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693 reviews for:
Why Nations Fail: The Origins of Power, Prosperity, and Poverty
Daron Acemoğlu, James A. Robinson
3.83 AVERAGE
693 reviews for:
Why Nations Fail: The Origins of Power, Prosperity, and Poverty
Daron Acemoğlu, James A. Robinson
3.83 AVERAGE
informative
reflective
slow-paced
Read it for my Indian Economy class. Found it intriguing enough to read it through.
challenging
informative
reflective
slow-paced
This book.........hmmmmmmm where to start. Well, this will be short because I will go into a 30 page rant if I do not control myself. Ok, it wasn't that bad, but I would definitely say this book was a far cry from one of my favorites. Why Nations Fail is quite informational and taught me quite a lot or more so it changed my perspective and how I thought. I thoroughly enjoyed reading and learning about the author's theory on why nations fail. They completely said the opposite of what my honors history teacher told me last year and it was kind of shocking. I definitely agree with their theory that the institutions of a nation determine if they will fail or not, not their geography, culture, or ignorance. Now, did I need 25 in-depth examples of which nations have failed and which ones have prospered? No, just outright no. It was difficult to read because it was EXTREMELY repetitive, not just their theory, but they didn't vary sentence beginnings and it was like no one had ever introduced them to pronouns. It irked me to no end and I seriously dreaded reading the book because it was so boring at times. Overall, I would only recommend this book to people who have patience and are at least somewhat already knowledgeable about this topic.
challenging
hopeful
informative
inspiring
slow-paced
Very interesting book on the mechanisms of economic success and why some nations perform better than others. The main trust of the book is that extractive political & economic systems don't encourage innovation, since they threaten the status quo, making sustainable progress impossible. Democratic institutions instead encourage this leading to continuous economic progress and ever more liberal institutions. The current state of nations is caused directly by the embracement of the industrial revolution by the west and the destruction of the inclusive institutions during colonization.
Besides that it gives a lot of interesting comparative analysis of countries from all continents, the history of their institutions and his it ties into their instructions. Unlike How Democracies Fails, it has a great global perspective making it interesting to read no matter your location.
Besides that it gives a lot of interesting comparative analysis of countries from all continents, the history of their institutions and his it ties into their instructions. Unlike How Democracies Fails, it has a great global perspective making it interesting to read no matter your location.
Possibly the best nonfiction book I've read that wasn't actually very well written.
WHY NATIONS FAIL makes an argument that I find very plausible: political and economics institutions are the key determinants of the wealth or poverty of nations, of the success or failure of states. Geography, culture, "ignorance," and other attempts to explain the historical outcomes that divided the world (e.g. in the 20th century CE) into thirds, simply don't cut it - though Acemoglu and Robinson don't deny that they might play *some* role.
Their theory is sort of a political economy version of "punctuated equilibrium," where nations stay in a holding pattern of extractive institutions until they reach "critical junctures," at which point judicious action can shift the institutions in a more inclusive direction. Such a series of junctures happened, first in England with the Magna Carta and the Glorious Revolution, then in the English colonies of America and Australia, the French First Republic (and later First Empire, Napoleon was good for something), Meiji Japan, post-colonial Botswana, and some other success stories.
Acemoglu and Robinson consider institutions in several dimensions, and emphasize that it's really difficult and complicated to get things right. (Hard to argue against; before the modern era, most people were not materially well off, and most governments were elites extracting wealth from the rest.) On the one hand, government should be centralized and powerful enough to (e.g.) monopolize force within its borders, so that you don't have warlords or whatever. But you don't want the government to be so centralized and powerful that it becomes an attractive target for wannabe kleptocrats. Economic institutions are better off pluralistic, but extreme inequality can tip the balance of political power towards a small elite, with bad consequences. And so on.
So this is a book for liberal democratic, capitalism-with-welfare-state sympathizers. But it also manages to drive home a surprising message about why colonialism is bad!
The many, many historical examples that Robinson and Acemoglu deploy show that, while most pre-colonial societies were under extractive institutions, colonizers *appropriated* those extractive institutions for their own use, often supercharging them to the utter ruin of the land and people. So more like guns, germs, steel, and existing hierarchies. Africans raided and traded slaves, but Europeans juiced that market so much that whole kingdoms transformed into slavers. The Aztec and Inca empires extracted wealth, but the Spanish reinforced tribute flows and weaponized conscripted labor so much that to this day, those areas of South America that were most under the yoke of encomienda are still the poorest and least productive. And so on.
What you need to defend a centralized government against capture by a single small group of elites is a heterogeneous group of elites, "civil society," and generally a system of checks and balances. The best way to get a wide group of people able to advocate for their own varied interests is for them to build wealth. It's not like the common people in poor countries are particularly stupid: in fact, they know their incentives quite well. Why bother improving the land above subsistence level if you know the government (or its robber-baron cronies) will just tax 100% of the improvement? Or if the land can be taken away at any time, on a bureaucratic whim?
I think I have perhaps a minimal world perspective to appreciate this book. It's easy to read about extractive institutions, elite capture, and so on and think "Oh yep, that's the United States!" (Indeed, there's a bit about the pre-1960s Southern states.) But while I won't deny the U.S. has room for improvement towards more pluralistic institutions, those issues are relatively small compared with problems elsewhere. It's just a different situation if the President can rig a national lottery, or where corruption runs so deep that local government officials and health care workers collude to just not do their jobs. It's May of 2022 when I write this: look at the news articles about how the Russian military is faring in its invasion of Ukraine. That's the product of extractive institutions, according to WHY NATIONS FAIL.
Okay, so on to my critique. This is not a very well written book. Acemoglu and Robinson set up each chapter (and maybe some subsections) with summary sandwiches, and frequent callbacks to previous chapters or examples. Reiteration is nice but at points it felt more like repetitive padding. More annoying was the just plain bad writing. Clunky sentence structure, idioms that didn't feel quite right, and so on. It's not unreadable and didn't prevent me from understanding the argument, but it sometimes took me out of the flow. I'd grade them on a curve for being academic economists and not pop-econ writers, but they should know the marginal benefit of an additional editorial pass ;)
Overall, 4.25 stars rounded down.
WHY NATIONS FAIL makes an argument that I find very plausible: political and economics institutions are the key determinants of the wealth or poverty of nations, of the success or failure of states. Geography, culture, "ignorance," and other attempts to explain the historical outcomes that divided the world (e.g. in the 20th century CE) into thirds, simply don't cut it - though Acemoglu and Robinson don't deny that they might play *some* role.
Their theory is sort of a political economy version of "punctuated equilibrium," where nations stay in a holding pattern of extractive institutions until they reach "critical junctures," at which point judicious action can shift the institutions in a more inclusive direction. Such a series of junctures happened, first in England with the Magna Carta and the Glorious Revolution, then in the English colonies of America and Australia, the French First Republic (and later First Empire, Napoleon was good for something), Meiji Japan, post-colonial Botswana, and some other success stories.
Acemoglu and Robinson consider institutions in several dimensions, and emphasize that it's really difficult and complicated to get things right. (Hard to argue against; before the modern era, most people were not materially well off, and most governments were elites extracting wealth from the rest.) On the one hand, government should be centralized and powerful enough to (e.g.) monopolize force within its borders, so that you don't have warlords or whatever. But you don't want the government to be so centralized and powerful that it becomes an attractive target for wannabe kleptocrats. Economic institutions are better off pluralistic, but extreme inequality can tip the balance of political power towards a small elite, with bad consequences. And so on.
So this is a book for liberal democratic, capitalism-with-welfare-state sympathizers. But it also manages to drive home a surprising message about why colonialism is bad!
The many, many historical examples that Robinson and Acemoglu deploy show that, while most pre-colonial societies were under extractive institutions, colonizers *appropriated* those extractive institutions for their own use, often supercharging them to the utter ruin of the land and people. So more like guns, germs, steel, and existing hierarchies. Africans raided and traded slaves, but Europeans juiced that market so much that whole kingdoms transformed into slavers. The Aztec and Inca empires extracted wealth, but the Spanish reinforced tribute flows and weaponized conscripted labor so much that to this day, those areas of South America that were most under the yoke of encomienda are still the poorest and least productive. And so on.
What you need to defend a centralized government against capture by a single small group of elites is a heterogeneous group of elites, "civil society," and generally a system of checks and balances. The best way to get a wide group of people able to advocate for their own varied interests is for them to build wealth. It's not like the common people in poor countries are particularly stupid: in fact, they know their incentives quite well. Why bother improving the land above subsistence level if you know the government (or its robber-baron cronies) will just tax 100% of the improvement? Or if the land can be taken away at any time, on a bureaucratic whim?
I think I have perhaps a minimal world perspective to appreciate this book. It's easy to read about extractive institutions, elite capture, and so on and think "Oh yep, that's the United States!" (Indeed, there's a bit about the pre-1960s Southern states.) But while I won't deny the U.S. has room for improvement towards more pluralistic institutions, those issues are relatively small compared with problems elsewhere. It's just a different situation if the President can rig a national lottery, or where corruption runs so deep that local government officials and health care workers collude to just not do their jobs. It's May of 2022 when I write this: look at the news articles about how the Russian military is faring in its invasion of Ukraine. That's the product of extractive institutions, according to WHY NATIONS FAIL.
Okay, so on to my critique. This is not a very well written book. Acemoglu and Robinson set up each chapter (and maybe some subsections) with summary sandwiches, and frequent callbacks to previous chapters or examples. Reiteration is nice but at points it felt more like repetitive padding. More annoying was the just plain bad writing. Clunky sentence structure, idioms that didn't feel quite right, and so on. It's not unreadable and didn't prevent me from understanding the argument, but it sometimes took me out of the flow. I'd grade them on a curve for being academic economists and not pop-econ writers, but they should know the marginal benefit of an additional editorial pass ;)
Overall, 4.25 stars rounded down.
adventurous
informative
reflective
fast-paced
Ideas were solid, with relevant and detailed examples. The arguements are sufficiently backed by supporting ideas.
The book itself is relatively longer than it should be. The writing could have been more crisp and precise. Long and repeating sentences dampened the ideas, in my opinion.
Nonetheless, a very interesting way of looking at the world.
The book itself is relatively longer than it should be. The writing could have been more crisp and precise. Long and repeating sentences dampened the ideas, in my opinion.
Nonetheless, a very interesting way of looking at the world.
informative
medium-paced
Read for one of my classes but actually really enjoyed the somewhat philosophical look at histories political institutions. Cool theory, but a lot of careful tip-toeing around larger subjects that would make their ideas a bit more flimsy. Some funny quips in there though