Why Nations Fail: A Review of Answers to the Berg Report of the World Bank from the Perspectives of Two Scholars

The Berg Report question on why some nations fail is a pertinent question. Many nations in Africa have failed to realize economic growth and development despite many interventions. An attempt at explaining this was made by various scholars such as Daren Acemoglu and James Robinson and Thandika Mkandawire have proposed certain hypotheses regarding this question. In their publications, Thandika Mkandawire wrote about neopatrimonialism as a school of thought as a way of explaining the failure of the said nations to progress. Mkandawire dismisses this school of thought and notes that there have to be alternative explanations. Acemoglu and Robinson proposed that inclusive institutions are a better bet at determining economic growth and development. The paper highlighted variants of neopatrimonialism that married with the extractive economic tendencies to explain the failure. It was concluded that further research is still needed to reach a better determination of the Berg Report question.