweise wohl nicht umschreiben. Eine echte nachhaltige Flüchtlingspolitik unterstützt aber eine Strategie, die es Menschen ermöglicht, in der Nähe ihrer Heimatländer zu bleiben, um von dort im Friedensfall schnell wieder nach Hause gehen zu können. Alles andere wäre absurd.

Die Autoren entwickeln in diesem Buch eine nachvollziehbare, wirksame Flüchtlingshilfe mit ganz konkreten praktischen Beispielen, die als Puffer zwischen Entwicklungshilfe und der schnellen Regeneration von gebeutelten Staaten fungieren kann. Hier werden ethische, humanitäre und ökonomische Aspekte vereint und zu einem nachvollziehbaren Konzept gebündelt.

Das Vorgehen Merkels (unilateral die Dublin.Verordnung außer Kraft zu setzen) hatte im Urteil der Autoren folgende ungewollte Wirkungen:

Tausende Menschen ertranken, weil Schleuser wie wild agierten bzw. ihr Geschäft machen wollten
Die Stimmung in den Aufnahmeländern kippte (aufgrund des massiven Zuzugs) von Wohlwollend zu Ablehnend, Schweden kappte Entwicklungshilfegelder für Flüchtlingen und schloss die Grenzen für Flüchtlinge
Peinliche Zugeständnisse an die Türkei, die Staaten mit Flüchtlingen erpresste, Kenia folgte diesem Beispiel erfolgreich und verwendete Flüchtlinge in ihrem Land als Geiseln
England befand sich während der Merkel Entscheidungen im Endkampf des Brexit, die Maßnahmen Merkels führten zum Kippen der englischen Entscheidung. Ohne Merkel wäre der Brexit wohl nicht zustande gekommen.

Was also hat Merkel mit ihrer einsamen Entscheidung verursacht? Nach Aussage der Autoren eine moderne Tragödie. Die Wirkungen: Ertrunkene, Flüchtlinge als Geiseln, den Brexit und die Aussicht auf eine erhöhte Instabilität Syriens nach dem Kriegsende, weil über 50% der Akademiker geflohen sind.

Das Furchtbare für die deutsche Kanzlerin: die Autoren zeigen deutlich auf, wie man ganz einfach hätte umsteuern können, das Versagen der deutschen Regierung liegt hier jedem offen, der in der Lage ist, zu lesen und Verbindungslinien zu ziehen.

Im Kern der Vorschläge von Alexander Betts/Paul Collier steht die Schaffung sicherer Zufluchtsorte in jenen Ländern der sich entwickelnden Welt, die in der Nachbarschaft von Konflikt und Krisen liegen: Menschen können von dort schnell wieder zurück und wieder aufbauen, sie können dort am schnellsten Autonomie und Beschäftigung erzielen, auch mit Hilfen von uns. Selbstständigkeit und Autonomie, zwei relevante Kriterien in diesem Buch, die überzeugen, auch weil Kulturen in der Nähe eher kompatibel sind als weit weg liegende. Dabei wäre u.a. die Frage an die reichen arabischen Länder, was ihre Beitrag sein sollte.

New spin on same old story
[Socialist Review 388, 2014]
https://socialistworker.co.uk/socialist-review-archive/new-spin-same-old-story/

Ken Olende demolishes the new arguments put forward by liberal commentators about the "dangers" of immigration, and the intellectual cover they give to right wing ideas over race.

BBC political editor Nick Robinson’s programme, The Truth About Immigration, was the latest step in a concerted attempt to redefine the “liberal” agenda on immigration. Two recent books, Britain’s Dream by David Goodhart and Exodus by Paul Collier, try to stake the same ground with more intellectual clout. Both are dreadful and shallow.

Goodhart is director of the Demos think-tank and former editor of Prospect magazine. Collier is an Oxford professor and former advisor to the World Bank. All three deploy similar arguments in favour of controlled immigration. They present a supposed competition between immigrants who “benefit” from migration and British-born working people who “suffer” from it.

Their key argument is that it is not racist to be against mass immigration. Collier states, “Enoch Powell closed down British discussion of migration policy for over 40 years” with his 1968 “Rivers of Blood” speech. But this is untrue.

Immigration was widely discussed in parliament, pubs and the media before the passing of restrictive acts – including the Immigration Act 1971, the Nationality Act of 1981, and the immigration acts of 2002, 2006 and 2009.

However, it is true that, in the same way that the Holocaust made all scientific racism untenable for generations, Powell made it harder to put forward glib, unsupported generalisations without being exposed as racist. This is what they don’t like.

Labour Party advocates of a new anti-immigration consensus argue that it represents a shift from the neoliberalism championed by Tony Blair, because it focuses on the interests of the “white working class”.

The Blue Labour project once favoured by Ed Miliband pushed just such a view. In 2011 it argued, “Increased flexibility across borders has brought huge benefits to urban, liberal middle classes… But for those who are less educated…it has often meant an erosion of jobs, wages and autonomy.”

But the same year Blue Labour became an embarrassment when its leader, Maurice Glasman, called for a ban on all immigration. So the latest versions of the theory suggest that the problem is not immigration as such, but assimilation.

Goodhart accepts Tory David Willetts’ implausible theory that welfare states only work in “culturally homogenous societies”. Collier puts forward the apparent difficulty of “absorption” as a reason for controlling immigration.

Both accept the idea of fixed nations with fixed interests, and largely internal timetables of national development.

Jonathan Portes’ review of Goodhart in the London Review of Books pointed out its many factual errors. But Portes was chief economist for the Treasury. His interest in immigration is how it may benefit Britain’s ruling class. So he had less to say about Goodhart’s argument that immigration pushes welfare costs up. To critique that would require questioning privatisation policies in general.

Collier’s world view excludes class and imperialism. Immigration, he states, primarily benefits the immigrant. He writes, “If Mali had a similar social model to France, and maintained it for several decades, it would have a similar level of income.” But Mali does not. Imperial powers and global companies are determined that it never will.

Goodhart too dismisses any active role for the state or imperialism, saying, “Britain acquired a large, non-European, minority population like it acquired an empire, in a fit of absence of mind.”

And all these commentators believe that racism is no longer significant. So Goodhart pontificates, “The stereotype of oppression is carefully preserved in black street culture and – to some – justifies transgressive behaviour. The fact that the stereotype is, by and large, no longer justified by the attitudes of today’s teachers and police officers has not been enough.”

Collier’s book is full of graphs that show the ways immigration causes social problems, but they don’t relate to the real world. In one case he actually says, “This is something that we know does not happen to any significant extent in actual migration.”

These commentators vary over the degree to which immigration is “good” for the national interest or “bad” for ordinary people. You wait in vain for the production of some evidence, but they remain resolutely silent.

The weakness of these “common sense” arguments is exposed by the attempt to intellectualise them. But they remain dangerous. There is a reason why the “I’m not a Powellite but, something has to be done about immigration” argument is so popular with all these people.

No one in this “liberal” debate is keen to bring in the real causes of social problems – the ruling class themselves. And none of them has anything to say about the fact that it makes a difference how people organise.

Struggle in the workplace, either by migrants or indigenous workers, is central to whether bosses can get away with undercutting wages.

But to discuss these issues would require accepting that bosses and workers have different interests.

A lot of wishful thinking and no clear message. I don't really disagree with anything the authors said it's just the book stops short of reaching any conclusions from all the observations and analysis. It's a very recent book and yet it speaks of the shift of working class support from Labour to Conservatives as something that is somehow controversial. This is representative of other ideas in the book.

Big ideas Big policies, I really hope for a better world in our future.

With less than two weeks remaining before a general election that offers nothing but an intolerable choice between populists and ideologues, Paul Collier’s The Future of Capitalism (2018) offers some clear-headed diagnosis and ideas about how to reshape a derailed capitalism.

Jeff Taylor wrote, “The political spectrum may be linear, but it is not a straight line. It is shaped like a horseshoe.” Drift far enough left or right of centre and ideologies both gravitate to authoritarianism. Social democracy appears to be in existential crisis. Collier’s analysis of why we’ve lost our sense of obligation to others is lucid and crucially important.

The force of Collier’s book is in his synthesis of “moral philosophy, political economy, finance, economic geography, social psychology and social policy.” At a time when despair often seems the only possibility, his book offers some relief that there is a progressive and pragmatic path to healing the divisions in our social and economic fabric. The question is how long it will take for our political spectrum to swing back from extremes.

The issues around immigration are not black and white. They are many-sided and are colored in many shades of grey. Paul Collier looks at the subject of immigration from the point of view of an economist and discusses the impacts of immigration from the point of view of the host country, the country of origin and the migrant themselves. His point of view is backed up by a wide variety of studies. Where those studies are inconclusive, he says so.

A sober, often counterintuitive roadmap for global development. Part academic analytics, part quite manifesto, "The Bottom Billion" is poignet, timely and surprisingly readable.

A sober, often counterintuitive roadmap for global development. Part academic analytics, part quite manifesto, "The Bottom Billion" is poignet, timely and surprisingly readable.

Un libro ideale per organizzarci attorno convegni e dibattiti. L’autore, direttore dell’oxfordiano Centre of the Study of African Economies e già collaboratore di Joseph Stiglitz, pone una questione seria: al netto del recente “sviluppo” di paesi come Cina, India, Brasile e altri, rimane un miliardo di persone nei «paesi arretrati» (buona parte dei quali concentrati in Africa) che costituiscono il vero problema del mondo attuale e di domani. Esse si ritrovano risucchiate in una spirale sulla cui natura e sulle cui vie d’uscita non si può più ripetere quanto già si è dimostrato fallimentare. Da parte sua, rifacendosi a un metodo di osservazione “statistico” – e in tal modo spiazzando molte analisi di sinistra come di destra – Collier identifica quattro grandi «trappole» nelle quali si dibattono i suddetti paesi. Per uscirne, «il cambiamento deve partire soprattutto dall’interno; non possiamo imporlo noi», afferma l’autore. Al tempo stesso, «possiamo fare molto di più per sostenere i riformatori». E infatti ogni parte del suo libro – una ricerca che «somiglia a un’inchiesta» – si conclude con una raccomandazione al G8. Se si supera il “rigetto” che possono di primo acchito suscitare in un “lettore di Nigrizia” diverse analisi e proposte dell’autore (la nozione di sviluppo, l’importanza conferita alla crescita, la legittimazione di certi interventi militari, i dubbi sull’efficacia del commercio equo…), non si può negare all’opera la capacità di rinnovare la riflessione sul «perché i paesi poveri diventano sempre più poveri».

Un libro ideale per organizzarci attorno convegni e dibattiti. L’autore, direttore dell’oxfordiano Centre of the Study of African Economies e già collaboratore di Joseph Stiglitz, pone una questione seria: al netto del recente “sviluppo” di paesi come Cina, India, Brasile e altri, rimane un miliardo di persone nei «paesi arretrati» (buona parte dei quali concentrati in Africa) che costituiscono il vero problema del mondo attuale e di domani. Esse si ritrovano risucchiate in una spirale sulla cui natura e sulle cui vie d’uscita non si può più ripetere quanto già si è dimostrato fallimentare. Da parte sua, rifacendosi a un metodo di osservazione “statistico” – e in tal modo spiazzando molte analisi di sinistra come di destra – Collier identifica quattro grandi «trappole» nelle quali si dibattono i suddetti paesi. Per uscirne, «il cambiamento deve partire soprattutto dall’interno; non possiamo imporlo noi», afferma l’autore. Al tempo stesso, «possiamo fare molto di più per sostenere i riformatori». E infatti ogni parte del suo libro – una ricerca che «somiglia a un’inchiesta» – si conclude con una raccomandazione al G8. Se si supera il “rigetto” che possono di primo acchito suscitare in un lettore "di sinistra” diverse analisi e proposte dell’autore (la nozione di sviluppo, l’importanza conferita alla crescita, la legittimazione di certi interventi militari, i dubbi sull’efficacia del commercio equo…), non si può negare all’opera la capacità di rinnovare la riflessione sul «perché i paesi poveri diventano sempre più poveri».

Collier tries to bring clarity to a political tense, emotionally fraught issue in this timely, readable volume. Attempting to get beyond the taboos (broadly speaking, liberal or nativist) which shape public debate on migration, Collier lays out a range of cultural and economic issues facing migrants, receiving societies, and those left behind. The book synthesizes a wealth of detailed research in a way that should make it useful for students, policy wonks, and a general audience.

This is a very important and timely books. It is written with a lot of tact, taking a sensitive and sensible approach. What is somewhat bothersome is that increasingly the conversation on the subject revolves around terms like rich countries, wealthy nations, developed nations as if all or most citizens of these so-called rich parts of the world are wealthy themselves. This, as we know, is not the case, unless the number of radios and televisions is an indicator of wealth, health and happiness. ... Book Review: Exodus: How Migration is Changing Our World By Paul Collier » Katarina Nolte
http://katarinanolte.com/WordPressBlog/2013/08/book-review-exodus-how-migration-...

Collier makes a significant contribution to the discussion of migration, emigration and immigration pointing out the necessity for balance and control for both the host and mother countries. Culture is an important ingredient for assimilation or isolation. He examines the phenomena of poor and failing nations versus rich countries, the role of remittance, advancement through education, the nature of different kinds of diasporas and various economic consequences. He attempts a unified analysis from disparate sources including moral philosophy and concludes with offering some migration policies to achieve the balance he postulates throughout the book. His presentation is dry but informative.

This text argues that the spread of elections in the world's poorest countries could lead to a more democratic world. This examines ethnic conflict in the world's poorest countries and looks at the policy failures of the developed world vis-à-vis the least developed countries over the past couple of decades. All in all, a useful book for the advanced student.

Paul Collier says right off the bat that he is the descendant of immigrants. In fact, a large percentage of us are. I myself am the culmination of two sets of immigrants: my father’s ancestors immigrated from France and Denmark; my mother’s from Mexico. At any given time, there is always some group of people moving from one region to another. Collier’s book Exodus investigates the phenomenon of immigration from a global sociological perspective to help get to the core of some of the issues at hand so that we can stop viewing immigration in an emotional context and place it in more of an economic one.

The issue of migration incorporates feelings of nationalism, classism, and racism. There is an unhealthy correlation between migration and the twin ideas of contamination and assimilation. Collier’s attempt at demystification leads to some interesting findings on the subject. He contends that migration is a natural byproduct of the world’s bimodal wealth distribution (a lot of rich people, a lot of poor people, not a lot of middle-income folks). Waves of global migration lead to some of the following outcomes: economic and social destabilization, multiculturalism, workforce revitalization, governmental policy change, or nationalistic uprising. This is definitely not a comprehensive list; migration could cause combinations of these or even new reactions, but Collier tries to encapsulate the world of migration is this sort of model.

This is not necessarily a “fun” book to read, but there are lot of really well-thought out ideas. When Collier decouples the idea of migration from emotion, he makes us better able to talk about it. He also understands that talking openly about the rhetoric surrounding migration carries the risk of being ostracized, but much like him, I believe that these ideas can be discussed without things getting too heated. He does not hasten to label migration as either good or bad, but rather lays out a theory for how the causes and effects of migration work on a global scale. Collier’s prose is a bit dusty, I suppose, but sociological and economic treatises tend to be that way. If you’re looking for a new perspective on a historical issue, then pick this one up.

Paul Collier asserts the 21st century being the era of civil wars. If the claim is practically solidified, the peaceful restoration of a world community will be a far-fetched dream. Civil wars are detrimental to political and state progression, let alone humanity. A volatile umbrella sheltering ethnic discrepancies, power-related violence, abusive exploitation of developmental funds, brutality, genocide and the biggest scare of all thriving of terrorists pockets. Collier, an expert in developmental predicaments of impoverished economies focuses on the African panorama of political violence and power struggle under the façade of democracy submitting numerous ingenious resolutions of policy changes, military budgets cuts to minimize the conflict risk, holding fair and free elections, reforming economic policies and providing governmental aid supervised by designated financial peacemaker.

I have always maintained the fact of democracy being a farce in a place where power and money rules above the nominal populace enhancement. How can one exercise free will when egalitarianism is either strictly communal or a moneyed privilege? Why is nation-building essential yet highly impossible in various third-world countries?

Democracy the magical word for a sovereign nation; amusing how it differs in the bottom billion (countries accounting for more than a billion of the world’s poorest populace).So, how can one dissect democracy or rather what does it stand for in the bottom billion.
D - Dais for several deluded notions of freedom and justice
propagandas.
E - Electoral sham, exhibiting every aspect of dreadful hostility ranging from bribery, intimidation, manipulating ballots and deceitful garnering of votes.
M - Mishandling of international and developmental funds fulfilling egotistical power-hungry motives and illegal arms dealings.
O - Omitting the prospect of Human Rights and at times overlooking educational and health upgrading. In some rural pockets illiteracy is preferred as no questions will be raised against criminal political and insurgent activities.
C - Chucking the concept of national identity whilst enhancing the prospects of varied ethnic liberalizations demarcating class, religious segregations and social order in state communities.
R – Rebellious onset of civil wars surfacing volatile situations between the governing assemblies and private rebel armies.
A -Accountability and security of public good for state development are offered minimalist efforts.
C -Corruption thriving within the walls of nationalized infrastructure, disposing patronage and ultimately becoming a benign part of a dysfunctional organization.
Y -Yielding a landscape fertile for proliferating embryonic terror cults and collective bedlam.

Assemble an autonomous nation-state on this pandemonium! And, to think elections and liberty of exercising the right to vote sums up the foundation to constructing a sovereign third world nation-state. Is it a fundamental naivety or a deficient study of a greatly diverse unrevealed world? A nation can be busted within a span of days or even hours but to construct a secure democratic sanctuary it takes decades of combating revolutionary upheavals and understanding the extant intricacies.

Michael Clemems rightly estimates the epochal tasks of development in the billion-bottom countries stating,"Helping the bottom billion will be a very slow job for generations, not the product of media- or summit-friendly plans to end poverty in ten or 20 years. It will require long-term, opportunistic, and humble engagement, much of it through public action -- built on a willingness to let ineffective interventions die and on a sophisticated appreciation of the stupendous complexity of functioning economies. The grievous truth is that although a range of public actions can and should help many people, most of the bottom billion will not -- and cannot -- be freed from poverty in our lifetimes."(Foreign Affairs, Sept/Oct.2007)

http://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/62849/michael-a-clemens/smart-samaritans?

I agree.

It's hard for me to critique this adequately because I'm not an economist. It does impress me that the author identifies which of his own referenced articles or studies have been peer reviewed and which haven't. This is my most marked-up book of the last few years, but mostly in a good and dialogical way. I agree with some of the author's assertions, think some of his arguments are made at the wrong level (e.g., statements about NGOs that may be true of larger organizations but aren't true of smaller ones), and note that perhaps not all forms of licit development are equally good for a country. I liked the ways in which he looked at the bottom billion problem from perspectives such as corruption, revolution, and landlock. It gave me a lot to think about as I consider how to be useful in the world.

This is a popularisation of the issues confronting the countries stuck at the bottom of development. What are the causes of this permanent failure and what can be done about it?

No footnotes and references only to the author's own writings! A popular account of his opinions, dosed with green and resting on his dicey concept of the 'bottom billion'. A thought-provoking but not a thoughtful book. An easy rapid read that leaves you wondering where you missed the insight into “how to solve the world’s problems”. This economist wants to cut carbon emissions and to stop burning coal but he is not otherwise concerned about ecosystem exploitation and the loss of biodiversity. These externalities associated with the plunder of natural resources are not even considered. There are fine arguments about how resource –rich, low-income countries should control the geological survey, auction off the right to mine and determine the most prudent use of revenues from non-renewable resources. But then poor governance gets in the way. So what is needed is a natural resource charter and transparency where extractive industry companies and countries reveal all the money flows. All this is well underway. Only add on large scale agriculture, GM technology and a ban on biofuel from maize and that pretty much solves it all. Collier refers approvingly to Fairfield Osborn, the long time head of the New York Zoo and earlier a Wall Street executive with mining and oil links. Osborn wrote a book in 1948 called “Our Plundered Planet” which “sought to awaken ordinary citizens to the unsustainable exploitation of nature”. Osborn worried about the waste and destruction of forests, watershed and animals (as well as minerals) but, unlike the unfortunate Prince Charles, he somehow escapes Collier’s censure as a “romantic environmentalist”. Osborn’s solution to the world’s problems in what Collier describes as a “founding text of modern environmentalism” was birth control. No comment made on this!

When Collier is explaining the process of how he collected his data and came to his conclusions, he almost turns this text into a biography of how to be a social scientist. He pretty much comes close to describing the trials and tribulations of an academic, where data can be puzzling, challenges are met and hurdles overcome.

This tone ensures this is not a dry text, but he manages to keep it scholarly. Ultimately it is a polemic and he wants you to be convinced. If he had just stuck to the data this aim would have been harder to achieve for a mass readership.

Having said that, it is well written and not totally unconvincing.

Why are the African countries failing after achieving freedom from Western countries ? Why are elected leaders consistantly staying in power year after year. In the Middle East we are seeing the effect right now, summer 2011. An excellent book

This is an important book and people should be aware that global prosperity may never get to a portion of the world due to major systemic issues. However, the problems and solutions raised in this book were pretty basic. Corruption, civil wars(what a surprise). Of course if you give aid to corrupt governments not much will happen. Unless the developed world chooses to intervene in these countries, I really don't see how this problem can be addressed

Paul Collier has previously written a host of academic papers on the subject, but this is a much more informal (occasionally quite chatty) monologue, where he explains why democracy doesn't work in poor countries and finally proposes a solution to the 'Africa problem'.

His premise is simple: Democracy is good - but only if the elected government is accountable to the electors. In poor ethnically diverse countries this doesn't work, and therefore elected presidents see office as an opportunity to enrich themselves (and especially their cronies, upon whom they rely to stay in power). For a president in a poor country elections are great - they are easy to manipulate¹, and give the winner respectability in the eyes of the 'international community'.

For the people, on the other hand, elections mean worse conditions, as the leader concentrates his energy on being re-elected rather than doing any public good.

The main risk of losing power in a poor country is not loss at the election polls, but rather a coup by your erstwhile cronies in the army. Since decolonisation in the 1960's there have been 80 successful coups in Africa alone, but only a handful of president who have left office after losing an election. And coups are intrinsically dangerous, as they also increase the risks of new coups and civil war.

His proposed solution is too complex to put forwards in great detail, but in short it's the following:

- The main threat to a ruler is the constant risks of coups.

- The 'international community' can pledge to thwart any attempt at a coup if and only if the ruler was elected in a free and fair election.

He claims that this would be enough of a guarantee to secure reasonably fair elections², and he also suggests similar schemes to cut down on gun-running and corruption

He also makes an interesting historical parallel between the decolonization of Africa and the de-romanization of Europe. During the Dark Ages Europe descended into chaos, and regional warlords battled it out for several centuries before homogeneous nation-states started to coalesce around the stronger armies. In Africa the borders have been frozen in a post-colonial stasis, with 53 countries (54 with South Sudan), where half a dozen would be better. The current African states are too large to be homogeneous (they invariably contain several ethnic groups), but too small to be efficiently run - there's economy of scale in many parts of government - especially security³.

The text is also interspersed with a very dry wit. He talks about the danger of doing research in some of these very violent surroundings, where people are being tortured and killed - because his grant might run out.

Rating: Four stars: ★★★★☆

¹He gives a long list. From simple media domination, via more targeted propaganda to bribery, ethnic conflicts, violence, and declaring your opponents illegible.

²The one scenario that he doesn't consider, though is the following: What happens if an openly unfair government gets elected? I'm thinking along he lines of the Hutu government of Rwanda, or if the Muslim Brotherhood were to gain power in Egypt

³The obvious counter-examples of Luxembourg and Lichtenstein have both given up a certain degree of national sovereignty.

http://nwhyte.livejournal.com/1447888.html

Wars, Guns and Votes is a lucidly written analysis of the effects and causes of democracy and good governance in the poorest countries of the world, whose inhabitants Collier describes in a previous book as 'the bottom billion'. Collier's findings are disturbing and provocative, but based on good hard research. He states that:

1. democratic poor countries are more at risk of violence than non-democratic poor countries (for rich countries, the opposite is the case)


2. This is because holding elections in poor and repressive states does nothing to improve the chances of good governance and incentivises violent behaviour from both government and opposition (and reinforces habits of bad governance, whoever wins)


3. Ethnically diverse poor countries are more at risk of violence - though the key finding here is that ethnic diversity makes it more difficult to run a state but usually helps the private sector to develop more rapidly


4. Post-conflict settlements are more durable in repressive states than democratic ones (Angola vs Sri Lanka)


5. UN peacekeeping, or any international security guarantee of intervention against potential spoilers, is by far the most cost-effective short-term means of preserving peace agreements


6. Though in the long term, economic development is the only real guarantee of peace


7. Post-conflict aid also helps to restore financial and human capital, though perhaps 11% (a surprisingly precise figure) gets diverted to military expenditure


8. Guns in Africa are very cheap, and international arms embargoes ignored by non-OECD countries


9. Civil wars are more likely in countries which
   
   
   1. have low per capita income
   
   
   2. have a low or negative rate of economic growth
   
   
   3. are dependent on exporting natural resources
   
   
   4. have more ethnic and religious diversity
   
   
   5. have more young men aged between 15 and 29
   
   
   6. are smaller
   
   
   7. have mountains
   
   
   8. are poor and democratic, or rich and repressive
   
   
   9. have already had a civil war
   
   
   
   


10. A very few coups are good, but all civil wars are bad; and there is no way to tell if a particular coup will be good or bad.


11. coups are
    
    
    1. no less likely in democracies than in repressive states, unless the state is very efficient in its repression
    
    
    2. likely to lead to further coups
    
    
    3. more likely in poor states and states with low or negative economic growth
    
    
    4. less common than they used to be
    
    
    5. less likely if the president adopts a term limit for himself, especially if he then sticks to it
    
    
    6. not especially affected in likelihood by the level of military spending
    
    
    
    


12. Small states, especially poor small states, will find it particularly difficult to provide adequate internal security (here he sneers at several small states which I know)

I must say that I am not happy with his findings that small states and diverse states are less secure. It seems to me a bit contradictory anyway; a Serbia trying to hand onto Kosovo, or a Sudan trying to hang onto its southern parts, doesn't look all that viable to me. On the other hand, one obvious solution that leaps to mind for me which Collier doesn't mention is that African countries should start negotiating regional security guarantees à la OSCE, in order to drive down military spending and boost disarmament.

Collier does have four provocative policy prescriptions, all of which should be seen in the context of his finding that democracies are fragile in poor countries, so the answer is to stabilise them until they are economically stable (at per capita income of $2700, which again seems remarkably precise):

1. The international community should offer a military guarantee against internal civil rebellion to governments which are prepared to hold elections that meet international standards and stick by the result. If the government rigs the elections, the guarantee is withdrawn, and potential coup leaders will take note.


2. A slightly incomprehensible proposal which seems to amount to more anti-corruption consultants and international aid funding non-state-run schools and hospitals


3. Aid should be negatively correlated with military expenditure


4. Post-conflict states should be prepared to share sovereignty with the international community in appropriate ad-hoc arrangements.

Apart from the second proposal, which I didn't understand, the rest all seems sensible to me; there is more to be said on post-conflict protectorates, of which Bosnia, which I know best, developed in its own very peculiar way and is now finding it difficult to wind down, but has at least played an important role in preventing a further outbreak of war.

Anyway, a fascinating and thought-provoking book.½