Why Nations Fail

Why Nations Fail

by

Daron Acemoglu and James A. Robinson

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Diversity, Pluralism, and Empowerment Theme Analysis

Themes and Colors
Global Inequality and Economic Growth Theme Icon
History and Institutional Change Theme Icon
Cycles of Wealth and Poverty Theme Icon
Diversity, Pluralism, and Empowerment Theme Icon
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in Why Nations Fail, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Diversity, Pluralism, and Empowerment Theme Icon

Acemoglu and Robinson admit that Why Nations Fail focuses more on explaining the past than predicting the future. They avoid proposing specific policies because no policy would work in every country. In different nations, the path to inclusive institutions can look wildly dissimilar—or even totally opposite. And even well-intentioned revolutions end up building extractive institutions at least as often as inclusive ones. But the authors do highlight a few key characteristics of the movements that succeed: they empower ordinary people and are pluralistic. This means they’re led by broad coalitions who represent a relatively wide range of different people and interests. In contrast, when narrow factions overthrow governments, they tend to create extractive institutions and rule just for themselves. This is why, although Acemoglu and Robinson refuse to endorse specific policies, they still conclude that the first step toward building inclusive institutions is to actually start including more people in movements for reform.

Acemoglu and Robinson believe that political change only makes institutions more inclusive when that change is led by a pluralistic group of citizens and stakeholders—meaning a group with various competing interests. Three key examples of this are the Glorious Revolution in the 17th century, the American Revolution in the 18th century, and the Meiji Restoration in the 19th century. In all these cases, aristocrats and elite merchants overthrew monarchies. Crucially, while the revolutionaries mostly belonged to the same class, they had diverse economic and political commitments, so they had to create pluralistic systems capable of balancing all of their interests. Admittedly, many people in Britain, the US, and Japan were excluded from the political process immediately after these revolutions. But the systems these revolutions created were still pluralistic. By the late 20th century, all three countries became highly inclusive and democratic, which shows how even a very limited form of pluralism in the short term can create inclusivity in the long run.

Revolutions with greater popular support also created inclusive institutions for similar reasons: the people building the institutions were diverse, so they had to create a structure for balancing diverse interests. For instance, while the French Revolution initially led to brutal violence, it later created a democratic republic with radically egalitarian laws. Similarly, the Workers’ Party helped topple Brazil’s military dictatorship in the 1970s and reestablish democracy by organizing grassroots activists around the country. These examples show how countries can move toward inclusive institutions when they give an inclusive, pluralistic group the power to build those institutions. For Acemoglu and Robinson, revolutions tend to succeed when they involve a coalition rebelling against a system, while they usually fail when they involve just one faction rebelling against another. In other words, during revolutions like the Meiji Restoration and French Revolution, citizens banded together to demand a new form of government. But in most revolutions (like Sierra Leone’s civil war, the overthrow of Ethiopia’s emperor, or the Mexican Revolution), elites simply fight over power: one faction wants to seize control of extractive institutions from another.

Because of the similarities between successful revolutions, the authors argue that citizens who want to alleviate poverty should focus on building pluralistic movements for institutional reform. They emphasize that top-down approaches to improving governance don’t work. They explicitly reject modernization theory, which is the idea that economic growth automatically creates democracy. (They think it’s the other way around.) They also criticize technocratic solutions that try to fix poverty through policy fixes but don’t examine the institutional problems that prevent policies from working as intended. Instead, Acemoglu and Robinson conclude, the only true route to reform is through institutional change. Their analysis shows that positive institutional change is unpredictable and requires different strategies in every country, depending on its circumstances, history, and existing institutions. But it also shows that broad coalitions are always key to creating this change. Activists and political leaders should reach out to different groups with different interests and develop common proposals for reform. While the authors don’t offer a one-size-fits-all solution to extractive institutions, then, they emphasize that any effective remedy has to be pluralistic—it has to be diverse and must represent an array of interests. This is the only way to establish the kind of inclusive institutions that can grow into a vibrant democracy.

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Diversity, Pluralism, and Empowerment Quotes in Why Nations Fail

Below you will find the important quotes in Why Nations Fail related to the theme of Diversity, Pluralism, and Empowerment.
Chapter 3 Quotes

Politics is the process by which a society chooses the rules that will govern it. Politics surrounds institutions for the simple reason that while inclusive institutions may be good for the economic prosperity of a nation, some people or groups, such as the elite of the Communist Party of North Korea or the sugar planters of colonial Barbados, will be much better off by setting up institutions that are extractive. When there is conflict over institutions, what happens depends on which people or group wins out in the game of politics—who can get more support, obtain additional resources, and form more effective alliances. In short, who wins depends on the distribution of political power in society.

Related Characters: Daron Acemoglu and James A. Robinson (speaker)
Page Number: 79
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 4 Quotes

England was unique among nations when it made the breakthrough to sustained economic growth in the seventeenth century. Major economic changes were preceded by a political revolution that brought a distinct set of economic and political institutions, much more inclusive than those of any previous society. […] The Glorious Revolution limited the power of the king and the executive, and relocated to Parliament the power to determine economic institutions. At the same time, it opened up the political system to a broad cross section of society, who were able to exert considerable influence over the way the state functioned. The Glorious Revolution was the foundation for creating a pluralistic society, and it built on and accelerated a process of political centralization. It created the world’s first set of inclusive political institutions.

Related Characters: Daron Acemoglu and James A. Robinson (speaker)
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 12 Quotes

This form of the vicious circle, where extractive institutions persist because the elite controlling them and benefiting from them persists, is not its only form. […] In a form that the sociologist Robert Michels would recognize as the iron law of oligarchy, the overthrow of a regime presiding over extractive institutions heralds the arrival of a new set of masters to exploit the same set of pernicious extractive institutions.

The logic of this type of vicious circle is also simple to understand in hindsight: extractive political institutions create few constraints on the exercise of power, so there are essentially no institutions to restrain the use and abuse of power by those overthrowing previous dictators and assuming control of the state; and extractive economic institutions imply that there are great profits and wealth to be made merely by controlling power, expropriating the assets of others, and setting up monopolies.

Related Characters: Daron Acemoglu and James A. Robinson (speaker)
Page Number: 365-366
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 13 Quotes

Nations fail economically because of extractive institutions. These institutions keep poor countries poor and prevent them from embarking on a path to economic growth. […] The basis of these institutions is an elite who design economic institutions in order to enrich themselves and perpetuate their power at the expense of the vast majority of people in society. The different histories and social structures of the countries lead to the differences in the nature of the elites and in the details of the extractive institutions. But the reason why these extractive institutions persist is always related to the vicious circle, and the implications of these institutions in terms of impoverishing their citizens are similar—even if their intensity differs.

Related Characters: Daron Acemoglu and James A. Robinson (speaker)
Page Number: 398-399
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 15 Quotes

There is much uncertainty. Cuba, for example, might transition toward inclusive institutions and experience a major economic transformation, or it may linger on under extractive political and economic institutions. The same is true of North Korea and Burma (Myanmar) in Asia. Thus, while our theory provides the tools for thinking about how institutions change and the consequences of such changes, the nature of this change—the role of small differences and contingency—makes more precise predictions difficult.

Related Characters: Daron Acemoglu and James A. Robinson (speaker)
Page Number: 436
Explanation and Analysis:

The rise of Brazil since the 1970s was not engineered by economists of international institutions instructing Brazilian policymakers on how to design better policies or avoid market failures. It was not achieved with injections of foreign aid. It was not the natural outcome of modernization. Rather, it was the consequence of diverse groups of people courageously building inclusive institutions. Eventually these led to more inclusive economic institutions. But the Brazilian transformation, like that of England in the seventeenth century, began with the creation of inclusive political institutions.

Related Characters: Daron Acemoglu and James A. Robinson (speaker)
Page Number: 457
Explanation and Analysis:

What is common among the political revolutions that successfully paved the way for more inclusive institutions and the gradual institutional changes in North America, in England in the nineteenth century, and in Botswana after independence—which also led to significant strengthening of inclusive political institutions—is that they succeeded in empowering a fairly broad cross-section of society. Pluralism, the cornerstone of inclusive political institutions, requires political power to be widely held in society, and starting from extractive institutions that vest power in a narrow elite, this requires a process of empowerment. This, as we emphasized in chapter 7, is what sets apart the Glorious Revolution from the overthrow of one elite by another.

Related Characters: Daron Acemoglu and James A. Robinson (speaker)
Page Number: 458
Explanation and Analysis: