Arguments

SUMMARY
AGREE Acemoglu&Robinson Mamdani Lustick Khalidi Jackson/Rosberg (juridical reality) Note: Zakarias argument can be used for either DISAGREE Ginsberg Sachs Diamond Stearns Jackson/Rosberg (empirical reality)

Arguments in detail
AGAINST
Author Diamond & Mosbacher Main argument Geography 1. Resources + Rentier states breed economic and political failure due to selfish dictators and elites Useful quotes Characteristics of diamonds and oil notoriously promote corruption and civil wars more than do characteristics of iron and timber. Examples + Sierra Leone - diamonds + Nigeria&Congo - oil&minerals respectively + Country that succeeded: Trininad&Tobago (oil, former British) + Tropical diseases cause a skilled Who contradicts this and how? Acemoglu: Corruption is an institutional failure. Diamonds are a curse for Sierra Leone and Angola, and a blessing for Botswana

+ Resources and geography are the reason for state failure 2. Weather + Geography: Economics disadvantages of tropical location

On tropical conditions: In the New World the two north temperate countries (the US and Canada, average incomes respectively $47,390 and $43,270) and the three south temperate countries (Uruguay, Chile, and Argentina, respectively $10,590, $10,120, and $8,620) are all richeron the average five times richer than almost all of the intervening seventeen tropical countries of mainland Central and South America (incomes mostly between $1,110 and $6,970). Similarly, mainland Africa is a sandwich of thirtyseven mostly desperately poor tropical countries, flanked by two thin slices each consisting of five modestly affluent or less desperately poor countries in Africas north and south temperate zones. Its the geographic conditions that hold countries back

worker, who completes professional training by age thirty, to look forward to, on the average, just ten years of economic productivity in Zambia before dying at an average life span of around forty, but to be economically productive for thirtyfive years until retiring at age sixtyfive in the US, Europe, and Japan (average life span around eighty). Even while they are still alive, workers in the tropics are often sick and unable to work. Women in the tropics face big obstacles in entering the workforce, because of having to care for their sick babies, or being pregnant with or nursing babies to replace previous babies likely to die or already dead.

Jackson: Juridical reality of post-colonial socities Counter: Zimbabwe and Liberia were British and American colonies Diamond: After properly controlling for institutions, geographic factors still have an effect on prosperity: Tropical medicine and agricultural science are major factors.

Sachs

Geography: Tropics + Poverty trap + Climate, geography, proximity to coast, and

+ Geography is not the ultimate determinant of development, BUT geographical conditions play an

Climatic and geographic differences played an important

distance from the equator are significant determinants of economic growth

important role in helping or hindering development - Tropical climates tropical diseases are harder to eradicate than temperate - Geographical isolation higher transport costs - Poor soil fertility poverty + Low population densities in Africa meant that it has been more expensive for African states to exert control over a given number of people than for European and other densely settled areas + Tropical areas are condemned to poverty because of their greater disease burden and their poor soil quality; topography and natural resources are crucial determinants of prosperity Historical and geographical factors matter The process of institutional change is not well understood

role in economic development, but THOUSANDS AND MILLIONS of years ago (Diamond)

Rodrik&Subra manian

History and geography matter There is no one set of institutions that can be considered best for economic development. Domestic factors: Political elites Its the people in power, not colonial legacy that Elites in Kinshasa actively undermine state authority, allowing opportunistic militias to fill the security vacuum.

Stearns

Corruption and weak rule of law in government due to aid glut Current balance of power within the state: Military factions

Khalidi: The people in power are in power, because the Western powers supports them.

are the reason.

Aid Corruption + In many African states, leaders such as Charles Taylor (Liberia) and Robert Mugabe (Zimbabwe), and their political elites pursue patrimonial politics that seek to use external sources for of aid and finance to reward their supporters and weaken their opponents, rather than pursue genuinely national development strategies Aid is a new form of colonialism Counter: One of the main new colonizers is the US, that used to be a colony itself. The new colonialism

Ginsberg State-building is a violent process that should not be looked upon as a failure. Its a natural process. Adam Smith Calomiris + The invisible hand: Free trade leads allocates resources in the most efficient manner Domestic factors: Protectionism Protectionism of developed countries is hurting developing countries

- Different stages of development

Stiglitz

Zakaria

Institutions Colonialism was a British gift, BUT domestic factors mattered more

India's democracy is truly extraordinary. ... India's political system owes much to the institutions put in place by the British over two hundred years ago (...) But perhaps even more importantly, India got very lucky with the vehicle of its independence, the Congress Party, and its first generations of postindependence leaders, who nurtured the best traditions of the British and drew on older Indian customs to reinforce them.

Mamdani The New Humanitarian Order

NEW colonialism The international legal regime and other international institutions are a new form of colonialism Problem: Western dominance in international institutions The developing countries are rising and The West is not welcoming Asia's progress, and its shortterm interests in preserve ring its privileged position in various global institutions are

Mahbubani

gradually taking over (focusing on Asia) in spite of the colonial era. The main problem is not colonial legacy, but the Wests inability to accept their inevitable demise.

trumping its long-term interest in creating a more just and stable world order. The West must cease its efforts to prolong its undemocratic management of the global order and find ways to effectively engage the majority of the world's population in global decisionmaking

Acemoglu&Ro binson

Other arguments

Colonialism was good: Having English, rather than French as a language opened up opportunities Political authority tends to be personal instead of institutional; the apparatus of power (i.e. the administration and government itself) is underdeveloped; and, economic circumstances have tended to be This due

Jackson

unfavourable to African States Mahbubani Colonialism as bump in the road Long before the colonial powers arrived in Asia, Asia had its own centers of civilization. The interconnectedness was split by the Western colonial era, but it is now being reestablished. HOWEVER, though the Asian rise is inevitable, BUT Western values of rule of law and concepts of justice must be adopted in the East in order to realize this rise.

FOR
Author Ferraro Main argument Primacy of institutions: Colonialism took on a new form History of colonialism is a history of exploitation. Colonialism established patterns of dependency between satellites and metropoles and this system persists. Policy implication: Success of advanced countries does not serve as a model for developing countries. Primacy of institutions + It is NOT policies, geography, culture or value systems that assure economic development, but rather institutions. Institutions formed during colonial regime: Inclusive vs. extractive. + Nations fail due to institutional corruption, Useful quotes Developing countries are poor because they were coercively integrated into the European economic system only as producers of raw materials or to serve as repositories of cheap labor, and were denied the opportunity to market their resources in any way that competed with dominant states Examples

Who contradicts this and how?

Acemoglu & Robinson

Inclusive institutions: Promoting growth and development Enforcing property rights for most people Placing constraints on the people in power Ensuring some degree of equal opportunity for most people Its only the quality of

- Europeans invested in Africa to create roads, transport, railways, etc. - Uganda: Colonial rule was extractive, and the legacy of arbitrary states has aided in the persistence of extractive institutions. This is because it is very difficult to have political power distributed in an inclusive way when each group is afraid of domination by another and these longrun animosities. Such clear distinctions also encourage the

Diamond: Resources matter more. Diamond: A long history of government doesnt guarantee good institutions but at least permits them; a short history makes them very unlikely. One cant just

not geography

institutions in various countries that account for the differences in GDP per capita. The effects of persisting elites, inequality, government structure, economic backwardness are all associated with extractive institutions, and are harmful for economic development. Democracy is not just about who governs and how they are chosen, but about HOW they govern, the institutions through which they govern and the institutional identities by and through which they organize different categories of citizens

maintenance of extractive economic institutions to the benefit of whichever group has power. This also leads to intense conflict, as it did in Africa after independence. - Ex. Botswanas success can be attributed to its good institutions

suddenly introduce government institutions and expect people to adopt them and to unlearn their long history of tribal organization. Diamond: Why do some institutions appear and not others?

Mamdani: Beyond Settler and Native

Institutions: Political identities as institutions The colonial state can be regarded as a legal/institutional complex that reproduced particular political identities. The great crime of colonialism was not the expropriation of the native and not how the borders were drawn, but the institutionalpolitical legacy of colonial rule. International institutions: The new form of colonialism preventing violent expansion The international legal

Mamdani The New Humanitarian Order

In specific the new humanitarian order which "claims responsibility for the protection of vulnerable populations is essentially monopolized by the "great powers" through the Security Council. As a consequence,

regime and other international institutions are a new form of colonialism. While postwar decolonization expanded the global principle of state sovereignty, the end of the Cold War led to a shift to a humanitarian order, that promises to hold state sovereignty accountable to an international human rights standard this in turn is a way of limiting the sovereignty of new states Easterly Artificial borders Artificial states face more economic and political problems than natural states. Artificial states are those in which political borders do not coincide with a division of nationalities desired by the people on the ground because the borders are drawn by the colonizers with no considerations for ethnic, religious, or linguistic groups. The straighter or more artificial the borders, the

sovereignty remains in some parts of the world but is suspended in countries in Africa and the Middle East. The West retains rights for its citizens through sovereignty, and states in Africa and the Middle East become "failed" states whose citizens are passive beneficiaries of humanitarian intervention.

Mamdani argues that the ICC is an instrument of the West in the advancement of this "international humanitarian order" and a model of "victor's justice".

more likely there are economic problems and ethnic fragmentation in the country. Lustick Artificial states: Imposed borders The effect of great power interventions prevented the emergence of a great power in the Middle East. These countries did not naturally emerge like they did in Europe. Borders were imposed by powers outside of the region. Colonial borders In the Congo unsolved struggles over land and local power are causes for the violence Artificial states: Juridical statehood is more important than empircial statehood Empirical reality: Corruption The structural forces that exist in juridical reality + International organizations have served as post-imperial ordering devices for the new African states, in effect freezing them in their inherited colonial jurisdictions and blocking + The empirical reality of african "states" is largely the result of internal incompetence and corruption, but the juridical reality of these states (i.e. how they were formed, their names, their borders, their administrative structure) is an enduring legacy of the colonial experience. + The international community will not The system of colonial subordination and externally enforced norms to which the 19th and 20th C Middle East was subjected to did not allow cross-border warfare by local rulers to effect substantial change in the number, size, or internal regimes of states

Autesserre

Jackson & Rosberg

were put in place by colonial powers

any post-independent movements toward selfdetermination + "Political authority tends to be personal rather than institutional" Far from giving support to democratic rule in the Middle East, the Western powers generally undermined it, preferring to deal with pliable and weak autocrats who did their bidding, and conspired with antidemocratic local elites

permit new "natural" states to be born because of their interest in protecting the sovereignty of states - even those states that were drawn by colonizers. + Internal chaos, external peace

Khalidi

Pattern of interaction: System of corruption is perpetuated by Western powers Western Powers have derailed democratic efforts in the Middle East for the benefit of their own strategic interests. The people in power are in power, because the Western powers supports them.

Autocrats are easier to control than parliaments that try to benefit the masses. + Example: Bahrain: US navy present + Saudi alliance with US because of oil interests. Colonial era established pattern where Western powers derail democratic efforts due to their own interests