The Bottom Billion: Why the Poorest Countries are Failing and What Can Be Done About It (Grove Art)

by Paul Collier

It is this that creates the possibility of a political development trap. A low-income, resource-rich society that either is an ethnically diverse autocracy or acquires the instant lopsided democracy of electoral competition without checks and balances is likely to misuse its opportunities in ways that make it fail to grow. This in turn closes off the path that most societies have taken to building a balanced form of democracy, namely, through economic development. The resource trap may well extend beyond the bottom billion. Many of the middle-income, resource-rich societies, notably Russia, Venezuela, and countries in the Middle East, could well be caught in it. At least for their citizens life is not as miserable as in the bottom billion, because they are stagnant at middle-income levels rather than being stagnant at the bottom. So I want to suggest not that the resource trap is unique to the bottom billion, just that it is important to them.