billyskye's Reviews > Why Nations Fail: The Origins of Power, Prosperity, and Poverty

I worked for an international affairs journal when this book was first released. I remember the considerable energy the authors seemed to be putting into its marketing – the articles, the interviews, the debates, the blog, the proliferation of review copies. It seemed like there was a concerted effort to get Why Nations Fail added to that canon of suspect, generalist readings of geopolitics – your Clash of Civilizations, your Tragedy of Great Power Politics, your End of History and the Last Man – that worm their way into the lexicons of all first-year IR students alongside the terms “realism,” “constructivism,” and “neoliberal institutionalism.” I must confess that at the time I was put off by the baby blue cover (everyone knows that all serious works of poli-sci keep their color schemes to the austere blacks and whites). But it was about time to give it a go.

The book’s central thesis is very simple. “Extractive institutions” limit “creative destruction” (borrowing Joseph Schumpeter’s famous term) as a society run by a “narrow elite” with entrenched power fear a disruption of the status quo. This “iron law of oligarchy” limits long-term market success. The answer lies in “inclusive” economic and political structures that foster a “virtuous circle” of innovation and sustainable growth. These phrases are repeated ad nauseam. They season the cherry-picked case studies that span the vast breadth of human history and take up the meat of the read.

If all that seems rather obvious, I don’t think you’re alone. Who among those with access to this text remain unconvinced that graft, monopolism, despotism yield limited prosperity for society at large? Vladimir Putin? Viktor Orban? Donald Trump? I’m sure their motivations stem from very different sources of inspiration than those the authors have in mind. As for the Western academic tradition – it seems rather conclusive on this matter. Why Nations Fail doesn’t deal much in nuance. It commits to a definition for neither “nationhood” (surely something a bit different than Benedict Anderson’s imagined communities) nor “failure” (are we talking a runaway Gini coefficient – large-scale income inequality? Scarcity? Barbarians at the gates?). So, what are we left with? Almost a tautology. Nations are sets of state-run institutions. They fail when those state-run institutions break down. Naturally.

I’m going to coin a term here. As a disclaimer: I’ve never studied classics so it’s probably less-than apt, but here goes. Historrhea (from Ancient Greek ἱστορία historía “history” and ῥέω rheo “to flow”) | noun | hist˙or˙rhea. Historrhea is characterized by excessive and sometimes incoherent tellings of societal events. I find there’s a lot of historrhea in these sorts of books that attempt to prescribe some grand narrative to human civilization. That seems to be what’s going on here and I’m not a huge fan for a few reasons: (1) It comes across as tendentious. I’ve witnessed enough anthropology professors dealing body blows to Guns, Germs, and Steel, the misguided goodwill of Jeffrey Sachs, and the latest Tom Friedman mixed-metaphor to know that things are rarely that simple. A lot of people have lived on planet earth. And collectively they have done a lot of stuff. You can bend the past to fit a linear argument in pretty much any way you want if you try hard enough. That doesn’t mean you’ve stumbled upon some harmonious truth to the universe, especially if… (2) There is almost no reliance on data/statistical modeling. This was a huge disappointment. I understand that Why Nations Fail was written as a work of pop-history, but Drs. Acemoglu and Robinson are respected economists. Why not play to your strengths and craft a more compelling, rigorous argument in the process? As it stands… (3) The results are not very educational. I read non-fiction to learn. It is very difficult to internalize information – for me at least – when the text skips haphazardly throughout time and space, dealing in surface-level treatments of complex issues like a disorganized AP World History study guide. The analysis of events never makes it past the Wikipedia page. I know enough to be suspicious of this.

Drs. Acemoglu and Robinson reject the “historical determinism” of other hypotheses for state success and state failure, but to me that’s kind of like a proponent of the Cartesian theater rejecting neurological determinism. Sure, you’ve liberated the mind from its fated ends, but how, then, do you do the same for the homunculus you’ve created? Here too, we manage a claim that nations may determine their own fate through the institutions they establish, but where do these institutions come from? Wherein lies the will to will? Really you’re not getting anywhere at all.

The theories proffered by Why Nations Fail are purely descriptive in nature. Drs. Acemoglu and Robinson acknowledge this lack of predictive power, but I’m not sure that makes it better. I think the most damning indictment of this sort of work comes at the authors’ own hands. As the book concludes, Drs. Acemoglu and Robinson can’t resist making some tame prognostications based on their thesis. The year is 2012. China is bound for a crash, they write; its authoritarian regime can’t hold on. Conversely, Brazil’s future is looking bright as the party of Lula rights the ship. In 2017 we know a bit of how things play out. Xi Jinping consolidates power as the Chinese economy continues its implacable advance. The reports of its demise have been greatly exaggerated. Meanwhile, Brazil remains mired in its worst recession on record while the government is wracked with corruption scandal after corruption scandal. Of course, there is always time for things to turn around. Even those in the Chinese politburo – riding high – must know this. The empire, long divided, must unite; long united, must divide. Thus it has ever been. Perhaps a window will open up in which the authors can claim vindication – that they were right in the long run. Of course, another famous quotation comes to mind in response.

Two stars. In the long run we are all dead.