Printer-friendly VersionEmail to a Friend

WARS, GUNS, AND VOTES: Democracy in Dangerous Places

$26.99

Backed by economic and social science research, Paul Collier argues for the peaceful development of the “bottom billion,” a term he uses to refer to the poorest countries of Africa, Latin America, and Asia.

Collier is a professor of economics at Oxford University and the author of The Bottom Billion, which won the Lionel Gelber Prize and the Arthur Ross Book Award of the Council on Foreign Relations.

“His evidence-based approach is a worthwhile corrective to the assumptions about democracy that too often tend to dominate when Western policy makers talk about the bottom billion.” —Kenneth Roth (Human Rights Watch), Sunday Book Review, The New York Times.

“(Collier) is destined to upset a lot of people when he asserts at the outset that democracy is bad news for the countries of the bottom billion—it usually ends in tears, not to mention grand larceny, murder, and even genocide. On closer examination, he argues that elections alone do not amount to a strong democracy. Without institutions that promote accountability, they are too easily exploited by cynical, greedy elites.”—Misha Glenny, The Guardian. •