Why Nations Fail : The Origins Of Power, Prosperity, And Poverty, By Daron Acemoglu Essay

Jared Diamond is a world renowned scientist, author, Pulitzer Prize winner, and currently a geography professor at UCLA. Of his six books published, we will be looking at the last chapter of his fourth book, Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed. In this book Diamond utilizes the comparative method to find resemblance in past societal collapses with our current society. In the chapter entitled, "The World as Polder: What Does it Mean to Us Today," Diamond points out that there are indeed many parallels between past and present societies and that our modern day society is currently on a path of self destruction , through examples such as globalization and the interdependency of each country.

Imagine a world where there were no problems, and everyone is happy. Few societies have not even been close to being this perfect. Great societies fail due to weak security systems, poverty, and inequality. The failed societies of Ancient Rome, Africa, and the dystopian novel Divergent by Veronica Roth, are all examples of great societies failing because of these three reasons.

What would it take for one country and their people to do whatever is necessary to attain freedom and rules that would pertain to a better future? Throughout the revolutions, these questions have been answered, but fight after fight is the most noticeable action as seen so far in the chapter. This leads to the question, how would a new government cause issues, instead of helping? Latin America faced many issues dealing with independence and struggled in many areas and needed to develop a new strategy, so the issues with independence can be resolved. However, the development of the nation did not occur well due to the structure of their new government and the people wanted them to know that the old system was what they were looking for and the treatment of the people was not stable.

Promises not Kept: Poverty and the Betrayal of Third World Development by John Isbister is a balanced, penetrating, and exciting account of why most people on the planet are poor, who has betrayed the promise for social change, and what we can do about it. Isbister gives a superb overview of third world development. He challenges people in developed nations to accept their share of responsibility for Third World stagnation and examines and analyzing international development issues. Promises not Kept offers provocative answers to the question of increasing world poverty.

COLLAPSE by Jared Diamond attempts to answer the question, “What caused some of the great civilizations of the past to collapse into ruin, and what can we learn from their fates?”

In “The end s of the world as we know them” article Jared Diamond looks at the collapse of several historical societies and the factors that caused their collapse. The factors are:

Ever wondered what it would be like to live in a “perfect” society? Truth is, there are no “perfect” societies due to the many reasons that lead them to fall. So why do societies fall? Many great societies have fallen due to corrupt leaders, scarcity in necessary resources, and sickness. Germany, China, Sierra Leone, and the fictional society of Ember, are all examples of how once great societies fall. All of these societies fell due to corrupt leaders, resource scarcity, and sickness.

In the prologue of “Collapse”, Jared Diamond claims that his previous book “Guns, Germs, and Steel” focused on the buildup of societies over the last 13,000 years and his present book ‘Collapse” focuses on the factors that cause failure and survival in civilizations all across the world2.” Diamond analyzes the breakdown of all societies through a unique scale called the five-point framework. This framework considers environmental damage, climate change, hostile neighbors, friendly trade partners, and most importantly society’s response to its environmental problems. Every society he studies he applies this framework to determine a possible flaw in the collapse of the society. The novel starts with Montana’s current environmental problems and evaluates societies as ancient as the Mayans and as recent as Modern China.

In the mid 1900s the world experienced a major change, no more was there a war between two major nations, rather the threat of war between the Soviet Union and the United States, a conflict that always threatened to boil over. Within this tug of war of power, nations broke free from their imperialistic ties, and became individual entities. Southeastern Asia was very much influenced by imperialism, with the Dutch controlling Indonesia, the French controlling Cambodia, and the British presence in Thailand. The cold war was a dissolving factor of imperialism and once these countries gained freedom, without the support of the countries controlling them, they inevitably fell into poverty. The first challenge critical to any country’s success would

This paper would contain a detailed overview of African Continent’s history and evolution. Social and cultural reformations and practices would be taken into consideration. It will carry a detail oriented research on the poverty and underdevelopment issues of the continent. A brief review to the history in the relevance of the topic would be included. Developmental crises would be analysed from several perspectives. The cultural and social norms and their relation to their relation to developmental crises would be evaluated. Possible solutions regarding the limitations and issues in the developmental social and cultural prosperity and well-being would be discussed. A meaningful conclusion would be evaluated on the research

Adversity, What is it? Adversity means a difficult or misfortune to someone during an event. Adversity is used in a everyday lifestyle for most people. Doing different tasks that makes you think deeper or thinking outside the box. Pushing through challenges you come upon. Adversity have been used for millions of years, Inventors use adversity every single day they work, finding kinks or flaws in their creation.

The book over all is about foreign policy and America being a super power and world leader. This in turn shares what one individual thinks America should go about doing it in the future and what he thinks America has done bad or wrong in the past. This is essentially the opinion on one way for things to be done by an individual who has a strong argument and evidence to back his claim up. Overall the book is very good and has strong evidence persuading you to see the author’s point of view and why the author feels the way he does. Someone who should read this book would be someone who wishes to be enlightened on foreign policy because the book destroys myths that surround this topic. This book allows the reader to understand exactly what America’s interests are in engaging foreign policy for the gain of America and other nations as

AIPA 2: UNDERSTANDING ACTORS, INTERESTS & POWER Institutions  Basic level – states exist to provide (1) defence and (2) social order  this requires the presence of a functioning economy.  State not only produces, consumes and redistributes; it’s also the main source and enforcer of “rules of games”.  “Rules of games” are institutions  institutional quality is related to economic performance.  Evidence: No country has gotten rich with bad institutions. Politics  Politics is the process of creating new institutions. Existing institutions create a constraint on this process.  Political processes can be analysed in terms of Actors involved in the processes, their interests and their relative power (AIP).  Actors: Political,

Those nations have failed because they fall into a cycle that has been repeated over and over, yet man refused to take heed. In the book The Fourth Turning,William Strauss and Niel Howe discovered that nations go through four cycles the first one compromising of an era of strengthening institutions and weakening individualism, a second one of spiritual upheaval, the third era is one of strengthening

Why Nations Fail takes an in depth look into why some countries flourish and become rich powerful nations while other countries are left in or reduced to poverty. Throughout this book review I will discuss major arguments and theories used by the authors and how they directly impact international development, keeping in mind that nations are only as strong as their political and economical systems.