East Timor and Liberia

Hello from Dili, the capital of East Timor. I’m here on vacation with a friend who is doing research.

(Disclaimer: These are all very fresh-off-the-boat thoughts; akin to the thoughts I tend to mock when I see people make about places I have been for long-ish periods of time.)

I keep seeing not-completely-trivial parallels between East Timor today and Liberia in 2005. Like Monrovia, Dili is small, and on the ocean. The Dili airport parking lot was filled with UN police SUVs and NGO trucks. Bad roads = slow driving. People refer to a “lost generation” as those who grew up between circa 1995 and 2005. A dual economy exists for locals and expats. Stories abound of international organizations abusing their extraordinary power over the government. The current government is unsure of how to deal with less-than-ideal contracts previous governments negotiated for the exploitation of natural resources.

Being here has reaffirmed my appreciation for comparative politics. Countries within Africa are heterogeneous. And of course any one African country is immeasurably different than any country in Eastern Europe or Latin America or Asia. But I bet there are things people have learned about Liberia that could help shed light on phenomena in East Timor, and vice versa. (And given my non-existent literature review on this topic, this has probably already been done. Multiple times.)