Development

Bottom billion

What can we do about it? Paul Collier says that we cannot save them. Societies of the bottom billion can be saved only by themselves. In each of the bottom billion countries are people, who try to change the situation, but commonly are defeated by internal forces, which do not want a change. We should help them! It is not easy at all to get out of these traps and interventions of development agencies would not be sufficient. Collier, in his book “Bottom billion”, suggests 4 instruments, which could help the “trapped countries” , where 980 million people live, to get out of their bad situation. Those are:

• Development aid

  The first instrument is development aid which has been the standard answer by the developed world with regards to the development problems of poor countries. Development aid is however increasingly coming under criticism as the last forty years of aid have brought little progress in the poorest countries. Collier is therefore skeptical about calls for simply injecting more development aid money to poor countries to solve their development problems. For Collier therefore it is clear that traditional development aid has its limitations to solve the development problems of the bottom billion. Nevertheless, Collier maintains that aid can play an important role when it is better targeted at supporting reformers and reform processes with the right mix of technical assistance and budget support given to countries that are willing to improve on governance.

• Military interventions

  The second and probably most controversial instrument Collier suggests is the use of military intervention. Collier argues that despite the bad experience of the Iraq and Afghanistan war the international community should consider using military intervention in the bottom billion countries as one instrument of helping them to develop. Collier gives the examples of Rwanda and Somalia where he says that with more decisive and timely military intervention the suffering of millions of people could have been averted. As a positive example of a military intervention Colliers mentions the case of Sierra Leone where the British government with a relatively small number of troops managed to bring an end to a bloody civil war. An interesting suggestion put forward by Collier is that the international community should give a sort of military protection against coups. Such a protection against coups should only be extended to democratically elected governments. Collier argues that this might bring more political stability and make it easier for reformist governments to go against entrenched military interests.

• Laws and charters

  As the third instrument, Collier suggests the use of laws and charters. One way of changing laws to benefit the bottom billion countries that Collier puts forward is to stop the deposit of money stolen by corrupt governments on bank accounts in the developed world. Linked to this Colliers also suggests that companies involved in bribing should face legal prosecution in their home countries. Besides changing laws Collier advocates a number of international charters that would bring benefits to reforming governments in the bottom billion. The most interesting of his suggestions is a charter for natural resource revenues. As part of this charter Collier recommends that contracts for natural resource extraction should be auctioned off in an international process. This would ensure that governments award the contracts to the highest bidder and not to the one paying the largest bribe. This would then also imply that contracts which were not awarded in a transparent process would not be legally binding for reformist governments.

• Trade policy

  As the fourth and last instrument Collier suggests a trade policy for reversing marginalization. The problem for the bottom billion according to Collier is not that they have been exploited by international trade and processes of globalization but rather that they have been bypassed by globalization. Collier then goes on to advocate for an active trade policy by the rich countries that would help the bottom billion countries to build up their export capacities.