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10 - An Argument for Anarchy in LDCs*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 February 2015

Peter T. Leeson
Affiliation:
George Mason University, Virginia
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Summary

Somalia's experience highlights the importance of comparing really existing anarchy to the really existing government that might replace it. For the rest of the least-developed world, where governments exist, Somalia's experience highlights the importance of comparing really existing governments to the really existing anarchies that might replace them.

Anarchies and governments come in a range of qualities, from very-high-quality (or close to ideal) anarchies and governments, which are highly functional, to very-low-quality anarchies and governments, which are highly dysfunctional. Without explicitly acknowledging as much, the approach most commentators take when comparing anarchy and government is to compare high-quality government with low-quality anarchy. Somalia, considered in the previous chapter, is a case in point. Most everyone who sees central government as a solution to the current “chaos” created by anarchy imagines replacing that anarchy with a Western-style government – a government that looks and operates similar to the highly functioning ones that exist in the countries from which such persons typically hail, rather than a least-developed country (LDC)-style government, such as the brutal and predatory one that actually dominated Somalia's reality under Mohamed Siad Barre. This is problematic: comparing high-quality government to low-quality anarchy is sensible only if the anarchy one expects would prevail in a particular circumstance is of the most dysfunctional kind and the government one expects would prevail in that same circumstance is of the most functional kind.

Type
Chapter
Information
Anarchy Unbound
Why Self-Governance Works Better Than You Think
, pp. 197 - 210
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2014

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References

Leeson, Peter T., and Williamson, Claudia R.. 2009. “Anarchy and Development: An Application of the Theory of Second Best.” Law and Development Review 2(1): 77–96 [© 2009 Law and Development Review].CrossRefGoogle Scholar

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