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Summary
Summary
From the authors of the international bestseller Why Nations Fail , a crucial new big-picture framework that answers the question of how liberty flourishes in some states but falls to authoritarianism or anarchy in others--and explains how it can continue to thrive despite new threats.
In Why Nations Fail , Daron Acemoglu and James A. Robinson argued that countries rise and fall based not on culture, geography, or chance, but on the power of their institutions. In their new book, they build a new theory about liberty and how to achieve it, drawing a wealth of evidence from both current affairs and disparate threads of world history.
Liberty is hardly the "natural" order of things. In most places and at most times, the strong have dominated the weak and human freedom has been quashed by force or by customs and norms. Either states have been too weak to protect individuals from these threats, or states have been too strong for people to protect themselves from despotism. Liberty emerges only when a delicate and precarious balance is struck between state and society.
There is a Western myth that political liberty is a durable construct, arrived at by a process of "enlightenment." This static view is a fantasy, the authors argue. In reality, the corridor to liberty is narrow and stays open only via a fundamental and incessant struggle between state and society: The authors look to the American Civil Rights Movement, Europe's early and recent history, the Zapotec civilization circa 500 BCE, and Lagos's efforts to uproot corruption and institute government accountability to illustrate what it takes to get and stay in the corridor. But they also examine Chinese imperial history, colonialism in the Pacific, India's caste system, Saudi Arabia's suffocating cage of norms, and the "Paper Leviathan" of many Latin American and African nations to show how countries can drift away from it, and explain the feedback loops that make liberty harder to achieve.
Today we are in the midst of a time of wrenching destabilization. We need liberty more than ever, and yet the corridor to liberty is becoming narrower and more treacherous. The danger on the horizon is not "just" the loss of our political freedom, however grim that is in itself; it is also the disintegration of the prosperity and safety that critically depend on liberty. The opposite of the corridor of liberty is the road to ruin.
Author Notes
Daron Acemoglu is an Institute Professor at MIT. In 2005 he received the John Bates Clark Medal, given to economists under age forty judged to have made the most significant contribution to economic thought and knowledge; in 2012 he was awarded the Erwin Plein Nemmers Prize in Economics for work of lasting significance; and in 2016 he received the BBVA Frontiers of Knowledge Award in Economics, Finance, and Management for his lifetime contributions. James A. Robinson , a political scientist and economist, is one of nine University Professors at the University of Chicago. Focused on Latin America and Africa, he is currently conducting research in Bolivia, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Sierra Leone, Haiti, and Colombia, where he has taught for many years during the summer at the University of the Andes in Bogotá.
Reviews (2)
Kirkus Review
A wide-ranging survey of the conditions of liberty required to steer the world away from the Hobbesian war of each against all.Why do nations fail? So Acemoglu and Robinson, economists at MIT and the University of Chicago respectively, asked in their 2012 collaboration, Why Nations Fail. Their answer is complex, but it falls largely on the absence or failure of democratic institutions. In this continuation of their previous book, they examine how liberty works: It is not "natural," not widespread, "is rare in history and is rare today," and is a fairly recent phenomenon that balances the competing demands of state and society while being reinforced by that balance. For instance, the Athenian constitutional reforms of Cleisthenes "were helpful for strengthening the political power of Athenian citizens while also battling the cage of norms"that cage of norms being the informal body of customs supplanted by state institutions. Those norms in turn "constrained what the state could do and how far state building could go," providing their own set of checks. Though somewhat fluid in its definition, liberty, as Acemoglu and Robinson show, is expressed differently under various "leviathans," to extend the Hobbesian critique. The American Leviathan, for example, does not contend properly with inequality and racial oppression, two enemies of liberty, while the "Paper Leviathan" is a bureaucratic machine favoring the privileged class, serving as both a political and economic brake on development and yielding "fear, violence, and dominance for most of its citizens." So it is with China, a "Despotic Leviathan" that commands the economy and coerces political conformity. The authors trace a link between democratic states and what they call "Shackled Leviathans," the beast in restraints being the best of all possible scenarios. Though the argument is a little jargon-y, it is, as with the authors' previous books, provocative and intuitively correct.An endlessly rewarding book full of takeaways, including the thought that the best societies protect everyone's rights. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Library Journal Review
Following 2012's Why Nations Fail, this third book by economist Acemoglu (Massachusetts Inst. of Technology) and political scientist and economist Robinson (Univ. of Chicago) addresses the preconditions for democracy's, and freedom's, success or failure in states. The coauthors champion the primacy of political and economic institutions over other determinants of state success in a way that is similar to Jared Diamond's argument for the pivotal role of geography. They ask: How does a nation get in the "Corridor" to promote and protect liberty in a "Shackled Leviathan" (shackled in the sense that the state cannot ride roughshod over subjects)? Why do some states never even make it there? The authors muster an admirable wealth of examples, then simplify the analysis with diagrams and easily remembered labels: "Shackled, Absent, Despotic Leviathans," "Corridor" (the social and political space within which democracy maintains itself), "Red Queen Effect" (opposing forces adjust to stay in balance so it seem like you've not moved at all). There is a good deal of repetition in this work whose thesis is simple yet examples are complicated, but it doesn't affect a well-written and argued treatise. VERDICT Indispensable reading for political scientists but also accessible enough to appeal to all educated readers.--David Keymer, Cleveland
Table of Contents
| Preface | p. xi |
| Chapter 1 How Does History End? | p. 1 |
| Chapter 2 The Red Queen | p. 33 |
| Chapter 3 Will to Power | p. 74 |
| Chapter 4 Economics Outside the Corridor | p. 97 |
| Chapter 5 Allegory of Good Government | p. 126 |
| Chapter 6 The European Scissors | p. 152 |
| Chapter 7 Mandate of Heaven | p. 201 |
| Chapter 8 Broken Red Queen | p. 237 |
| Chapter 9 Devil in the Details | p. 266 |
| Chapter 10 What's the Matter with Ferguson? | p. 304 |
| Chapter 11 The Paper Leviathan | p. 338 |
| Chapter 12 Wahhab's Children | p. 370 |
| Chapter 13 Red Queen Out Of Control | p. 390 |
| Chapter 14 Into The Corridor | p. 427 |
| Chapter 15 Living with the Leviathan | p. 464 |
| Acknowledgments | p. 497 |
| Bibliographic Essay | p. 499 |
| Sources for Maps | p. 517 |
| References | p. 519 |
| Index | p. 543 |
