"It is true that the poorest countries often face the biggest obstacles to reaping the gains from trade and that economists' models often assume these obstacles away. Many rely on tariffs as a source of government revenue. Weak infrastructure and underdeveloped credit markets can make economic restructuring difficult. These problems underline why trade liberalisation is no substitute for either more domestic reform or foreign aid. They also suggest that some of the poorest countries need more time to open their markets than others. Unfortunately, the Doha negotiators are taking that logic much too far. And the losers will be the world's poor."

So writes The Economist in a recent article ("Weighed in the balance" Dec.8 2005) on the state of the WTO's Doha trade round. The article is worth a read, and as far as trade policy is concerned, much of it is pretty convincing. But their admission that free trade may not make the world's poorest people richer is relegated to a little coda at the end, "weak infrastructure and underdeveloped credit markets can make economic restructuring difficult." Indeed they do. And this points to what is probably the greatest barrier to prosperity for the world's poor: bad governance. How exactly we hope to change this is not clear in the least. I'm not even sure that it is entirely desirable that we change it. Effective governance that helps to create and guide the infrastructure (broadly speaking, ie. not just physical) and identity of a nation must include a significant degree of sovereignity. What to do, what to do?