Introduction
The Bottom Billion was authored by Paul Collier and was published in two 2007. In his book, Collier explores the reasons behind persistent poverty in developing countries. The citizens of these countries continue to live in abject poverty in spite of the international aid. He points out that, in more than fifty-eight countries, there are an approximated one billion people who seem to be irredeemably stuck in poverty. Some of this people have never felt the impact of foreign aid.
According to him, these people are trapped in poverty. Their living standards are plundering when the living standards of other people in other nations are improving. Life expectancy has sharply dropped to forty years as compared to sixty-seven years in the stable nations. Child mortality has grown up. The percentage of children who do not live to see their first birthday now stands at fourteen percent in comparison with a four percent in developed countries.
Collier explains how the western governments give misplaced assistance to the poor nations. He argues that they have to do much more than giving them money. These developed nations and the aid agencies must shift from the traditional approaches of poverty alleviation.
The methods have seemingly failed to work. The poverty syndrome has defeated them and, therefore, a new prescription has to be found. He puts forward solutions both to the developing countries and the western powers over what he feels should be done to pull these people out of poverty.
Elements
Paul Collier believes that these people are trapped. In his examination of the causes of poverty level among the bottom billion, he says that these people are concentrated in Africa and central Asia. He outlines the following as his reasons for stagnancy.
The Conflict trap
There are persistent civil wars and repeated military coups in these nations. These wars eat too much into funds that would have been directed to other sectors of the economy for development. The wars are extremely costly and incur large economic costs to these nations. Similarly, years after the war or coups are extremely delicate and fragile. These countries easily and painfully slip back due to the wars. This causes a recurrent situation with wars or coups succeeding other coups.
During wars, a clique of people from poor countries and foreign countries strike out a beneficial deal, whereby they benefit from the war. They supply either arms or ammunitions to the fighting groups. In return, they are allowed to extract the natural resources that they export hence enrich themselves. These actions aggravate the situation, which ensures that conflicts are sustained. In most cases, the corrupt keep winning, making it extremely impractical for these nations to develop.
The Natural Resources Trap
The bottom billion nations have peculiar characteristics. Some of these are extremely ironical. The abundance of natural resources has become a curse. Nations endowed with resources have the worst instability as compared to those that have few resources. Collier attributes this to various reasons. The availability of the resources creates room for conflict. There are competing interests over the same resources, which is a cause of conflict.
The second point he puts forward is that the presence of resources is a source of income to governments. The government, therefore, does not tax its citizens. This makes the population lack the necessity to hold their government accountable as far as financial spending is concerned. This is an open window for government officials who would be handed a blank check when it comes to expenditure. Most of these officials misuse the opportunity to satisfy their selfish interests.
The presence of valuable natural resources that are exploited impacts negatively on other competitive sectors of the economy. Generation of income from this exploitation leads to currency valuation and other industries are affected. In Collier’s opinion, globalization has made matters worse. The resources that are extracted in these nations end up in stable countries. This contributes to the persistence of problems.
Landlocked countries
Some countries that fall in the bottom billion category are landlocked. This comes in two perspectives. The naturally landlocked nations do not have a coastline. This restricts their accessibility to the world through the seas. This means that they only access the world via their neighbors. Poor infrastructure network makes their link with neighbors inaccessible. This hinders such countries from fully exploiting their economic potential.
The other problem comes when the nation is landlocked, and furthermore its neighbors have serious instabilities. This bit cuts off the developing nation from the rest of world. These challenges pose a serious threat and make it extremely impractical for these nations to tap from the world economic growth.
Bad governance
Paul Collier argues that poor governance critically affects small countries. This is caused by regular military coups that overthrow legitimate government. Another effect is that corruption tilts the electorate to lean towards poor leaders. It is also said that some stable nations literally interfere with these nations by funding politicians who cannot run an economy.
He explains that unstructured governments with incapable leaders destroy economies of the countries at an alarming speed. Developing nations have a low cost of living. This should be an exceptionally good ground for investors with a labor-intensive work. However, investors are scared due to the unpredictability of the security condition.
These nations are also unknown. Investors, therefore, opt to invest in more development countries such as China. Investment that would have served to improve these nations is channeled elsewhere (Collier 26).
Solutions
Paul Collier clearly explains that the development and political stability of these nations are essential to the stability of the world at large. Therefore, the West has a moral responsibility to put to an end the problems and sufferings that people of these nations face.
Collier, in his book, proposes measures that are pragmatic financially, but quite challenging to governmental institutions. He believes that in order for these nations to succeed the following measures should be considered.
The aid agencies should take risks. He elaborates that the agencies have to concentrate on extremely risky and difficult environments. For instance, the population may not be knowledgeable enough to question the accountability of their governments. This may require among other things educating the citizenry on accountability. The governments of the poor nations would fight these steps hard. They may respond by deporting foreign staff. However, if there is unity of purpose among these agencies, they will succeed.
The second measure that he outlines is appropriate military intervention. He avers that, during these persistent civil strives, the western powers should launch a carefully calibrated assault on the warring factions. He gives the example of the British intervention in Sierra Leone.
This will guarantee democratic governments success over the militia groups that are corrupt and only seek to mismanage the economy through misappropriation of funds for personal gain. The newly instituted governments ought to bring in new laws, which should be against corruption.
The third approach proposed by Collier addresses the international organizations. He urges the organizations to ratify charters with the ethics of protocol. The charters are to be drafted and enforced to encourage good governance. He finally urges the western powers to adopt free trade policies with the bottom billion getting preferences for their export products. The external market will be opened to these nations, and in the process, they will learn a lot.
Elements That Do Not Match With Liberalism
Paul Collier may have discussed exceeding many factors that favor liberalism. However, some of his arguments do not categorically match with liberalism. Taking a position to explain that the availability of resources reduces the citizens’ capacity to hold the government accountable is vague.
The resource availability, however, much they generate an income, can never influence the government to a level that it can stop taxing the population. The government has to tax its citizenry in order to get adequate finances. His explanation of this point leaves us with a notion that nations in the bottom billion are ruled through laissez-faire. This form of leadership no longer exist
Some of his proposed solutions will not work towards liberalization, particularly military intervention in the civil war times. The aim of his proposals is to save the citizenry from the cruelty of these countries. Regular military action, however, well choreographed, will attract resistance from the population. When the troops are in war, citizens will feel the heat.
This will be referred to as collateral damage. Examples can be drawn from Iraq, Afghanistan, and Somalia. The US intervened, but it faced roadblocks from the population. War will also destroy the infrastructure, which he points out as a necessity. NATO attacked Libya to help the rebels overthrow Ghaddafi’s government. He was toppled, but the country was left with serious infrastructural problems.
Realism
Looking at Paul Collier’s arguments that lean towards liberalism, some of his evaluations and proposals conflict sharply with some realism facts. While Collier lays his foundation on striving to ensure equality among all nations, realists believe that world politics are guided by self-interests. Collier’s bottom billion argues with the mind that the western powers can pull the poor states from poverty for the benefit of the poor states stability. Realists justifiably argue that self-interests dictate the engagement with other nations.
Collier quotes the British involvement in Sierra Leone. He does not state the British interests in the involvement. There were British interests. That is why realists had justifiable reasons to assert that states engagements with others are based on self-interests.
By recommending military interventions, Collier is insinuating that other states can control other sovereign states. This is not practical. In realism, sovereign states cannot be dictated. For example, The British intervened in Sierra Leone. The nation still fights to date. The US intervened in Iraq and Somalia, but the civil wars persist to date. The main reason is that once the citizens sink to the idea that they are sovereign, and then will resist any attempt by foreign powers to interfere with the domestic affairs.
He disagrees with the idea that states will always attain resources. He does not state the role of the US in the Democratic Republic of Congo. The reasons behind government treaties and too much allocation of cash for exploration clearly approve the realist approach that nations are constantly seeking to increase their resources.
Whereas Collier wants both the Western powers and International organizations to take serious steps to change the bottom billion, he forgets that these multinational organizations are run by the sovereign states. These states choose the officials and fund them. It is, therefore, in order to concur with realists that multinationals do not have independent influence. The West must determine what multinationals do because they give the funds to them.
For several years, donors have demanded that the government of Ghana should align and harmonize its programs to suit their rules. There have been calls from donors to change the funding modalities from focusing on one sector to a budget support modality. In 2006 and 2008, donors contributed an approximated 13.8 percent and 14.33 percent of the budget respectively
Neo-realism also called structural realism states that nations are primary actors because no political monopoly is above existing states. Collier encourages the west to intervene militarily in the civil war cases. He forgets that they have failed before and will fail again if the same mistakes are repeated.
If citizens reject then it is over. Collier cries out that war is costly, and the money should have done better projects had the regions been peaceful. This is quite intriguing because he goes ahead to call for military intervention. The question is who foots the costs of the war by the West. Realists assert that Countries must constantly prepare for conflict through economic and military buildup.
Constructivism
Paul Collier’s ideas happen to cut across the human life. He puts forward some ideologies that conflict with the constructivism theory in international relations. Collier lays almost all the problems of development on resources. He forgets to evaluate the hidden factors such as competition for natural resources. Constructivism holds the view that primarily shared ideas rather than material forces determine associations. There are goals, needs, and intentions behind the rivalry over resources. This is a fact that constructionists hold dearly.
Collier fails to capture the interests of other states in the nations in the bottom billion. He notes that the third support persistent civil strives that would lead to fragile conditions immediately after the war. This makes countries constantly at war. The best example is the Democratic Republic of Congo, Angola, and Sudan.
Proponents of constructionist state that international relation is a social construction. This is built over time. In Collier’s bottom billion, he believes that all solutions to problems of the third world rest with the Western powers and international organizations. It is impractical for a western government to move into one of the countries that fall in the bottom billion and install changes with an immediate impact. Therefore, social constructionist becomes more applicable.
The ideologies have a great effect and can easily trump the materialistic power. The effects are far reaching. This is why the perception is very important. Collier opposes this by proposing actions that seek instant material changes. Instead of suggesting institutional changes, he agitates for military deployment to install democratic governments.
These attempts have failed elsewhere due to what constructs call perception. The effectiveness of the donor-funded project is evaluated using the indicators designed by citizens. For instance, the community might use scorecards to establish the effectiveness of the project.
Works Cited
Collier, Paul. The Bottom Billion: Why the Poorest Countries Are Failing and What Can Be Done About It. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007. Print.