Smart Samaritans

Collier's first step is to show that the people most in need of our attention are not all those who are poor but those who are both very poor and caught in countries whose economies are not growing. This includes about a billion people living in the 58 countries that have low per capita incomes and have not grown over the long term. Most of these countries are in Africa, but they also include Bolivia, Cambodia, Haiti, Laos, Myanmar, Yemen, and several Central Asia countries. There are many very poor people in other places, such as India, but at least that country is starting to generate opportunities for larger numbers of people. The poorest people everywhere might need humanitarian assistance, but development assistance -- something distinct, for Collier -- should go primarily to those countries currently achieving no sustained growth.

For the countries of the bottom billion, the long-term problem is not that they have lacked "sustainable, pro-poor growth ... it is that they have not had any growth." Such stagnation, Collier argues, is due to a series of "traps" -- traits that simultaneously cause and are reinforced by poverty, locking a country into a vicious cycle. Sachs, in his recent Reith Lectures on the BBC, focused on four traps: poor nutrition, debilitating disease, terrible infrastructure, and high fertility. Collier does not take serious issue with any of these but rather points out four related traps in which the bottom-billion countries are caught: armed conflict, dependence on natural-resource extraction, poor governance, and geographic isolation from good markets (this last is essentially identical to Sachs' infrastructure trap).

The book's discussion of these traps is rich and highly informative -- even if some of the statistical evidence Collier cites remains controversial. In sketching the conflict trap, he questions simplistic notions that most wars in bottom-billion countries arise from ethnic strife (he cites Somalia's relative ethnic homogeneity). And he argues that many groups rebelling against brutal regimes are not romantic freedom fighters; they are profit-obsessed resource grabbers.

Collier's second trap, natural-resource dependence, is not simply a matter of a soaring currency killing nonresource exports -- the "Dutch disease" economists often speak of. It is more importantly a problem of politics. A centralized source of easy and unaccountable cash tends to annihilate a fledgling democracy by creating patronage machines and lowering the pressure to develop a social contract that comes with effective taxation.

The third trap, poor governance, Collier highlights as particularly pernicious. Reforms that can assist growth often go against the interests of key actors, and when their death grip is broken in rare moments of reform, the technical skills necessary to exploit the chance are scarce. This is a direct attack on Sachs, who often suggests that donors invoke poor governance as an excuse to do nothing.

Finally, will globalization free the bottom billion from all these chains? No, Collier maintains, because other traps will prevent it. A trade trap arises: because it is cheaper to open manufacturing facilities in places where they are already concentrated, the poorest economies, even with their lower wages, cannot compete with the Asian export centers. An investment trap bites when individual international investors expect returns to be low and unpredictable in the poorest countries, thus eliminating potential finance for complementary industries that could raise or smooth those returns. There is even a self-confidence trap: Collier suggests that some African governments that have the possibility to break into new global markets "will not even try because they lack belief in themselves and expect to fail." And the nature of all these vicious cycles is that they cannot be broken except through some extrinsic event; things will not get better automatically.

The Nobel laureate Robert Solow once wrote that economists are intellectual sanitation workers: their key contribution is to consign bad ideas to the trash. Collier seizes this role vigorously, launching a devastating bombardment on people and organizations that, benevolently or malevolently, reinforce the traps: Togolese President Faure Gnassingbé would make his greatest contribution to development "by dying." Nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) such as Christian Aid inhabit a "satisfyingly simple ... fantasy world" and exercise "power without responsibility." Advocates of "fair trade" effectively work to ensure that poor people "get charity as long as they stay producing the crops that have locked them into poverty." Campaigners for trade barriers to protect poor countries from globalization are "idiots," and rich-country bankers who hide and invest kleptocrats' assets are "pimps." And aid workers furtively dodge the bottom billion because most find life unglamorous in outposts such as Bangui and Vientiane.

SELECTIVE INTERVENTIONS

So much for what will not help. The centerpiece of Collier's book is his own plan for the G-8, based on a hoard of his own research and experience in advising governments. In laying out this plan, Collier is skeptical of quick fixes, funny, and also deeply caring, with a keen eye for the crucial issues. He is specific, suggesting exactly who should do exactly what, and he takes the development agenda far beyond aid. He aims the spotlight directly and convincingly at the very poorest, and he sets the proper target for development (as opposed to humanitarian) assistance. He emphasizes that "growth is not a cure-all, but lack of growth is a kill-all."