Paul Collier > Quotes

“Elections determine who is in power, but they do not determine how power is used.”
― Paul Collier, The Bottom Billion: Why the Poorest Countries Are Failing and What Can Be Done About It

“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.”
― Paul Collier, The Bottom Billion: Why the Poorest Countries Are Failing and What Can Be Done About It

“You are a citizen, and citizenship carries responsibilities.”
― Paul Collier, The Bottom Billion: Why the Poorest Countries Are Failing and What Can Be Done About It

“Without an informed electorate, politicians will continue to use the bottom billion merely for photo opportunities, rather than promoting real transformation.”
― Paul Collier, The Bottom Billion: Why the Poorest Countries Are Failing and What Can Be Done About It

“Change in the societies at the very bottom must come predominantly from within; we cannot impose it on them.”
― Paul Collier, The Bottom Billion: Why the Poorest Countries Are Failing and What Can Be Done About It

“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.”
― Paul Collier, The Bottom Billion: Why the Poorest Countries Are Failing and What Can Be Done About It

“Most conduct is guided by norms rather than by laws. Norms are voluntary and are effective because they are enforced by peer pressure.”
― Paul Collier, The Bottom Billion: Why the Poorest Countries Are Failing and What Can Be Done About It

“The aid agencies are not run by fools. they are full of intelligent people severely constrained by what public opinion permits.”
― Paul Collier, The Bottom Billion: Why the Poorest Countries Are Failing and What Can Be Done About It

“Not all developing countries are the same.”
― Paul Collier, The Bottom Billion: Why the Poorest Countries Are Failing and What Can Be Done About It

“Electorates tend to get the politicians they deserve.”
― Paul Collier, The Bottom Billion: Why the Poorest Countries Are Failing and What Can Be Done About It

“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’.”
― Paul Collier, The Future of Capitalism: Facing the New Anxieties

“Poverty is not intrinsically a trap, otherwise we would all still be poor.”
― Paul Collier, The Bottom Billion: Why the Poorest Countries Are Failing and What Can Be Done About It

“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.”
― Paul Collier, The Bottom Billion: Why the Poorest Countries Are Failing and What Can Be Done About It

“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.”
― Paul Collier, The Future of Capitalism: Facing the New Anxieties

“Populism offers the headless heart; ideology offers the heartless head.”
― Paul Collier

“The key obstacle to reforming aid is public opinion.. Public opinion drives them into the "I care" photo opportunities that dominate aid.”
― Paul Collier, The Bottom Billion: Why the Poorest Countries Are Failing and What Can Be Done About It

“Politicians would only move beyond gestures once there was a critical mass of informed citizens.”
― Paul Collier, The Bottom Billion: Why the Poorest Countries Are Failing and What Can Be Done About It

“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.”
― Paul Collier, The Bottom Billion: Why the Poorest Countries Are Failing and What Can Be Done About It

“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.”
― Paul Collier, The Bottom Billion: Why the Poorest Countries Are Failing and What Can Be Done About It

“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.”
― Paul Collier, Refuge: Rethinking Refugee Policy in a Changing World

“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.”
― Paul Collier, The Future of Capitalism: Facing the New Anxieties

“For every $135 of public money spent on an asylum-seeker in Europe, just $1 is spent on a refugee in the developing world.”
― Paul Collier, Refuge: Rethinking Refugee Policy in a Changing World

“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”
― Paul Collier, The Future of Capitalism: Facing the New Anxieties

“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”
― Paul Collier, The Future of Capitalism: Facing the New Anxieties

“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”
― Paul Collier, Refuge: Rethinking Refugee Policy in a Changing World

“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.”
― Paul Collier, Refuge: Rethinking Refugee Policy in a Changing World

“Pressure works, but it needs to be organized. This is the domain of the NGOs and the rock stars.”
― Paul Collier, The Bottom Billion: Why the Poorest Countries Are Failing and What Can Be Done About It

“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;”
― Paul Collier, The Future of Capitalism: Facing the New Anxieties

“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.”
― Paul Collier, Refuge: Rethinking Refugee Policy in a Changing World

“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.”
― Paul Collier, The Bottom Billion: Why the Poorest Countries Are Failing and What Can Be Done About It