ìBolivians Support Gas Plan And Give President a Lift: Referendum Maintains Company Control,î by Juan Forero, New York Times, 19 July, p. A6.

ìAre Sanctions Evil?" by Michael Judge, Wall Street Journal, 19 July, p. A11.

Let me skip over the details of the referendum on the gas project. Bolivia is a poor country, and God knows it wonít be developed simply because itís got some gas. Trying to grow an economy on the exportation of raw materials is just about the slowest way to go, as weíve seen time and time again over the 20th century.

The real problem with Bolivia is the weakness of its political institutions. Hereís a pretty good guy operating as president, but hereís how a knowledgeable observer describes his ruling situation:

ìHere you have a guy who has no control over the armed forces, no control over the police,î said Eduardo Gamarra, a Bolivian-born expert who oversees Latin America studies at Florida International University. ìHe basically controls the palace, and he has the daunting mission of trying to re-found the country.î

What define the Core are stable-enough political systems that, on average, rotate their leaders every 4-to-6 years. Thatís true for 90% of the Core countries, according to my research as reported in PNM.

Inside the Gap, the situation is the opposite: 90% of the governments canít meet that Goldilocksí happy medium. Just under one-third of Gap states canít keep a leader for four years, on average. And just under two-thirds canít get rid of a leader in less than six years. Only one-in-ten Gap states rotate their leadership regularly. That yields a bad mix of too-weak and too-strong leaders. Boliviaís got a weak one right now, whereas Burma has far too strong of one in its military junta.

The cure for both is connectivity in general, although our tendency with the latter is to throw sanctions at the problem, which basically never results in the authoritarian leadership being thrown aside but instead tends to enrich them while making the plight of the masses even worse.

Our approach is completely backasswards: we should be throwing aid at the weaker states and pursuing regime change with the harsher ones. Does that mean invading every authoritarian regime? Hardly. But it sure as hell doesnít mean trying to wait out the Big Man through sanctions, which surely hasnít toppled any Castros or Qaddafis around the world.

Again, if the Core were serious about shrinking the Gap, weíd develop an A-to-Z rule set on how to process politically-bankrupt states and once we successfully employed it a few times, youíd see dictators grabbing their loot and heading for the border in plenty of states further down ìthe list.î But until that resolve is bolstered by rule sets, this clean-up effort will remain a largely American affair, meaning something weíll whip ourselves into doing now and then, always to recoil almost immediately from the subsequent realization that finishing the job will take timeólike in Afghanistan and Iraq today.