
What the bottom billion need, Collier argues, is a bold new plan supported by the Group of Eight industrialized nations. Standard solutions do not work, he writes aid is often ineffective, and globalization can actually make matters worse, driving development to more stable nations. Collier analyzes the causes of failure, pointing to a set of traps that ensnare these countries, including civil war, a dependence on the extraction and export of natural resources, and bad governance. A struggle rages within each of these nations between reformers and corrupt leaders-and the corrupt are winning. The book shines much-needed light on this group of small nations, largely unnoticed by the industrialized West, that are dropping further and further behind the majority of the world's people, often falling into an absolute decline in living standards. In the universally acclaimed and award-winning The Bottom Billion, Paul Collier reveals that fifty failed states-home to the poorest one billion people on Earth-pose the central challenge of the developing world in the twenty-first century.
