| abstract | - In the book, The Bottom Billion: Why the Poorest Countries are Failing and What Can Be Done About it, author Paul Collier studies the economic, political, and social problems of the world's poorest countries that have failed to adequately develop, and are moving backwards in terms of economic advancement in the global market. According to Collier, these countries and their approximate one- billion inhabitants (aka the 'bottom billion) now occupy the lowest status in the international economic hierarchy and will continue to do so until steps for improvement are taken from both within the societies of the bottom billion and through joint actions taken by governments of the world's more developed nations. In The Bottom Billion: Why the Poorest Countries are Failing and What Can Be Done About it, Paul Collier asks and attempts to answer the following questions: Why are the poorest countries failing in the first place? Why are these nations experiencing divergence from, instead of development with, the rest of the world's more developing countries? What can be done to offer assistance and tangible solutions to those living in economically stagnant and fiscally depressed societies? In The Bottom Billion: Why the Poorest Countries are Failing and What Can Be Done About It, Paul Collier explains four 'poverty traps' that impede a country's domestic development, why it is crucial that the rest of the world cares about economic growth within these countries, and ways through which outside help can be efficiently channeled in order to facilitate 'bottom billion' pecuniary advancement. A noted Africanist, an Oxford University professor, an expert on civil war and reconstruction of failed states, and the principal author of the 2003 World Bank report where he once lead the bank's Development Research Group, Paul Collier boasts the qualifications, and therefore credibility, to inform the public on a wide range of macroeconomic, microeconomic, and political economy topics. His theory of the 'bottom billion' was borne on an assertion that even though the poorest of monetarily-destitute countries coexist with developed and developing countries of the twenty-first century, those one-billion plus people who live in the poorest of nations endure an ironic juxtaposition of 'basic' living standards that 90% of the rest of the world's population has; general standards including societal stability, available healthcare, and educational opportunity. Instead, Collier argues, the reality of the countries at the bottom is comparable to the fourteenth century: civil war, plague, and ignorance. So which countries are considered the poorest of the poor and what people live in communities shielded from the fruits of globalization? In The Bottom Billion, Collier asserts that 70% of the world's most impoverished countries are in sub-Saharan Africa with the rest being places such as Haiti, Bolivia, and Central Asian countries including Laos, Cambodia, Yemen, Burma and North Korea. As an expert in African affairs, it seems only appropriate that Collier focuses principally on Africa's decades of governmental failure and economic hardships when explaining the reasons for, and global consequences of, 'bottom billion' existence in his book. According to Collier, Africa's history has resulted in many of its countries plunging into 'poverty traps ' from which they are incapable of breaking free and therefore unable to grasp the coattails of globalized development that 80% of lesser developed countries have already taken a hold of. In The Bottom Billion, Collier outlines the four 'poverty traps' in which a country can find itself unyieldingly stuck: a conflict trap, a natural resources trap, a 'landlocked' trap, and a bad governance trap. The first of these traps that result in a failure of growth process in the poorest of poor countries is the conflict trap, a concoction of societal struggles including widespread repression, exploitation, political aggressiveness, low median income, and/or economic difficulties including slow growth, stagnation, or decline. According to Collier, these domestic problems entangle a country in a vicious cycle of constant political and social strife resulting in either civil wars or coup d’états, and ultimately create a ‘persisting legacy of poverty and misery’. When a country lacks confidence in their government, trust in their leaders, and hope for economic and political stability, violence ensues (whether prolonged in a civil war or swift in a coup d’état) that can be both costly and repetitive, resulting in high government spending, bigger deficits, and ultimately a state of poverty. Additionally, a country will experience even more violent conflict if it has a large proportion of young, uneducated males, an imbalance between ethnic groups, and lastly, the presence of natural resources. The second ‘poverty trap’ is that of natural resources. In The Bottom Billion, Collier says that the normal economic pattern of countries with an abundance of natural resources experiences stagnation, or ‘rather booms and busts around a pretty flat trend’ much like the Middle East, Russia, and Nigeria have had. Collier maintains that governments become dysfunctional when the majority of their country’s revenue is derived from natural resources. When this is the case, instead of implementing public services and institutions, political activity within these governments is based on ‘politics of patronage’, consequently locking the country into a prisoners dilemma of inactivity. Similarly, countries which are ‘landlocked with bad neighbors’ share similar characteristics with countries stuck in the ‘natural resource trap’ and find themselves more deeply disintegrated with the developed and emerging global market. Collier emphasizes the role of geography when discussing the ‘bottom billion.’ His third theory, the ‘landlocked’ trap theory, suggests that countries enclosed or nearly enclosed by land are faced with impediments to participating in global trade and transport, thus encountering negative affects on national wealth. Collier sites Africa, with many regions being disadvantageously located far from ports or major markets, as being especially vulnerable to regional economic suffering due to high transport costs and poor inland navigation. Collier also emphasizes the especially difficult task of a poor landlocked country improving economic standing when the poor country is surrounded by poor neighbors. If, he says, nearby markets are incapable of generating much trade, then any sort of global trade initiative put forth by a country in the ‘bottom billion’ is difficult to initiate and even harder to successfully execute. As Collier puts it, landlocked countries are ‘hostages to their neighbors’ and may fall victim to the final trap: the ‘bad governance in a small country trap.’ When a country is landlocked and/or lacks economic resources (i.e. natural resources), its citizen’s turn to the government to supply alternative goods and services. If, however, that country is locked in a ‘bad governance trap,’ then damaging political policies by greedy and corrupted government officials precede policies meant to improve a nations general well-being both socially and economically. In The Bottom Billion: Why the Poorest Countries are Failing and What Can Be Done About it, Collier illustrates how incompetent or narcissistic governments and other self-interested domestic actors within the poorest countries have prevented them from breaking into global markets. This ‘bad governance trap’ contributes to stagnation and a destruction of economic growth and innovation in a ‘bottom billion’ country.
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