In my view Paul Collier is a bit of a genius. He tries to turn political economy into an empirical science and comes pretty close to succeeding. The crux of what he does is use the natural experiments provided by countries doing different things, control some factors to isolate the things that do matter or can make a difference.
He starts off with a comforting conclusion – democracy is good. But only if average incomes are more that $2,700 per capita. Below that and increasing democracy tends to lead to more violence and less effective governments. Much of what follows is equally comfortable, as he demonstrates that for your typical president in the bottom billion countries the method most likely to lead to losing an election is to rely on trying to run the country well.
In separate chapters he addresses ethnic politics, guns, wars and coups. Most of what he uncovers is depressing, but not all. For example, I read with a mixture of amusement, incredulity and horror as he shows that peacekeeping forces are worthwhile economically. He also manages to bring out what the important factors are in many complex situations leading to some hints about what possible solutions might be. He is candid enough to admit his results aren’t always as robust as he might like, though some of the supporting anecdotes help dispel doubts.
Its interesting that his solutions depend on two things, but the largest is incentivising the participants to act in the ‘right’ way. Throughout the book he discusses how things that many hoped would make politicians act in their countries interest, such as introducing elections, have often had the opposite effect. The second is creating opportunity – the reader may or may not agree with his idea of harnessing the threat of coups, but it timing is vital. Countries are not always receptive – in his previous book he found that aid can have its largest effect immediately after war, but is much less effective at other times. Clearly signing up to ‘good practice’ agreements and his idea of many countries having too much sovereignty rather than too little are good ideas. However, there will be times when countries are more receptive to these ideas and the legacy of colonialism in Africa means some of his ideas will be left untouched. That is a shame.