81. Oil, Development, and the Politics of the Bottom Billion
- Author:
- Michael Watts
- Publication Date:
- 08-2010
- Content Type:
- Journal Article
- Journal:
- Macalester International
- Institution:
- Macalester College
- Abstract:
- The Economist of 4 August 2007 called it a “slip of a book” and “set to become a classic.” Paul Collier's The Bottom Billion argues that most of the bottom billion, the world's chronically poor, live in 58 countries (almost three quarters of which are African) distinguished by their lack of economic growth and the prevalence of civil conflict. Most are caught in a quartet of “traps,” two of which (in Collier's account they are deeply related) concern me here: the civil war trap (the average cost of a typical civil war is about $64 billion) in which 73% of the poor have been caught at one time or another; and a natural-resource trap (resource wealth or dependency turned sour), which accounts for another 30%. Collier's argument is not simply that civil conflict is expensive in human and developmental terms nor that wars are associated with economic stagnation and poverty (“low income means poverty, and low growth means hopelessness. Young men, who are recruits for rebel armies, come pretty cheap…Life itself is cheap”). Rather, he sees this nexus of forces as arising from resource dependency (“Dependence upon primary commodity exports…substantially increases the risk of civil war”). That is to say, there is a robust relationship between resource wealth and, paradoxically, poor economic performance, poor governance (resource predation), and the likelihood of falling into (debilitating and enduring) civil conflicts. Collier's book speaks to a wider interest taken by economists and political scientists in what seems like a challenge to economic orthodoxy, namely, that resource wealth (as a source of comparative advantage) turns out to be a “curse.” The “resource-curse” literature—whether emphasizing poor economic performance, state failure (oil breeds corruption or “resource rents make democracy malfunction”), or the onset of civil violence (blood diamonds, oil secession)—has generated a vast amount of research of which Collier and his colleagues have been central contributors.