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Loading... The Bottom Billion: Why the Poorest Countries are Failing and What Can Be Done About It (2007)by Paul Collier
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Sign up for LibraryThing to find out whether you'll like this book. No current Talk conversations about this book. Big ideas Big policies, I really hope for a better world in our future. ( ) 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.
At the core of this fluent, thought-provoking book is an analysis of why these states continue to fall behind and fall apart. Civil wars are caused not by colonial legacies or fractious ethnic populations, he argues, but by the appeal of a shot at riches to uneducated, impoverished young men.
Global poverty, economist Collier points out, is actually falling quite rapidly for about 80% of the world. The real crisis lies in a group of about 50 failing states, the bottom billion, whose problems defy traditional approaches to alleviating poverty. Here, Collier contends that these fifty failed states pose the central challenge of the developing world in the twenty-first century. This group of small nations, largely unnoticed by the industrialized West, are dropping further and further behind the majority of the world's people, often falling into an absolute decline in living standards. A struggle rages within each of these nation between reformers and corrupt leaders--and the corrupt are winning. Collier analyzes the causes of failure, and offers a bold new plan.--From publisher description. No library descriptions found. |
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Google Books — Loading... GenresMelvil Decimal System (DDC)338.90091724Social sciences Economics Production Economic Development And Growth Biography And History Other Geographic Classifications Socioeconomic Regions By Development Level Developing WorldLC ClassificationRatingAverage:
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