Like a good sequel, War, Guns and Votes deftly summarizes the earlier book while presenting a new and compelling story line. In a TED conference talk last year, Collier, referring to The Bottom Billion, said: "I wrote an economics book that you could read on a beach." Clearly, he succeeded, earning praise from economists, development professionals, and concerned citizens alike for the soundness of his research methods and findings. Indeed, it is thick with questions leading to other questions. To date we have used these instruments badly, so there is considerable scope for improvement."Ĭollier's newest book, War, Guns and Votes: Democracy in Dangerous Places, benefits from a retrospective approach to his work and is very much a companion piece to The Bottom Billion, though the more demanding of the two. We will need a range of policy instruments to encourage the countries of the bottom billion to take steps toward change. "Change is going to have to come from within the societies of the bottom billion, but our own policies could make these efforts more likely to succeed, and so more likely to be undertaken. "The problem of the bottom billion is serious, but.fixable," he writes. But Collier is nothing if not optimistic.
And he's critical of the development assumptions and strategies, many going back decades, that have contributed to the situation. And, as we know, conditions in certain countries and regions are even more horrific.Ĭollier, an economist and expert on Africa, and currently professor of economics and director of the Center for the Study of African Economies at Oxford University, has identified multiple causes, or "traps," that have gotten these countries into such a dire predicament. In his writing (most notably The Bottom Billion: Why the Poorest Countries Are Failing and What Can Be Done About It, reviewed here) and frequent appearances, Collier describes these societies in stark demographic terms: life expectancy, 50 years infant mortality, 14 percent malnourished children, 36 percent.
The idea, in his case, is the fate of what he calls the "bottom billion": the billion or so people living in failed states in the developing world, most of them in Africa, whose living standards are falling further and further behind those of the majority of the world's people. Paul Collier is like a prolific visual artist who is committed to a single compelling idea and will do anything to get his audience to engage with that idea.
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