Review from ROAPE Volume 20 Number 56
Tropical Gangsters: Development/Decadence (Klitgaard)

If Tropical Gangsters was meant to be a polished piece of propaganda for the promulgation of the IMF's devastating policies of ‘structural adjustment’ - the means by which increasingly poverty-ridden and debt-laden third world countries are induced to get their economies in line with the dictates of the capitalist market ‘or else’ - then it could not have been better done. Robert Klitgaard is a disarming World Bank consultant who has written engagingly on his mission to reorient the economic structure of Equatorial Guinea so that its new leaders - who recently replaced one of the world's dictators - could get their country plugged into the world's cash machines and on the road to modernisation and laissez-faire. He seems to have made quite a splash in the place and he writes well of his many fascinating forays and strange encounters (albeit no direct ones with any ‘tropical gangsters’ ). Furthermore, he seems to be a ‘nice guy’ - an honest, well-meaning, pragmatic and cheerfully helpful American. But, more importantly, we are led to believe that if his ‘American way’ policy proposals were actually implemented, the future of Equatorial Guinea would be rosy. This is popular economics with a vengeance; and its back cover comparisons with the work of the V S Naipaul and others suggest it is intended to be a best seller.