the.com/banana republic
A country run like a business, by someone bad at business.
means A small country whose economy and politics are dominated by a single export or foreign commercial interest, run by a corrupt or unstable government propped up for profit rather than public good.
from Coined in the early 1900s, popularized by writer O. Henry, to describe Honduras and similar Central American nations whose economies were effectively run by U.S. fruit companies like United Fruit — bananas being the export that made a handful of executives and generals rich while the politics stayed cheap, pliable, and rotten underneath.
- origin
- coined for fruit-export nations run by foreign corporations
- economy
- one export, zero diversification, infinite instability
- irony
- also a mall store selling khakis, not coups
- o. henry
- coined in 1904 short story collection Cabbages and Kings