The Narrow Corridor(2020) - Daron Acemoglu and James A. Robinson

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The Narrow Corridor: States, Societies, and the Fate of Liberty(2020) - Daron Acemoglu and James A. Robinson

From the winners of the 2024 Nobel Prize for Economics and the authors of the international bestseller Why Nations Fail

"Why is it so difficult to develop and sustain liberal democracy? The best recent work on this subject comes from a remarkable pair of scholars, Daron Acemoglu and James A. Robinson. In their latest book, The Narrow Corridor, they have answered this question with great insight." —Fareed Zakaria, The Washington Post

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.

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Brief Outline of the Rest of the Book

In this chapter, we introduced the tripartite distinction between the Absent, Despotic, and Shackled Leviathans. In the next chapter, we present the heart of our theory, which concerns the evolution of state-society relations over time. We explain why the emergence of powerful states is often resisted (because people are afraid of despotism) and how societies use their norms, not just to mitigate the possibility of Warre, as we saw in Asante, but also to counter and control state power. We focus on how the Shackled Leviathan emerges in a narrow corridor where society’s involvement in politics creates a balance of power with the state, and illustrate this possibility with the early history of the Greek city-state Athens and the founding of the U.S. Republic. We also draw out some of the implications of our theory, emphasizing how different historical configurations lead to the Absent, Despotic, and Shackled Leviathans. We further show that in our theory it is the Shackled Leviathan, not the despotic sort, that develops the most and the deepest state capacity.
In Chapter 3 we explain why Absent Leviathans may be unstable and yield to political hierarchy in the face of the “will to power”—he desires of some actors to reshape society and accumulate greater political and economic power. We’ll see how these transitions away from stateless societies are a mixed bag for liberty. On the one hand, they bring order and may relax the cage of norms (especially when it is in their way). On the other hand, they introduce unrestrained despotism. Chapter 4 examines the consequences of the Absent and Despotic Leviathans for the economic and social lives of citizens. It explains why economic prosperity is more likely to emerge under the Despotic Leviathan than under either the anarchic conditions of Hobbesian Warre or in the cramped space created by the cage of norms. But we’ll also see that prosperity created by the Despotic Leviathan is both limited and rife with inequities.
Chapter 5 contrasts the workings of the economy under the Absent and Despotic Leviathans to life in the corridor. We’ll see that the Shackled Leviathan creates very different types of economic incentives and opportunities and permits a much greater degree of experimentation and social mobility. We focus on the Italian communes and the ancient Zapotec civilization in the Americas to communicate these ideas and also to highlight that there is nothing uniquely European about Shackled Leviathans. This last point notwithstanding, it is of course the case that most examples of the Shackled Leviathan we have come from Europe. Why is this so?
Chapter 6 explains why several European countries have managed to build broadly participatory societies with capable but still shackled states. Our answer focuses on the factors that led much of Europe toward the corridor during the early Middle Ages as Germanic tribes, especially the Franks, came to invade the lands dominated by the Western Roman Empire after its collapse. We argue that the marriage of the bottom-up, participatory institutions and norms of Germanic tribes and the centralizing bureaucratic and legal traditions of the Roman Empire forged a unique balance of power between state and society, enabling the rise of the Shackled Leviathan. Underscoring the importance of this marriage, very different types of states emerged in parts of Europe where either the Roman tradition or the bottom-up politics of Germanic tribes were absent (such as Iceland or Byzantium). We then trace the path of liberty and the Shackled Leviathan, which had considerable ups and downs and veered out of the corridor on several occasions.
Chapter 7 contrasts the European experience with Chinese history. Despite historic similarities, the early development of a powerful state in China completely removed societal mobilization and political participation. Without these countervailing forces, the Chinese development path closely follows that of the Despotic Leviathan. We trace the economic consequences of this type of state-society relationship both in Chinese history and today, and discuss whether the Shackled Leviathan can emerge in China anytime soon.

Chapter 8 moves to India. Unlike China, India does have a long history of popular participation and accountability. But liberty has been no more successful in taking root in India. We argue this is because of the powerful cage of norms in India, as epitomized by its caste system. Caste relations have not only inhibited liberty but also made it impossible for society to effectively contest power and monitor the state. The caste system has produced a society fragmented against itself and a state that lacks capacity, which is nonetheless unaccountable as the fragmented society remains immobilized and powerless.
Chapter 9 returns to the European experience, but this time to study why some parts of Europe and not others found their way into and stayed in the corridor. In the process of answering this question, we develop another one of the central ideas of the book: the conditional nature of how structural factors influence state-society relationships. We emphasize that the impact of various structural factors, such as economic conditions, demographic shocks, and war, on the development of the state and the economy depend on the prevailing balance between state and society. There are thus no unambiguous conclusions to be drawn about structural factors. We illustrate these ideas by discussing why, starting with similar conditions and facing similar international problems, Switzerland developed a Shackled Leviathan, while Prussia fell under the dominance of the Despotic Leviathan. We contrast these cases with Montenegro, where the state did not play much of a role in either conflict resolution or in organizing economic activity. We apply the same ideas to explain why Costa Rica and Guatemala diverged sharply in the face of nineteenth-century economic globalization, and why the Soviet Union’s collapse led to a diverse set of political paths.
Chapter 10 returns to the development of the American Leviathan. We emphasize that, although the U.S. managed to build a Shackled Leviathan, this was based on a Faustian bargain—the Federalists accepted a Constitution that kept the federal state weak both to appease a society that was concerned about the threat of despotism and to reassure Southern slaveholders who were worried about losing their slaves and assets. This compromise worked, and the U.S. is still in the corridor. But it also led to an unbalanced development of the American Leviathan which, even as it has become a veritable international sea monster, still has only limited capacity in several important domains. This is most visible in the inability or unwillingness of the American Leviathan to protect its citizens from violence. This unbalanced development also led to the American Leviathan’s patchy record in structuring economic policy to ensure equitable gains from economic growth. We’ll see how uneven state development has caused a distorted evolution of the power and capabilities of society, and paradoxically how it created room for the state’s power to evolve in unmonitored and unaccountable ways in some domains (such as national security).
Chapter 11 shows that states in many developing countries may act as despots but lack the capacity of the Despotic Leviathan. We explain how these “Paper” Leviathans have come about and why they make so little attempt to build capacity. Our answer is that this is mostly because they are afraid of mobilizing society and thereby destabilizing their control over it. One origin of these Paper Leviathans lies in the indirect rule of colonial powers, which set up modern-looking administrative structures but at the same time empowered local elites to rule with few constraints and little participation from society.
Chapter 12 turns to the Middle East. Though state builders will often loosen the cage of norms as it limits their ability to mold society, there are circumstances under which despotic states may find it beneficial to strengthen or even to refashion the cage. We explain how this tendency has characterized Middle Eastern politics, the historical and social circumstances that have made it an attractive strategy for would-be despots, and the implications of this development path for liberty, violence, and instability.
Chapter 13 discusses how the Shackled Leviathan may get out of control when the race between state and society turns “zero-sum,” with each side trying to undercut and destroy the other for survival. We emphasize how this outcome is more likely when institutions are not up to the task of impartially resolving conflicts and lose the trust of some segments of the public. We look at the collapse of the Weimar Republic in Germany, Chilean democracy in the 1970s, and the Italian communes to illustrate these dynamics and identify the structural factors making this type of zero-sum competition more likely. Finally we link these forces to the rise of modern-day populist movements.
Chapter 14 discusses how societies move into the corridor and whether anything can be done to facilitate such a move. We emphasize several important structural factors, focusing on what makes the corridor wider and thus easier to move into. We explain the role of broad coalitions in such transitions and discuss a number of cases of successful transitions as well as some failed ones.
In Chapter 15 we turn to the challenges facing nations in the corridor. Our main argument is that as the world changes, the state must expand and take on new responsibilities, but this in turn requires society to become more capable and vigilant, lest it find itself spinning out of the corridor. New coalitions are critical for the state to gain greater capacity while keeping its shackles—a possibility illustrated by Sweden’s response to the economic and social exigencies created by the Great Depression and how this led to the emergence of social democracy. It is no different today when we are facing many new challenges, ranging from inequality, joblessness, and slow economic growth to complex security threats. We need the state to develop additional capabilities and shoulder fresh responsibilities, but only if we can find new ways of keeping it shackled, mobilizing society and protecting our liberties.

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What makes this a corridor, not a door, is that achieving liberty is a process; you have to travel a long way in the corridor before violence is brought under control, laws are written and enforced, and the state starts providing services to its citizens. It is a process because the state and its elites must learn to live with the shackles society puts on them and different segments of society have to learn to work together despite their differences

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Norms had evolved to reduce vulnerability to violence and exposure to those who could carry it out, providing some protection against hawks. But at the same time, they imposed their cage; you would have to surrender your freedom and stand with the other chickens.

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The problem in societies where the Leviathan is absent isn’t just uncontrolled violence of “every man, against every man.” Equally critical is the cage of norms, which creates a rigid set of expectations and a panoply of unequal social relations producing a different but no lighter form of dominance.

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We need a state that has the capacity to enforce laws, control violence, resolve conflicts, and provide public services but is still tamed and controlled by an assertive, well-organized society.

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Nevertheless, there is also a glimmer of hope, because humans are capable of constructing a Shackled Leviathan, which can resolve conflicts, refrain from despotism, and promote liberty by loosening the cage of norms. Indeed, a lot of human progress depends on societies’ ability to build such a state. But building and defending—and controlling—a Shackled Leviathan takes effort, and is always a work in progress, often fraught with danger and instability.

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In this chapter, we introduced the tripartite distinction between the Absent, Despotic, and Shackled Leviathans. In the next chapter, we present the heart of our theory, which concerns the evolution of state-society relations over time. We explain why the emergence of powerful states is often resisted (because people are afraid of despotism) and how societies use their norms, not just to mitigate the possibility of Warre, as we saw in Asante, but also to counter and control state power. We focus on how the Shackled Leviathan emerges in a narrow corridor where society’s involvement in politics creates a balance of power with the state, and illustrate this possibility with the early history of the Greek city-state Athens and the founding of the U.S. Republic. We also draw out some of the implications of our theory, emphasizing how different historical configurations lead to the Absent, Despotic, and Shackled Leviathans. We further show that in our theory it is the Shackled Leviathan, not the despotic sort, that develops the most and the deepest state capacity

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How Solon limited the elites’ control over the state and dominance over regular citizens on the one hand and increased the capacity of the state on the other is not a peculiar feature of an ancient civilization. It is the essence of the Shackled Leviathan. The Leviathan can build greater capacity and become much stronger when society is willing to cooperate with it, but this cooperation requires people to trust that they can control the sea monster. Solon built this trust.

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So we need both state and society running together and neither getting the upper hand. This is not unlike the Red Queen effect described by Lewis Carroll in Through the Looking-Glass, and What Alice Found There. 

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The Red Queen effect refers to a situation where you have to keep on running just to maintain your position, like the state and society running fast to maintain the balance between them. In Carroll’s book all that running was wasteful. Not so in the struggle of society against the Leviathan. If society slacks off and does not run fast enough to keep up with the state’s growing power, the Shackled Leviathan can quickly turn into a despotic one. We need society’s competition to keep the Leviathan in check, and the more powerful and capable the Leviathan is, the more powerful and vigilant society must become. We need the Leviathan to keep on running too, both to expand its capacity in the face of new and formidable challenges and to maintain its autonomy, which is critical not only for resolving disputes and impartially enforcing laws but also for breaking down the cage of norms. This all sounds quite messy (all that running!), and that, we’ll see, is often the case. Even though it’s messy, we depend on the Red Queen for human progress and for liberty. But the Red Queen herself creates lots of swings in the balance of power between state and society, as one party and then the other pulls ahead.

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A very different type of Leviathan, a shackled one, emerges when there is a balance between its power and society’s capacity to control it. This is the Leviathan that can resolve conflicts fairly, provide public services and economic opportunities, and prevent dominance, laying down the basic foundations of liberty.

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In fact, a lot of human progress depends on the state’s role and capacity advancing to meet new challenges while society also becomes more powerful and vigilant. Nipping greater state capacity in the bud would preclude such human progress. It is particularly important for the state to expand its remit during moments of economic or social crisis. In Britain the Beveridge report was a response to such a crisis.

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The more important point for our framework is that, in eval‎uating the role of various policies and institutions, we must take into account the supporting arrangements that seek to create a balance and thus help keep the Leviathan and the elites shackled.

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Human progress depends on the expansion of the state’s capacity to meet new challenges and combat all dominances, old and new, but that won’t happen unless society demands it and mobilizes to defend everybody’s rights. There is nothing easy or automatic about that, but it can and does happen.

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https://youtu.be/WEpzg8fYHl0

https://youtu.be/A4eVoOlIuis

https://youtu.be/OShxRPVbsF4

Rethinking Capitalism: In Conversation with Daron Acemoglu

https://youtu.be/ZkEtBjq5SeE

Daron Acemoglu on freedom, democracy, growth, and The Narrow Corridor

https://youtu.be/DYg3CBeXneY

https://youtu.be/XBQEjfmfW2w

https://youtu.be/-7g5fIxe2z0