Introduction

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.