Commissioned Book Review: Daron Acemoglu and James A Robinson, The Narrow Corridor: States, Societies, and the Fate of Liberty
| Author | Aron Hajnal |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1177/14789299221090833 |
| Published date | 01 May 2023 |
| Date | 01 May 2023 |
| Subject Matter | Commissioned Book Review |
Political Studies Review
2023, Vol. 21(2) NP11 –NP12
journals.sagepub.com/home/psrev
Commissioned Book Review
1090833PSW0010.1177/14789299221090833Political Studies ReviewCommissioned Book Review
book-review2022
Commissioned Book Review
The Narrow Corridor: States, Societies,
and the Fate of Liberty by Daron
Acemoglu and James A Robinson.
New York: Penguin Press, 2019. 576 pp.,
£11.20. ISBN 978-0-7352-2438-4
Liberty, defined by Locke as the freedom to
order one’s actions and dispose of his or her
possessions independently from others’ will, is
a fundamental requisite for a happy and digni-
fied human existence. Yet such freedom has
been largely absent throughout history and is
absent today in most countries. Seven years
after Why Nations Fail?, Daron Acemoglu and
James A. Robinson have taken on exploring
how certain nations achieve and maintain lib-
erty. Building upon their prior work’s findings,
The Narrow Corridor extends its framework
and shares many of its virtues. It presents a
robust conceptual framework to address the
focal question and applies it to analyse a myriad
of historical and contemporary cases from
around the world. The book also examines how
polarization, external threats and further factors
may push nations towards authoritarian rule.
The Narrow Corridor’s conceptual frame-
work bolsters the argument that liberty can be
provided by a state that is centralized and strong
but is controlled by society. Such states
(Shackled Leviathans) can collect taxes, pro-
vide public services, contain violence and cre-
ate economic incentives. Shackled Leviathans
are the result of a maintained and balanced
rivalry between the state and the society, that is,
as the state assumes more power and capacity,
society becomes more mobilized and able to
control the state. As long as the struggle is even,
such a state rests in the narrow corridor. Apart
from modern Western states, ancient Athens,
ancient Central American city-states and medi-
eval Italian city-states (among others) are con-
sidered by the authors to have trod this narrow
corridor.
When the rivalry between state and society
is unbalanced, other types of states come into
existence. When society is reluctant to establish
a central state, a so-called Absent Leviathan
emerges, with dire consequences regarding
liberty and prosperity (e.g. Lebanon, Lagos
and the Democratic Republic of Congo).
Having experienced the horrors of the English
Civil War in the fifteenth century first-hand
(resulting from a weak state), Thomas Hobbes
concluded that an omnipotent state was neces-
sary for maintaining peace. History has shown,
however, that unconstrained states (Despotic
Leviathans) have similarly disastrous conse-
quences. Many examples of Despotic Leviathans
have arisen throughout history, including the
Abbasids state in Arabia, the Third Reich, and
modern Saudi Arabia and China.
The fourth type of state described in The
Narrow Corridor is the Paper Leviathan, which
combines some of the worst characteristics of the
Despotic and Absent Leviathans. On the surface,
a Paper Leviathan appears to be a functioning
state, but its institutions are designed to assist its
elites in expropriating the nation’s wealth rather
than to provide services and contain violence.
According to the authors, Paper Leviathans pre-
vail in many countries today, including many
Latin American and African states.
Which factors affect the outcome of the
competition between state and society and, con-
sequently, determine a Leviathan’s type and the
liberty or lack thereof it provides its citizens?
The authors argue that these outcomes largely,
though not exclusively, depend on institutional
conditions rooted in a nation’s historical trajec-
tory. A critical factor is what the authors call the
cage of norms, a set of (mostly informal) social
norms that govern people’s actions (e.g. tribal
customs in African societies, the caste system in
India or the discrimination against Blacks in the
United States).
Importantly, however, history is not destiny.
Nations can change their trajectories – they can
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