A case for breaking up Iraq

Here's economic research which suggests a case for breaking up the Iraqi state - because nation-states make for better economies:

Artificial states are those in which political borders do not coincide with a division of nationalities desired by the people on the ground. We propose and compute for all countries in the world two new measures how artificial states are....We then show that these two measures seem to be highly correlated with several measures of political and economic success.

Not just highly correlated, but very sensitive. The 75th percentile of artificial states has a per capita GDP 83% higher than the 25th percentile of artificial ones. The authors conclude:

The artificial borders bequeathed by colonizers are a significant hindrance to the political and economic development of the independent states that followed the colonies.

Read the whole paper here (pdf).

Comments

[dearieme]

"The artificial borders bequeathed by colonizers"...; but are there many other sorts, if you take a long view? Anyway, the only thing approaching a natural border for these Isles is the English Channel, and who on earth wants to transfer the Channel Isles from the Crown, or reincorporate the Irish Republic into the UK?

[chris]

Well the Channel Isles form their own set of countries with their own laws and ecomonic area with their own taxes and duty arrangements. They simply also have the Queen as head of state, like Canada and many other commonwealth countries. So no problem there.

[dearieme]

I know they're not part of the UK; observe my carefully worded remark about transfer from the Crown. Of course, they are not "like Canada", in that they're not allowed their own Defence and Foreign policies. Didn't they teach you buggers anything at Oxford? Or Manchester?

Anyway, my compliments on the wonderful joke of suggesting that the future of Iraq might be determined by economic rationality.

[strange chris]

I'm not the author of the blog, having a common name can be a problem sometimes so I've changed what I'm calling myself here from 'chris' to 'strange chris'.

The paper wasn't about simple geological location, but nationality. And I think that you will find the Channel Islanders happy with the national arrangement that they have at the moment, their national identity having considerably more in common with the UK than France. The language and legal system for example. So shifting to becoming a French dependency would leader a greater degree of artificiality.

[dearieme]

Apologies to Chriss both. (Bugger, how do you spell the plural of Chris? Chrisses? Chris's?) Strange 'un: that's rather my point. They are left over from those colonial adventures, the setting up of the Duchy of Normandy and The Conquest of England. Utterly artificial. Leave 'em be: they seem prosperous and content. The oldest border in Western Europe is said to be the Scottish/English one. Entirely artificial, consequence of Gaels colonising southwards, Normans northwards.