In 1992, the economist Francis Fukuyama declared we were at the end of history with the worldwide transition to liberal democracies. Today, that picture looks a lot different as developing countries revert to authoritarianism and western democracies elect strongmen leaders who undermine the very democratic institutions their countries founded.
Economist at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Daron Acemoglu's latest book, The Narrow Corridor, written with James Robinson, examines the very delicate balance between the power of the state and the power of the people.
Prof Acemoglu talks to Kathryn Ryan about the fine line between democracy, despotism, and anarchy.
Photo: Image by TitusStaunton from Pixabay
He says he and Robinson strove to understand the broad sweep of history.
“We cannot understand the current problems confronting pretty much every country in the world unless we understand how we got here. In fact, some of the narratives that people in the west developed over the last several decades are not helpful because they don’t have that historical background.”
One of those narratives was that there would be a smooth transition for countries to become liberal democracies after the fall of the Berlin Wall.
“That’s too complacent at some level if you think about how difficult it was for democracy to emerge and how many times it stumbled and fell. Moreover, if you think about all of the different types of societies under which we have lived through in our history on this earth.”
One of the anchor points for the book is Thomas Hobbes’ Leviathan which they use to describe different political structures. Prof Acemoglu describes the book as a complete game-changer for social science. Hobbes, he says, believed in the importance of laws and state power to keep stability, prevent infighting and provide public goods and services.
“He also, very provocatively, viewed the state as the fountainhead of liberty because he thought that without the state, there would be chaos. There are many elements of this picture that are really not accurate, both from a historical point of view and from a conceptual framework for understanding what came since then.”
Prof Acemoglu says that, in fact, most stateless societies are not in the midst of chaos and fighting, there are norms that societies have for keeping conflict in check, distributing resources and establishing hierarchies.
Hobbes also downplayed the role that society and community play in contesting power.
“To Hobbes, that wasn’t the problem because states were so necessary that it was just a small issue, but actually throughout history it has been a defining issue for most people and most societies. Therefore, Hobbes acted like a really good starting point for us – putting one side of the argument very clearly, but in some sense missing other parts of the big picture.”
Prof Acemoglu draws a distinction between the shackled leviathan and the despotic leviathan. He says Hobbes had in mind the despotic leviathan - the uncontrolled and awe inspiring sea monster - as the system that would benefit society most and deliver the best outcomes. Prof Acemoglu says that hasn’t turned out to be the case.
“When you look at history, the despotic leviathan which seems more like the one Hobbes describes where the state and the elites that control the state don’t have to listen to the other peoples’ input. They don’t have to cater to their needs and wishes.
“That doesn’t really deliver most of the things that Hobbes dreamed of. It sometimes delivers stability but it often represses people. It doesn’t give them what they want, doesn’t provide public services, it gets growth going during certain periods but that growth doesn’t benefit people equally. It’s the shackled leviathan, the one that’s weaker and has to cooperate with society, that gives the sorts of things that Hobbes wanted the state to deliver.”
He says that while stateless societies do have order, that order is often based on tradition or religion that is oppressive to certain sectors of the community such as women or LGBT.
“Do these norms work, do these traditions work and bring some type of order? They do, but at some level, and this is part of the starting point of the book, that’s not enough. You want the order that provides a lot of freedom to people so that they’re not under the undue influence of anybody or any institutional norm.
“You also want them to be economically vibrant. If the order is one that says nobody can trade anything, nobody can engage in economic activity – and some are pretty close to that – then poverty is going to be endemic and that’s not good for anybody.”
Prof Acemoglu says that when elites lose trust in non-elites and non-elites lose trust in the elites that run state power, democratic institutions break down.
“We’ve all been surprised where, from a time that democracy seemed to be in ascendance and more and more countries were becoming democratic, things have reversed. You see many more countries in the developing world revert to a sort of authoritarianism and you see many in the West going through tumultuous times and electing, or coming close to electing, leaders that are essentially standing for the dismantlement of the very democratic institutions that these countries used to take pride in.
“A trust that used to exist in institutions has started to disappear, or completely disappeared in some places. I don’t think you can tell the story of Donald Trump getting elected in the US, or Brexit in the UK without mentioning the fact that there is a malaise among many people that the institutions in these countries are not working for them, they’re working for a select few, and they’re no longer delivering what they’re supposed to deliver.”
Prof Acemoglu says that many people, quite rightly, feel that they haven’t benefitted from globalisation and new technologies.
“That intensifies the feeling that the state is rigged and I believe that things became much worse after the financial crisis. Both because some fault lines of the system became very obvious for many to see, but also because the sense of politicians looking after the interests of the very powerful became very salient and jarring when they saw the bankers and very rich spared.”
Despite the failures of democratic institutions and the failure of imposing it on others through invasions and war, there’s still a Fukuyama 'End of History' strand of thought that liberal democracy is the teleological final state of states. Prof Acemoglu says it goes to show we haven’t learned from those failures.
“I think future health of the liberal democratic project depends on understanding the driver of that outcome. I think the real driver is society’s mobilisation, it isn’t some ruler, some elite, and it certainly isn’t an American general imposing it on a foreign society.”
