Bottom Billion: conclusions

Three central propositions that encapsulate how thinking needs to change:

1. The development problem we now face is not that of the past forty years: it is not the five billion people of the developing world and the Millennium Development Goals that track their progress. It is a much more focused problem of around a billion people in countries that are stuck. This is the problem we are going to have to tackle, and if we stick with present efforts, it is likely to be intractable even as the dashboard indicators of world poverty get better and better.
2. Within the societies of the bottom billion there is an intense struggle between brave people who are trying to achieve change and powerful groups who oppose them. The politics of the bottom billion is not the bland and sedate process of the rich democracies but rather a dangerous contest between moral extremes. The struggle for the future of the bottom billion is not a contest between an evil rich world and a noble poor world. It is within the societies of the bottom billion, and to date we have largely been bystanders.
3. We do not need to be bystanders. Our support for change can be decisive. But we will need not just a more intelligent approach to aid but complementary actions using instruments that have not conventionally been part of the development armory: trade policies, security strategies, changes in our laws, and new international charters.

We need to narrow the target and broaden the instruments. 

-- "The Bottom Billion" by Paul Collier, p. 192

Other quotes from The Bottom Billion:

• Voting with your feet
• Reciprocity
• Five international charters
• Polarizations
• Public inaction
• Reformers do not have it easy
• Nine strategies for landlocked countries
• The role of economic growth

More:

• How rich countries got rich... (Erik S. Reinert)
• Sacred Economics
• Dead Aid: counter proposal
• The Credit Crisis visualized (by Jonathan Jarvis)

Collier on the role of economic growth

"Growth is not a cure-all, but the lack of growth is a kill-all."

-- "The Bottom Billion" by Paul Collier, p. 190

Nine strategies for landlocked countries

"Africa's landlocked countries are not oriented toward their neighbors. Both their infrastructure and their policies are oriented either to be completely inward-looking or toward the world market. Neighbors are just in the way of the world market, not themselves the market. And this shows up in the growth spillovers. 

In Africa, if the neighbors grow [...] it doesn't spill over. To date it has not mattered very much: usually in Africa the neighbors of the landlocked have barely been growing, so there has been precious little growth to spill over. But as things stand, even if the more fortunate countries started to grow, it would not help the landlocked." 

-- "The Bottom Billion' by Paul Collier, p. 57 - 58

So what can a landlocked country do?

Collier on "Reform"

"Reform in [failing states] has to come from within, and it takes courage. Vested interests can be relied upon to use their power, resources, and ingenuity to oppose change. Although the reformers have truth on their side, truth is just another special interest, and not a particularly powerful one. The villains willing to lie in order to defeat change have an advantage over those constrained by honesty. Reformers do not have it easy." 

-- "The Bottom Billion" by Paul Collier, p. 180

Collier on "Public Inaction"

"Our public inaction does not mean that the rich world is passive, it means that the powerful forces of globalization continue to side with the political crooks in the [bottom billion] societies." 

-- "The Bottom Billion" by Paul Collier, p. 179

Breaking the conflict trap

"It will make sense for donors to fund traditional projects to restore infrastructure, but they will need exceptionally substantial supervision both to ensure success and to guard against corruption."

"Security in postconflict societies will normally require an external military presence for a long time. Both sending and recipient governments should expect this presence to last for around a decade, and must commit to it. Much less than a decade and domestic politicians are liable to play a waiting game rather than building the peace, and firms are likely to be wary of investing. Much more than a decade and citizens are likely to get restive for foreign troops to leave the country. 

To be effective, an external presence requires troops with a mandate to fight to preserve the peace, as well as contributing governments willing to accept casualties. In return for this external security guarantee, the postconflict government should be required to radically downsize its own army. It has to learn to rule by consent rather than oppression. While the military should be reduced in size, there is likely to be a need for an expanded police force to deal with a crime wave as the violent diversify from war to crime."

-- "The Bottom Billion" by Paul Collier, p. 177 - 178

Polarizations

Will globalization improve the situation? Trade is more likely to lock the bottom billion into natural resource dependence than to open new opportunities, and the international mobility of capital and skilled workers is more likely to bleed them of their scanty capital and talent than to provide an engine of growth.

"Globalization will fix it" vs "They need more protection"

"They need more money" vs "Aid feeds corruption"

"They need democracy" vs "They"re locked in ethnic hatreds"

"Go back to empire" vs "Respect their sovereignty"

"Support their armed struggles" vs "Prop up our allies"

These polarizations are untenable, and I hope that you have picked up some sense of how quantitative research on these issues challenges them.

-- "The Bottom Billion" by Paul Collier, p. 175 and 176

Other quotes from The Bottom Billion:

• Voting with your feet
• Reciprocity
• Five international charters
• Public inaction
• Reformers do not have it easy

More:

• How rich countries got rich... (Erik S. Reinert)
• Sacred Economics
• Dead Aid: counter proposal
• The Credit Crisis visualized (by Jonathan Jarvis)
• Overpopulation is a myth

Five international charters

From "The Bottom Billion" by Paul Collier, p. 139 - 156

"Five international charters - norms that I think would help reformers within the societies of the bottom billion to achieve and sustain change."

"The main point of pressure for the adoption of international standards would come from within the bottom-billion societies themselves, especially from civil society. An international charter gives people something very concrete to demand: either the government adopts it or it must explain why it won't. All societies of the bottom billion have plenty of latent opposition to bad governance. But transforming this latent opposition into effective pressure is difficult."

"Global public goods are grossly undersupplied because nobody has much interest in providing them. Being good for everybody, they face the ultimate free-rider problem. The real problem, therefore, is not that of not knowing what to do but getting around to doing it."

Reciprocity

"In Chapter 1 I discussed the danger that the societies of the bottom billion might become safe havens for criminals, terrorists, and disease. Paradoxically, some of this is reciprocal: the rich countries have been a safe haven for the criminals of the bottom billion. 

One grotesque form of this safe haven role has been that Western banks have taken deposits looted from the bottom-billion societies, held the money in great secrecy, and refused to give it back."

-- "The Bottom Billion" by Paul Collier, p. 135

Voting with your feet

The bottom billion have not only integrated into the world economy through capital flight. They are increasingly integrating through migration. People vote with their feet as well as with their wallets. Historically, migration has been the great equalizer. In the nineteenth century the vast movement of people from Europe to North America did more to raise and equalize incomes than trade or capital movements.

-- from "The Bottom Billion" by Paul Collier, p. 93

Liberalization of Trade and the Right to Food

“National efforts will often remain of limited impact in combating malnutrition and food insecurity unless the international environment, including not only development assistance and cooperation but also trade and investment regimes or efforts to address climate change at a global level, facilitates and rewards these national efforts."

-- Prof. Olivier De Schutter

Full document, including case study on Brazil: PDF

Free Trade to Feed the World

The liberalization of the international markets is sold to the world population as a remedy for all the world’s problems and the yellow brick road to global development. In the case of food supply: the idea that agricultural commodities can simply travel from food-surplus regions to food-deficit regions seems, at a first glance, to be the ideal solution to world hunger. If a country does not have sufficient stock, they can buy it from those that have produced too much.

Unfortunately, the global food price crises of 2008 and of 2010-11 have already illustrated the global imbalance. Before trade can contribute to the realization of the right to adequate food, a wide range of measures must be adopted [De Schutter]. In the world today, there are about one billion people facing food insecurity. About half of them are actually growing food themselves as small-scale independent farmers. In the other half there is a large part (estimated to be two hundred million people) of waged workers, employed on large plantations, who are not sufficiently well-paid to feed themselves in dignity (source).