I don't get why everybody is raving about "Why Nations Fail". Their definitions of inclusive/extractive institutions seem hopelessly muddled. It is almost as if they've collected all the stuff they liked in prosperous countries and called it "inclusive" and then did the same with all the stuff they disliked in impoverished dictatorships and called it "extractive". If you try to distill a succinct definition of these concepts and then apply it, you run into contradictions such as (borrowing an example from Fukuyama): "The Indian political system is so inclusive that it can’t begin major infrastructure projects because of all the lawsuits and democratic protest, especially when compared to the extractive Chinese one."

If the thesis is "institutions are important for prosperity", it is kind of obvious. But the book does little to explain exactly what kind of institutions.