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Name: The Narrow Corridor
Rating: 4.3 (140 reviews)
Author: Daron Acemoglu and James A. Robinson

Daron Acemoglu and James A. Robinson

States, Societies, and the Fate of Liberty

4.3 (140 Bewertungen)

32 Min.

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What’s in it for me? Journey through the history of liberty – and the lack thereof.

For centuries, philosophers have pondered the concept of liberty. How should it be defined, and what conditions make a society liberal or illiberal?

Despite the wide range of definitions, the authors argue that liberty has a fundamental, core meaning. For them, liberty equals freedom from violence, intimidation, and domination. In liberal societies, people are free to make their own choices as to how to live their lives, unafraid that they’ll be punished for doing so.

Liberty seems like something everyone would want. But despite this, it’s historically been quite rare and elusive. That’s because, as you’ll learn in these blinks, liberty requires a constant and evolving synergy between state and society –⁠ that is, a government and the citizens living under it. This synergy is difficult to set in motion and equally difficult to maintain.

A quick note before we begin: some of these blinks contain graphic depictions of violence.

In these blinks, you’ll learn

why the Tiv ethnic group doesn’t have chiefs;
the reason it’s so hard to access welfare in Argentina; and
how polarization helped the Nazis gain power.

The path to liberty is a narrow corridor, requiring a balance between state and society.

One of the world’s oldest surviving pieces of text is the Epic of Gilgamesh. Etched upon a series of Sumerian tablets some 4,200 years old, it tells the story of Gilgamesh, king of the ancient city of Uruk.

In the epic, we witness Gilgamesh presiding over a flourishing Uruk. The city is remarkable, home to glorious palaces and temples, bustling markets, and gleaming ramparts.

But not all is well. King Gilgamesh is proud, vainglorious, and tyrannical. He arrogantly struts around the city, tearing sons and daughters away from their parents in order to murder or rape them. The people of Uruk plead with Anu, the god of the sky, to save them from Gilgamesh’s tyranny and restore some semblance of liberty.

The key message here is: The path to liberty is a narrow corridor, requiring a balance between state and society.

The god Anu hears the people’s pleas and comes up with a solution to what the authors call the Gilgamesh problem. It is the question of how to control the power and authority of the state so it benefits rather than oppresses society.

Anu’s solution? To have the creation goddess Aruru create a counterpart for Gilgamesh – a man equal to him in strength and power, who could balance him out. His name was Enkidu.

At first, Enkidu succeeded in pushing back against Gilgamesh’s tyranny. But soon, the two struck up a friendship and began to conspire together. With their combined strength, the possibility for checks and balances completely disappeared. Despotic power was there to stay.

So why didn’t liberty emerge in Uruk? In short, because society wasn’t mobilized and therefore had no political might. As a result, elites –⁠ in this case, Gilgamesh and Enkidu –⁠ had no reason to remain benevolent.

Liberty requires a balance between state and society. Too strong a state, and you’re left with despotism. Too weak a state, and violence and lawlessness emerge. The space between these two extremes is a narrow corridor to liberty.

Why a corridor and not a door? Well, because traveling in the corridor is a long, drawn out process –⁠ governments and institutions aren’t forged overnight. And the corridor is narrow because it’s not easy to restrain a powerful state –⁠ nor to keep members of society working together rather than tearing each other apart.

When a society fails to enter the corridor, the consequences can be dire.

Without a strong central government, a society can’t have liberty.

Nigeria, 1994. The country is in the grip of a military dictatorship, led by General Sani Abacha. Abacha’s main mission? Not to resolve conflicts, protect, or provide services to Nigerian citizens, but to assassinate his political opponents and rob the country of its natural wealth.

Essentially left without a central government, Nigeria’s cities, including its business capital of Lagos, are on the brink of anarchy. Human corpses litter Lagos’s streets, alongside ever-growing piles of trash and scavenging rats. Gang members called “area boys” terrorize citizens, committing murder and robbery. The government provides no electricity or running water.

Ancient Athens achieved liberty by empowering society to balance state power.

Throughout most of the Greek Dark Ages, which began in 1200 BCE, the city of Athens was ruled by magistrates called Archons.

Archons were appointed to their positions and, in practice, always came from an elite class of wealthy families. They frequently competed among themselves for power, and, occasionally, these power struggles led to coups.

The cage of norms keeps some societies locked in an Absent Leviathan.

The Red Queen effect creates the right conditions for liberty and economic prosperity. Yet there are still modern societies that choose to stick with weak or nonexistent Absent Leviathans, in which liberty and economic prosperity are scarce. Why?

Social scientists suggest a variety of answers. They argue, for instance, that factors like low population density or the absence of agriculture or trade make it less necessary to have a central government.

The Red Queen effect is messy and imperfect.

The Red Queen effect is rarely pretty. In fact, a society learning to live with a state, and the state learning to live with its shackles, can often be downright messy. This is particularly apparent in the United States, which has achieved a powerful Shackled Leviathan –⁠ but one with a dark side.

The first system of laws in the US, the Articles of Confederation, leaned heavily in favor of individual states’ rights. They allowed each state to print its own money and refuse to fund the national debt.

Under a Despotic Leviathan, there can be economic growth –⁠ but not liberty.

When Thomas Hobbes theorized about a state of Warre, he defined it as “every man, against every man” –⁠ that is, citizens fighting their fellow citizens.

But history demonstrates that all-powerful Leviathans can also instigate versions of Warre –⁠ governments can dominate and murder their own people. The Chinese people lived through this nightmarish situation in the middle of the twentieth century, under the reign of Chairman Mao Zedong, the leader of the Chinese Communist Party.

Leviathans can’t work properly when the cage of norms is too restrictive.

Today, India is the largest democracy in the world by population. It also has a rich history of widespread participation in society. But despite these factors, India remains outside the narrow corridor. Why has liberty there been so impeded?

The reason is its powerful cage of norms, which comes in the form of the caste system. Originating in ancient India, the caste system divides the country’s population into status groups that affect people’s chances of getting certain jobs, their marriage prospects, and their ability to move up in the social hierarchy.

Paper Leviathans combine weak states with weak societies.

Leticia is an Argentinian citizen hoping to register for a welfare program called Nuestras Familias, or Our Families. In fact, she’s tried to sign up at the appropriate office three times in the past two weeks. The first time she went, she was told to come back in three days. But when she did as instructed, the office turned out to be closed. She returned again the next day and was told there were no funds in the program.

Leticia’s case is not at all atypical. Anyone who wants to gain access to Nuestras Familias must wait –⁠ and wait, and wait, and wait some more.

Numerous factors affect whether a state can move into the corridor.

Entering the narrow corridor is far from easy, no matter where a society stands in relation to it. But, historically, there are examples of Absent, Despotic, and Paper Leviathans becoming democratic and liberal.

Take South Africa, which entered the oppressive regime known as apartheid in the early twentieth century. Laws like the Native Land Act codified the oppression of the country’s Black citizens, who suddenly found themselves forced off of the land they owned and tended throughout 87 percent of the country.

Polarization can disrupt the Red Queen effect and cause a loss of liberty.

In 1928, the National Socalist German Workers Party – the Nazis – was still a fringe movement. It had received just 2.6 percent of the vote in the election that year. But the following years saw the party creep into prominence, until it received 33 percent of the vote in 1932. How did this happen?

Recall that the Red Queen effect is generally characterized by competition between state and society. But while each side continually attempts to gain the upper hand, neither ultimately aims to destroy the other. In Germany, however, this was precisely the case. The Red Queen was becoming a zero-sum contest, in which elites and the mobilized parts of society were pitted against each other, with no desire or ability to compromise.

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Worum geht es in The Narrow Corridor?

The Narrow Corridor (2019) weaves together a rich tapestry from disparate parts of history to answer the question: Why do some countries achieve liberty while others do not? From the ancient city of Uruk to Revolutionary America, from 1950s China to modern-day Argentina, it examines the conditions that enable governments and citizens to thrive as one –⁠ and the consequences when this fails to occur.

Wer The Narrow Corridor lesen sollte

Fans of world history, philosophy, economics, and political science
Citizens concerned about the fate of liberty in their countries
Anyone fascinated by a gripping historical tale

Über den Autor

Daron Acemoglu is a multi-award-winning economist and an Institute Professor –⁠ the highest title a faculty member can achieve –⁠ at MIT. In 2015, the Research Papers in Economics database named him the most-cited economist of the previous decade. Along with James A. Robinson, he is the coauthor of the best-selling book Why Nations Fail.

James A. Robinson is a political scientist who previously taught at Harvard and now serves as one of nine University Professors at the University of Chicago. His major areas of interest are Africa and Latin America, where he continues to conduct extensive research.

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