Paul Collier Quotes

Elections determine who is in power, but they do not determine how power is used.

Rebels usually have something to complain about, and if they don't they make it up. All too often the really disadvantaged are in no position to rebel; they just suffer quietly.

You are a citizen, and citizenship carries responsibilities.

Without an informed electorate, politicians will continue to use the bottom billion merely for photo opportunities, rather than promoting real transformation.

Change in the societies at the very bottom must come predominantly from within; we cannot impose it on them.

Most conduct is guided by norms rather than by laws. Norms are voluntary and are effective because they are enforced by peer pressure.

Launching a turnaround takes courage. I cannot measure that and so it is not going to be included in my analysis, but behind the moments of change there are always a few people within these societies who have decided to try to make a difference.

The aid agencies are not run by fools. they are full of intelligent people severely constrained by what public opinion permits.

Electorates tend to get the politicians they deserve.

Poverty is not intrinsically a trap, otherwise we would all still be poor.

Not all developing countries are the same.

An identity of being ‘on the left’ has become a lazy way of feeling morally superior; an identity of being ‘on the right’ has become a lazy way of feeling ‘realistic’.

The key obstacle to reforming aid is public opinion.. Public opinion drives them into the "I care" photo opportunities that dominate aid.

Politicians would only move beyond gestures once there was a critical mass of informed citizens.

Encouraging your firm to have a decent sense of purpose is your contribution to society, but continuing to work for one which lacks purpose is personally soul-destroying.

Populism offers the headless heart; ideology offers the heartless head.

La terre est bleue La terre est bleue comme une orange Jamais une erreur les mots ne mentent pas Ils ne vous donnent plus à chanter Au tour des baisers de s’entendre Les fous et les amours Elle sa bouche d’alliance Tous les secrets tous les sourires Et quels vêtements d’indulgence À la croire toute nue. Les guêpes fleurissent vert L’aube se passe autour du cou Un collier de fenêtres Des ailes couvrent les feuilles Tu as toutes les joies solaires Tout le soleil sur la terre Sur les chemins de ta beauté.

Persuading everyone to behave decently to each other because the society is so fragile is a worthy goal, but it may be more straightforward just to make the societies less fragile, which means developing their economies.

Pressure works, but it needs to be organized. This is the domain of the NGOs and the rock stars.

They are the people who currently dominate the media. An identity of being ‘on the left’ has become a lazy way of feeling morally superior;

For every $135 of public money spent on an asylum-seeker in Europe, just $1 is spent on a refugee in the developing world.

One way of grounding how we should identify refugees in a changing world is through the concept of force majeure - the absence of a reasonable choice but to leave.

Today over half the world's refugees are in 'protracted refugee situations' and for them the average length of stay [in camps] is over two decades.

The critical changes in trade policy... are politically difficult not because they threaten interests (they don't) but because they do not fit into any of the current slogans and so don't make it onto the agenda.

And so a miserable but possible scenario is that countries in the bottom billion oscillate between the traps and limbo, perhaps switching in the process from one trap to another.. Let me be clear: we cannot rescue them. The societies of the bottom billion can only be rescued from within. In every society of the bottom billion there are people working for change, but usually they are defeated by the powerful internal forces stacked against them. We should be helping the heroes. So far, our efforts have been paltry: through inertia, ignorance, and incompetence, we have stood by and watched them lose. Let me be clear: we cannot rescue them. These societies of the bottom billion can only be rescued from within.

Six man variables... determine variation in refugees' income levels. First, regulation: the greater the degree of full participation in the national economy, the better refugees will do... Second, nationality... Third, education... fourth, occupation... fifth, gender... sixth, networks

As an economist, I have learned that decentralized, market-based competition – the vital core of capitalism – is the only way to deliver prosperity, but what are the founts of the other aspects of well-being? Whereas economic man is presumed to be lazy, purposive action such as work is important for esteem.

The distinguished psychologist Martin Seligman has conducted a sustained programme of research on the attainment of well-being. His conclusion is unambiguous: ‘If you want well-being, you will not get it if you only care about accomplishment . . . Close personal relationships are not everything in life, but they are central.’14

Suppose a country starts its independence with the three economic characteristics that globally make a country prone to civil war: low income, slow growth, and dependence upon primary commodity exports. It is playing Russian roulette. That is not just an idle metaphor: the risk that a country in the bottom billion falls into civil war in any five-year period is nearly one in six, the same risk facing a player of Russian roulette.

Governments could recognize the huge value added if the two biological parents choose to live together with the child: a tax-credit bonus could reduce the tax burden for those who are taxpayers, and income could be supplemented by an equivalent amount for those who are not. The commitment of young parents to their children benefits us all, and we should be prepared to pay for it. When parents withhold this commitment, the rest of us pay for it – heavily.

The humanitarian silo model is also increasingly out of touch. It fails against almost any metric. It doesn't help refugees, undermining their autonomy and dignity. It doesn't help host governments, transforming potential contributors into a disempowered and alienated generation in their midst. It doesn't help the international community, leaving people indefinitely dependent on aid, less capable of ultimately rebuilding their countries of origin, and with onward movement as their only viable route to opportunity.

Whatever the nature of British failure – in providing local-government services, maintaining standards in education in the devolved nations, or raising hospital effectiveness – the fault is attributed to government unwillingness to provide enough money. Sometimes the claim is justified, sometimes not. But there is no need even to think about that question, or engage in self-examination, because blame always lies somewhere else. And the process is self-reinforcing and self-justifying: agencies which are not given financial autonomy do not acquire the capacity to exercise it responsibly.

The transformation of power into authority is essential for building reciprocity across huge groups of people, such as everyone accepting the obligation to pay their taxes. Leaders are not engineers of human souls, but they can harness our emotions. The dangerous leaders are those who rely only on enforcement. The valuable ones are those who use their position as communicator-in-chief at the hub of their networked group – they achieve influence through crafting narratives and actions. All leaders add and refine the narratives that fit within the belief system of their group, but great leaders build an entire belief system.28

More than fifteen years later, Uganda's Self-Reliance Strategy has endured as a relatively unique experiment. It was further formalized within Uganda's 2006 Refugee Act, now regarded as one of the most progressive pieces of refugee legislation in Africa. At times, self-reliance has been criticized for legitimizing the premature withdrawal of food rations. The quality of plots of land distributed to refugees has also become uneven as numbers have increased. And refugees still clearly face challenges, including discrimination and informal barriers to market participation. But compared to the alternatives in neighbouring countries, the model is both a shining beacon of policy innovation and a rare opportunity to understand what happens when refugees are given autonomy.

Among the best shows were these, some of which have attained cult followings: The Most Dangerous Game (Oct. 1, 1947), a showcase for two actors, Paul Frees and Hans Conried, as hunted and hunter on a remote island; Evening Primrose (Nov. 5, 1947), John Collier’s too-chilling-to-be-humorous account of a misfit who finds sanctuary (and something else that he hadn’t counted on) when he decides to live in a giant department store after hours; Confession (Dec. 31, 1947), surely one of the greatest pure-radio items ever done in any theater—Algernon Blackwood’s creepy sleight-of-hand that keeps a listener guessing until the last line; Leiningen vs. the Ants (Jan. 17, 1948) and Three Skeleton Key (Nov. 15, 1949), interesting as much for technical achievement as for story or character development (soundmen Gould and Thorsness utilized ten turntables and various animal noises in their creation of Three Skeleton Key’s swarming pack of rats); Poison (July 28, 1950), a riveting commentary on intolerance wrapped in a tense struggle to save a man from the deadliest snake in the world—Jack Webb stars

The rise of individualism has weakened the capacity of society to work together for common purposes. And the two have interacted: leaders thought they knew what to do, but distrusted people as being too selfish to cooperate, so they relied on incentives linked to scrutiny. The combination of individual selfishness and overconfident top-down management has damaged our societies. But you can change it: we have written this book to help you do so. 1 What is Going On Here?

A refusal to countenance racially based differences in behavior is a manifestation of human decency. A refusal to countenance culturally based differences in behavior would be a manifestation of blinkered denial of the obvious.

Very recently, economists have gained a better understanding of the structure of taboos. Their purpose is to protect a sense of identity by shielding people from evidence that might challenge it.2 Taboos save you from the need to cover your ears by constraining what is said.

the Arab Spring, which has transformed Tunisia, Egypt, Libya, and, as I write, shortly Syria. These transformations each demonstrate the potency of the idea of democratic institutions.

CONTRARY TO THE PREJUDICES OF XENOPHOBES, the evidence does not suggest that migration to date has had significantly adverse effects on the indigenous populations of host societies. Contrary to self-perceived “progressives,” the evidence does suggest that without effective controls migration would rapidly accelerate to the point at which additional migration would have adverse effects, both on the indigenous populations of host societies and on those left behind in the poorest countries.

But in virtually all societies with more inclusive voting systems, single-issue anti-immigrant parties now attract a remarkably high share of the vote. Far from forcing sane debate on immigration policy by the mainstream parties, the emergence of extremists has further frightened them away from the issue. Either you regard this outcome as a shocking condemnation of ordinary people, or as a shocking condemnation of the mainstream political parties: I view it as the latter.

data. Paul Collier is one of the few who has ventured a recent guess. He recently asked: “Is this dismal performance just an artifact of the data?

Between state building and economic growth Having a state is a basic precondition for intensive economic growth. The economist Paul Collier has demonstrated the converse of this proposition, namely, that state breakdown, civil war, and interstate conflict have very negative consequences for growth.20 A great deal of Africa’s poverty in the late twentieth century was related to the fact that states there were very weak and subject to constant breakdown and instability. Beyond the establishment of a state that can provide for basic order, greater administrative capacity is also strongly correlated with economic growth. This is particularly true at low absolute levels of per capita GDP (less than $1,000); while it remains important at higher levels of income, the impact may not be proportionate. There is also a large literature linking good governance to economic growth, though the definition of “good governance” is not well established and, depending on the author, sometimes includes all three components of political development.21 While the correlation between a strong, coherent state and economic growth is well established, the direction of causality is not always clear. The economist Jeffrey Sachs has maintained that good governance is endogenous: it is the product of economic growth rather than a cause of it.22 There is a good logic to this: government costs money. One of the reasons why there is so much corruption in poor countries is that they cannot afford to pay their civil servants adequate salaries to feed their families, so they are inclined to take bribes. Per capita spending on all government services, from armies and roads to schools and police on the street, was about $17,000 in the United States in 2008 but only $19 in Afghanistan.23 It is therefore not a surprise that the Afghan state is much weaker than the American one, or that large flows of aid money generate corruption.

In September 2001, after an unnecessary international war with Ethiopia, half the Eritrean cabinet wrote to the president, Isaias Afwerki, asking him to think again about his autocratic style of government. He thought about it and imprisoned them all.

Entre eso y las amenazas de muerte que recibió, la nueva ministra supo que iba por buen camino. 

Ni la búsqueda de justicia con ánimo vengativo por parte de los vencedores ni el olvido por decreto son actitudes deseables.

es imposible que los dos estén en lo cierto. Sí es posible, en cambio, que los dos estén en un error

Es natural que un gobierno de un país en situación de posguerra trate de defenderse, pero no le servirá de nada.

podemos decir que los “chulos bancarios” son tan despreciables como los proxenetas comunes.

La otra opción es quedarnos de brazos cruzados mientras nuestras petroleras compiten con los chinos a ver quién soborna mejor.

single-issue pressure groups driven by ‘activists’ have replaced pragmatic coalitions, while ‘activism’ has come to mean ‘drawing attention’ – ostensibly to the chosen issue, but in practice, perhaps most especially to oneself: ‘I care about this.

But the dawn of datasets cast doubt on this theory.11 While civil wars were increasingly being fought by ethnic factions, researchers such as Paul Collier and Anke Hoeffler at Oxford, and Fearon and Laitin at Stanford, found that ethnically diverse countries were not necessarily more prone to war than ethnically homogeneous ones. This was a puzzling finding: If diversity didn’t matter, then why did so many civil wars break down along ethnic or religious lines? This prompted the Political Instability Task Force to include more nuanced measures of ethnicity in their model. Instead of looking at the number of ethnic or religious groups in a country or the different types of groups, they looked at how ethnicity was connected to power: Did political parties in a country break down along ethnic, religious, or racial lines, and did they try to exclude one another from power? The PITF had been collecting and analyzing data for years when they discovered a striking pattern. One particular feature of countries turned out to be strongly

Public Choice Theory. This recognized that decisions on public policies are not usually taken by detached saints, but by balancing pressures from different interest groups, including the bureaucrats themselves. The selflessness of the planner could only be relied upon while the people involved in the decision were imbued with a passion for the national interest, as instilled into the wartime generation.

Trade does usually benefit each country sufficiently that whoever gets the gains could fully compensate those who lose out. But while economists were vociferous advocates of trade, they kept very quiet about compensation. Without it, there is no analytic basis for claims that society is better off.

By eschewing shared belonging, and the benign patriotism that it can support, liberals have abandoned the only force capable of uniting our societies behind remedies. Inadvertently, recklessly, they have handed it to the charlatan extremes, which are gleefully twisting it to their own warped purposes.

The left needs to move on from the West’s self-flagellation and idealized notions of developing countries. Poverty is not romantic. The countries of the bottom billion are not there to pioneer experiments in socialism; they need to be helped along the already trodden path of building market economies.

Fortunately, these problems are not inevitable features of capitalism but the results of fixable mistakes of public policy. Public policy has gone wrong because of the trivialization generated by the strident rivalry of antiquated ideologies. The ideology of the right asserts faith in ‘the market’ and denigrates all policy intervention. Its solution is ‘get the government off the back of business: deregulate!’ The ideology of the left denigrates capitalism and condemns the managers of firms and funds as greedy. Its solution is state control of companies, and state ownership of the commanding heights of the economy. Both these fundamentalist ideologies are ill-founded, but between them they have set the terms of public discussion, impeding productive thought. The starting point for a new approach is to recognize that the role of the large corporation in society has never properly been thought through. The boards that run large companies are taking decisions of overarching importance for society. Yet their present structure is the result of individual, unco-ordinated decisions, each of which happened to lead to some further decision that had not been anticipated. The system of corporate governance has lacked any process remotely equivalent to the intense and shrewd public discussion, embodied by the Federalist papers, that produced the American Constitution and its system of national governance. Public policies towards business have been incremental, and so have never properly addressed the fundamental issue of control. Any viable solution must begin with rebalancing the interests in which the power of control is legally vested.

What is true of asset managers is true of lawyers. Willem Buiter, former Chief Economist for Citigroup, puts it aptly: the first third of lawyers produce the immense social value we know as the 'rule of law'. The next third are working on legal disputes that are essentially zero-sum games: each side over-invests in winning the tournament and so they are socially useless....The final third of lawyers are socially predatory: they are employed in the legal scams that fleece the productive.

The radical opposition came from the provinces. The mutinies were age-related, but they were not as simple as old-versus-young. Both older workers, who had been marginalized as their skills lost value, and young people, entering a bleak job market, turned to the extremes.

There is no analytic presumption that migration produces gains either for the societies that migrants join, or for those they leave; the only unambiguous gains are for the migrants themselves.

If state tries to impose a set of values different from those of its citizens it forfeits trust and its authority erodes.

Many of the characteristics that are responsible for successful families are not just good for the families themselves, but good for the entire society. Conversely, many of those that are responsible for failing families are not only private tragedies, but social catastrophes.

it is an insulting delusion of many people who, like me, have cushy jobs in the public sector to imagine that workers in the private sector are driven by greed and fear. The evidence suggests that job satisfaction is actually considerably higher in the private sector; for example, people are far less likely to use illness as a reason for not going to work.

Nature abhors a vacuum, and so do political opportunists.

miracles. My generation grew up through such a period, between

building them is as hierarchies in which those at the top issue commands to those lower down. While quick to build, they are seldom efficient to run: people only obey orders if commanders monitor what subordinates are doing. Gradually, many organizations learned that it was more effective to soften hierarchy, creating interdependent roles that had a clear sense of purpose, and giving people the autonomy and responsibility to perform them. The change from hierarchy run through power, to interdependence run through purpose, implies a corresponding change in leadership. Instead of being the commander-in-chief, the leader became the communicator-in-chief. Carrots and sticks evolved into narratives.

People were asked to recall and rank those past decisions that they most regret.

The regrets that fester are overwhelmingly about failures to meet ‘oughts’, when we have let someone down, breaching an obligation.5 We learn from such regrets to keep our obligations. Although our decisions are biased towards momentary folly, when we consider our actions ‘oughts’ usually trump wants.

Whether or not migrants realize it, the impetus for their emigration is to escape from those aspects of their countries of origin that have condemned people to low productivity.

academic literature. Major influences on my thinking include Douglass North, who won the Nobel Prize for Economics for his work on institutions; the pre-eminent economist of modern Africa, Paul Collier, author of The Bottom Billion and Plundered Planet; Hernando de Soto, the Peruvian economist and author of The Mystery of Capital; Andrei Shleifer and his numerous co-authors, who have pioneered an economic approach to the comparative study of legal systems; and Jim Robinson and Daron Acemoglu, whose book Why Nations Fail asks similar questions to the ones that interest me.

But in truth, those of us fortunate enough to have lived all our lives in a mature democracy only think of elections because we take so much else for granted. Democracy is not just elections; it is a whole set of rules that limit what government can do.

Hyperinflation is a very high-yielding form of taxation, and what is best about it is that people do not recognize it as a tax.

Hyperinflation is a very high-yielding form of taxation, and what is best about it is that people do not recognize it as tax