Extractors

While Why Nations Fail has no specific main character, since it is a work of development economics, it certainly has a main character class, namely those who govern, implement and preserve extractive institutions, people we might call "extractors." Extractors are sectors of the population, almost exclusively members of social and political elites, who bend political and economic institutions to redistribute economic gains from the poor and middle-class to themselves. Thus, an extractor is someone who extracts wealth from the labor and efforts of others, especially the majority of the population which, under extractive institutions, are politically powerless.

Extractors come in two main varieties - foreign and homegrown. Foreign extractors have historically been imperial powers, such as the British and Spanish Empires. The latter produced the conquistadors, the ultimate unapologetic extractors who bent native South American political institutions to their benefit. The rules of British colonies were more careful...