In Why Nations Fail, Daron Acemoglu and James A. Robinson argued that countries rise and fall based not on culture, geography, or chance, but on the power of their institutions. In their new book, they build a new theory about liberty and how to achieve it, drawing a wealth of evidence from both current affairs and disparate threads of world history.
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, arrived at by a process of “enlightenment.” This static view is a fantasy, the authors argue. In reality, the corridor to liberty is narrow and stays open only via a fundamental and incessant struggle between state and society: The authors look to the American Civil Rights Movement, Europe’s early and recent history, the Zapotec civilization circa 500 BCE, and Lagos’s efforts to uproot corruption and institute government accountability to illustrate what it takes to get and stay in the corridor. But they also examine Chinese imperial history, colonialism in the Pacific, India’s caste system, Saudi Arabia’s suffocating cage of norms, and the “Paper Leviathan” of many Latin American and African nations to show how countries can drift away from it, and explain the feedback loops that make liberty harder to achieve.
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.About Author:
Daron Acemoglu is the Killian Professor of Economics at MIT. In 2005 he received the John Bates Clark Medal awarded to economists under forty judged to have made the most significant contribution to economic thought and knowledge. He is also the co-author of The Narrow Corridor: States, Societies, and the Fate of Liberty.James A. Robinson, a political scientist and an economist, is the David Florence Professor of Government at Harvard University. A world-renowned expert on Latin America and Africa, he has worked in Botswana, Mauritius, Sierra Leone, and South Africa. He is also the co-author of The Narrow Corridor: States, Societies, and the Fate of Liberty.
James A. Robinson, a political scientist and economist, is one of nine University Professors at the University of Chicago. Focused on Latin America and Africa, he is currently conducting research in Bolivia, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Sierra Leone, Haiti, and Colombia, where he has taught for many years during the summer at the University of the Andes in Bogotá.
کتاب “راه باریک” نوشته نویسندگان کتاب “چرا ملت ها شکست میخورند”،”دارون عجم اوغلو” و جیمز رابینسون ” میباشد.
“دارون عجم اوغلو” و جیمز رابینسون ” بر اساس دهها سال تحقیق،به توضیح موضوعی بسیار مهم می پردازند که چرا برخی کشور ها به سمت پیشرفت و آزادی حرکت میکنند،در حالی که برخی کشور ها با استبداد و هنجار های غلط به مسیری دیگر پا میگذارند.
در کتاب “راه باریک” توضیح میدهند که معمولا ایالت های برای محافظت از شهروندان خود در برابر قدرتمندان نیاز به یک وضعیت پایدار دارند.که ازین وضعیت پایدار تحت عنوان روشنگری یاد می کنند که منجر به برقراری تعادل میان دولت و مردم همچنین نخبگان و شهروندان میشود.این تعادل دولت و مردم را وادار میکند که از ظرفیت های غنی جامعه استفاده کنند که منجر به رشد و شکوفایی نیز میشود.
دارون عجم اوغلو” و جیمز رابینسون ” توضیح این مفهوم جدید را بواسطه داستانهای مختلف از سراسر جهان در طول تاریخ این در فهم آن به ما کمک میکنند تا گذشته و حال را بفهمیم و آینده را تحلیل کنیم.
درباره نویسنده:
دارون عجم اغلو استاد اقتصاد کیلیان در MIT است. در سال 2005 او مدال جان بیتس کلارک را دریافت کرد که به اقتصاددانان زیر چهل سال اعطا شد که به نظر می رسید مهم ترین سهم را در اندیشه و دانش اقتصادی داشته اند. او که یک متخصص مشهور جهان در آمریکای لاتین و آفریقا است، در بوتسوانا، موریس، سیرالئون و آفریقای جنوبی کار کرده است. او همچنین یکی از نویسندگان دالان باریک: ایالات، جوامع و سرنوشت آزادی است.
جیمز رابینسون، زاده ی سال 1960، متخصص علوم سیاسی، استاد دانشگاه و اقتصاددان انگلیسی است. او در دانشگاه هایی چون دانشگاه شیکاگو، هاروارد، کالیفرنیا، برکلی، کالیفرنیای جنوبی و ملبورن تدریس کرده است.
