Product Description
The Narrow Corridor
Author(s): Daron Acemoglu, James A. Robinson
Format: Paperback
How Nations Struggle for Liberty
From the Winners of the Nobel Prize in Economics
One of the Financial Times' Best Books of 2019
One of Kirkus Reviews' Best Books of 2019
Shortlisted for the Lionel Gelber Prize
'This book is more original and exciting than its predecessor...the highly influential Why Nations Fail' Martin Wolf, Financial Times
By the authors of the international bestseller Why Nations Fail, based on decades of research, this powerful new big-picture framework explains how some countries develop towards and provide liberty while others fall to despotism, anarchy or asphyxiating norms - and explains how liberty can thrive despite new threats.
Liberty is hardly the 'natural' order of things; usually states have been either too weak to protect individuals or too strong for people to protect themselves from despotism. There is also a happy Western myth that where liberty exists, it's a steady state, arrived at by 'enlightenment'. But liberty emerges only when a delicate and incessant balance is struck between state and society - between elites and citizens. This struggle becomes self-reinforcing, inducing both state and society to develop a richer array of capacities, thus affecting the peacefulness of societies, the success of economies and how people experience their daily lives.
Explaining this new framework through compelling stories from around the world, in history and from today - and through a single diagram on which the development of any state can be plotted - this masterpiece helps us understand the past and present, and analyse the future.
'As enjoyable as it is thought-provoking' Jared Diamond
About the Author
Daron Acemoglu is the Killian Professor of Economics at MIT and recipient of the prestigious John Bates Clark Medal.
James A. Robinson is an economist and political scientist and a University Professor at the Harris School for Public Policy at the University of Chicago. They are the authors of the international bestseller Why Nations Fail, which won numerous prizes.
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