Summary of Why Nations Fail

underdevelopment is caused by political institutions and not by geography, climate, or other cultural factors. Elites in underdeveloped countries deliberately plunder their people and keep them impoverished.

South Korea is more developed than North Korea because North Korea is run by a smothering dictatorship that deliberately extracts wealth from its citizens. Countries are poor when they are ruled by governments that exploit the people and keep them in poverty. When governments are pluralist, open, and encourage innovation, as for example in England, economies grow and thrive. When governments are dictatorial and run to enrich the few, as occurs in Sierra Leone, economies stagnate.

Why Nations Fail makes a strong polemical case for a controversial theory. Acemoglu and Robinson are partisans in this debate, and their perspective colors all aspects of their book. Readers who wish to consider the cases made for other causes of development will need to consult other sources. Jared Diamond, the historian against whom the authors most conspicuously argue, criticized Why Nations Fail in theNew York Review of Books, where he predictably argued that geography has a greater effect on development than Acemoglu and Robinson believe it does. [11] Roberto Patricio Korzeniewicz, a comparative and historical sociologist writing in Jacobin, argued that the authors ignore the extent to which global capitalism creates and depends upon inequality. [12]

The book discusses the ways in which imperial nations imposed extractive institutions that impoverished nations in Africa and Latin America. But the possibility that economic success in one democratic nation may be linked to the undemocratic exploitation of another is never examined

The book discusses the ways in which imperial nations imposed extractive institutions that impoverished nations in Africa and Latin America. But the possibility that economic success in one democratic nation may be linked to the undemocratic exploitation of another is never examined.

Some economists and experts have argued that violence and conflict are among the major causes of poverty worldwide. The 2011 World Development Report argued that violence traps many countries in inescapable cycles of poverty. Thirty-nine countries that experienced civil war between 2000 and 2011 also experienced civil war between 1970 and 2000. In countries that experience this kind of repetitive violence, people suffer malnourishment at twice the rate of non-conflict-ridden nations. In these countries, infant deaths are also twice as likely. Those who want to end poverty, therefore, need to focus much more on ending violence and war. [7]

Governments resist development because they believe that growth will result in creative destruction, shifting power within the country, moving prosperity to new elites

conclude that underdevelopment is caused by political institutions and not by geography, climate, or other cultural factors

Political institutions are often shaped by historical contingencies.

Political institutions are often shaped by historical contingencies.