The Narrow Corridor
States, Societies, and the Fate of Liberty
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The Narrow Corridor
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Narrated by:
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Stephen Graybill
About this listen
From the authors of the international best seller, Why Nations Fail, a crucial new big-picture framework that answers the question of how liberty flourishes in some states but falls to authoritarianism or anarchy in others - and explains how it can continue to thrive despite new threats.
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, a steady state, arrived at by a process of "enlightenment". This static view is a fantasy, the authors argue; rather, the corridor to liberty is narrow and stays open only via a fundamental and incessant struggle between state and society. The power of state institutions and the elites that control them has never gone uncontested in a free society. In fact, the capacity to contest them is the definition of liberty. State institutions have to evolve continuously as the nature of conflicts and needs of society change, and thus society's ability to keep state and rulers accountable must intensify in tandem with the capabilities of the state. This struggle between state and society becomes self-reinforcing, inducing both to develop a richer array of capacities just to keep moving forward along the corridor. Yet this struggle also underscores the fragile nature of liberty. It is built on a fragile balance between state and society, between economic, political, and social elites and citizens, between institutions and norms. One side of the balance gets too strong, and, as has often happened in history, liberty begins to wane. Liberty depends on the vigilant mobilization of society. But it also needs state institutions to continuously reinvent themselves in order to meet new economic and social challenges that can close off the corridor to liberty.
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.
Includes a bonus PDF of the maps and figures from the book.
PLEASE NOTE: When you purchase this title, the accompanying PDF will be available in your Audible Library along with the audio.
©2019 Daron Acemoglu, James A. Robinson (P)2019 Penguin AudioCritic reviews
One of the Financial Times' Best Books of 2019
One of Kirkus Reviews' Best Books of 2019
Shortlisted for the Lionel Gelber Prize
"What explains the rise and fall of democracy and dictatorship?... [Acemoglu and Robinson] offer a provocative framework for analyzing our current moment of democratic crisis.... A powerful starting point for understanding the many perils facing aspirations for democracy and liberty today...helpfully recalibrates our American tendency to collapse debates over freedom into a binary clash between the narrow liberty of ‘free markets’ on the one hand, and the economic and political freedoms provided by social-democratic ‘big government’ on the other.” (The Washington Post)
“Crucially and rightly, the book does not see freedom as merely the absence of state oppression.... This book is more original and exciting than its predecessor. It has gone beyond the focus on institutions to one on how a state really works.” (Martin Wolf, Financial Times)
“A work of staggering ambition - aiming to explain why liberty has or has not existed at every moment in time in every geography in the world.... It is chock full of delightful detours and brilliant nuggets.... Smart and timely.” (Newsweek)
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