Brilliant and engagingly written Why Nations Fail answers the question that has stumped the
experts for centuries: Why are some nations rich and others poor divided by wealth and poverty
health and sickness food and famine? Is it culture the weather geography? Perhaps ignorance
of what the right policies are? Simply no. None of these factors is either definitive or
destiny. Otherwise how to explain why Botswana has become one of the fastest growing countries
in the world while other African nations such as Zimbabwe the Congo and Sierra Leone are
mired in poverty and violence? Daron Acemoglu and James Robinson conclusively show that it is
man-made political and economic institutions that underlie economic success (or lack of it).
Korea to take just one of their fascinating examples is a remarkably homogeneous nation yet
the people of North Korea are among the poorest on earth while their brothers and sisters in
South Korea are among the richest. The south forged a society that created incentives rewarded
innovation and allowed everyone to participate in economic opportunities. The economic success
thus spurred was sustained because the government became accountable and responsive to citizens
and the great mass of people. Sadly the people of the north have endured decades of famine
political repression and very different economic institutions--with no end in sight. The
differences between the Koreas is due to the politics that created these completely different
institutional trajectories. Based on fifteen years of original research Acemoglu and Robinson
marshall extraordinary historical evidence from the Roman Empire the Mayan city-states
medieval Venice the Soviet Union Latin America England Europe the United States and
Africa to build a new theory of political economy with great relevance for the big questions of
today including: - China has built an authoritarian growth machine. Will it continue to grow
at such high speed and overwhelm the West? - Are America's best days behind it? Are we moving
from a virtuous circle in which efforts by elites to aggrandize power are resisted to a vicious
one that enriches and empowers a small minority?
