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Tom Butler-Bowdon

politics classics

Why Nations Fail: The Origins of Power, Prosperity and Poverty
(2012)
Daron Acemoglu & James Robinson 


What do people in poor countries desire most? This book begins with quotes from some of the young protesters who helped bring down the Mubarak regime in Egypt. The authors try to untangle what they were after.  The software engineer and blogger Wael Khalil, one of the movement’s leaders, made a list of twelve things that he wanted to change. Rather than issues like higher wages and lower prices, all the demands were political. Egypt’s economic malaise as a direct result of the monopolization of politics and political institutions by an elite. If this didn’t change, nothing else would - including the economy.

Putting politics first might seem obvious, authors Acemoglu (economics, MIT) and Robinson (political science, Harvard) note, but professors and pundits usually put forward other explanations for a country’s failure. In Egypt’s case these would be: 1) geography – its lack of water and arable land inevitably has held it back, compared to more verdant places 2) culture – Egyptians lack the proper work ethic to succeed, and the Islamic beliefs of the people are inimical to economic success; 3) its leaders have made one bad decision after another, and if it had been better managed and ruled, it would be a lot better off by now.

The protesters have it right, the authors argue, and the experts are wrong. Whether it is Egypt, Sierra Leone, Zimbabwe or North Korea, the poorest countries have much in common. They have elites that have seized full political power and looted nearly all the wealth, drying up opportunities for advancement and prosperity for the mass of people. By contrast, successful, rich countries tend to have political rights that are broadly distributed, governments accountable to citizens, and economic opportunities open to all. The key difference between rich and poor countries, Why Nations Fail argues, is that their institutions provide different incentives for individuals and businesses. These incentives are provided by economic institutions, but they rest on political laws and rules.

The argument of the book is not necessarily new (De Toqueville wrote “I have no doubt that the democratic institutions of the United States… are the cause of the prodigious commercial activity of the inhabitants.”), but the evidence the authors amass seems incontrovertible. Brilliant chapters on the early years of the American and Australian colonies and potted histories of Latin America, the French Revolution and Napoleonic Wars, Congo, Botswana, and the greatest extractive state of modern times, apartheid South Africa, are joined with vivid descriptions of contemporary kleptocracies including Zimbabwe (President Mugabe once ran a national lottery, and his name was pulled out of the barrel as the winner) and Uzbekistan, run by a single family and the perfect example of crony capitalism. This is contemporary political economy writing at its best. 

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BUTLER-BOWDON
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  • Home
  • 50 Classics Series
    • 50 Self-Help Classics >
      • James Allen - As A Man Thinketh
      • Dale Carnegie - How To Win Friends and Influence People
      • Stephen Covey - The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People
      • Ralph Waldo Emerson - Self-Reliance
      • Benjamin Franklin - Autobiography
      • Louise Hay - You Can Heal Your Life
      • Joseph Murphy - The Power of Your Subconscious Mind
      • Samuel Smiles - Self-Help
      • Teilhard de Chardin - The Phenomenon of Man
    • 50 Success Classics >
      • Claude M Bristol - The Magic of Believing
      • Jim Collins - Good To Great
      • Russell H Conwell - Acres of Diamonds
      • Napoleon Hill - Think and Grow Rich
      • Catherine Ponder - The Dynamic Laws of Prosperity
      • David J Schwartz - The Magic of Thinking Big
      • Wallace Wattles - The Science of Getting Rich
    • 50 Spiritual Classics >
      • Carlos Castaneda - Journey to Ixtlan
      • Kahlil Gibran - The Prophet
      • Aldous Huxley - The Doors of Perception
      • Carl Jung - Memories, Dreams, Reflections
      • Margery Kempe - The Book of Margery Kempe
      • CS Lewis - The Screwtape Letters
      • Miguel Ruiz - The Four Agreements
      • 50 More Spiritual Classics
    • 50 Psychology Classics >
      • Eric Berne - Games People Play
      • Isabel Briggs Myers - Gifts Differing: Understanding Personality Type
      • Louann Brizendine - The Female Brain
      • David D Burns - Feeling Good: The New Mood Therapy
      • Robert Cialdini - Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion
      • Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi - Creativity
      • Albert Ellis - A Guide To Rational Living
      • Milton Erickson - Teaching Tales
      • Erik Erikson - Young Man Luther
      • Hans Eysenck - Dimensions of Personality
      • Sigmund Freud - The Interpretation of Dreams
      • Malcolm Gladwell - Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking
      • Carl Jung - The Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious
      • Alfred Kinsey - Sexuality In The Human Female
      • Abraham Maslow - Motivation and Personality
      • Stanley Milgram - Obedience To Authority
      • IP Pavlov - Conditioned Reflexes
      • Jean Piaget - The Language and Thought of the Child
      • Carl Rogers - On Becoming A Person
      • BF Skinner - Beyond Freedom & Dignity
    • 50 Prosperity Classics >
      • James Allen - The Path to Prosperity
      • Genevieve Behrend - Your Invisible Power
      • Richard Branson - Losing My Virginity
      • Warren Buffett - The Essays of Warren Buffett
      • Rhonda Byrne - The Secret
      • Andrew Carnegie - The Gospel of Wealth
      • Felix Dennis - How To Get Rich
      • Peter Drucker - Innovation and Entrepreneurship
      • Harv Eker - Secrets of the Millionaire Mind
      • Milton Friedman - Capitalism and Freedom
      • Michael E Gerber - The E-Myth Revisited
      • Benjamin Graham - The Intelligent Investor
      • Esther & Jerry Hicks - Ask And It Is Given
      • Conrad Hilton - Be My Guest
      • Joe Karbo - The Lazy Man's Way To Riches
      • Catherine Ponder - Open Your Mind To Prosperity
      • Ayn Rand - Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal
      • Donald Trump - The Art of the Deal
      • Max Weber - The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism
      • Prosperity Principles
    • 50 Philosophy Classics >
      • Simone de Beauvoir - The Second Sex
      • Heraclitus - Fragments
      • Soren Kierkegaard - Fear and Trembling
      • Thomas Kuhn - The Structure of Scientific Revolutions
      • Marshall McLuhan - The Medium is the Massage
      • John Stuart Mill - On Liberty
      • Montaigne - Essays
      • Friedrich Nietzsche - Beyond Good and Evil
      • Plato - The Republic
      • Karl Popper - The Logic of Scientific Discovery
      • John Rawls - A Theory of Justice
      • Jean-Paul Sartre - Being and Nothingness
      • Nassim Nicholas Taleb - The Black Swan
      • Ludwig Wittgenstein - Philosophical Investigations
    • 50 Politics Classics
    • 50 Economics Classics
    • 50 Business Classics
  • BOOK INSIGHTS
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    • Think and Grow Rich
    • The Science of Getting Rich
    • The Art of War
    • The Prince
    • The Wealth of Nations
    • The Republic
    • The Tao Te Ching
    • Meditations
    • Beyond Good and Evil
    • Origin of Species
  • Testimonials
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  • Think Long
  • About the author
  • Contact
  • New Page