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  • Published: 3 May 2010
  • ISBN: 9781446450185
  • Imprint: Vintage Digital
  • Format: EBook
  • Pages: 272

Wars, Guns and Votes

Democracy in Dangerous Places




A timely, powerful and provocative study of the tensions between democracy and violence in the world's poorest countries, by one of the world's leading development economists.

The world is in a mess. For more than a billion people, everyday life is played out against the backdrop of civil wars, military coups and failing economies. For them, the peaceful democracy taken for granted in the West seems an impossible pipe-dream.

But solutions do exist - it is up to us to achieve them. Award-winning academic Paul Collier's vision for the future of the developing world is eye-opening, provocative and refreshingly unequivocal.

  • Published: 3 May 2010
  • ISBN: 9781446450185
  • Imprint: Vintage Digital
  • Format: EBook
  • Pages: 272

About the author

Paul Collier

Paul Collier is a professor of economics at Oxford University. The author of Wars, Guns and Votes: Democracy in Dangerous Places and The Bottom Billion, which won the 2008 Lionel Gelber Prize for the world's best book on international affairs, he has lectured widely on the subjects of economics and international relations.

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Praise for Wars, Guns and Votes

Collier adopts an upbeat, indeed breezy style

Stephen Howe, Independent

Collier comes up with very concrete proposals and some ingenious solutions

The Times

Collier knows Africa intimately... It is hard to be unmoved by his anger about the world's blindness to realities, and his passion to do things better

Max Hastings, Sunday Times

furthering an understanding of the pragmatics of democracy's failures

Amreeta Mathai, The Oxonian Review

His recent Book Wars, Guns and Votes, is all the more remarkable in that it is based on impeccable scholarship and statistical analysis but remains highly readable and accessible

Bruno Tertrais, Survival

It is always a pleasure to discover Paul Collier's latest thoughts...always illuminating and grounded in rigorous social science...it's gripping stuff

Allister Heath, Literary Review

Realpolitik at its best

Prospect

The author challenges a lot of lazy thinking about the trajectory that poor countries should take to improve their lot ... Mr Collier is thinking about these urgent and very difficult issues, something that not many people are willing to tackle head-on

The Economist

Unlike many academics Collier comes up with very concrete proposals and some ingenious solutions.

Richard Beeston, The Times

Very important ideas based on extremely thorough empirical research...put him in the same camp as real heavyweights such as the Nobel laureate Joseph Stiglitz

Misha Glenny, Guardian

With its verve, wit and lateral thinking, this is a book that changes its readers' horizons

Observer
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