Acemoglu and Robinson's book "The Narrow Corridor" examines the most fundamental problem facing modern states: How should the balance of power between the state and society be established?
Following the book "Why Nations Fail" written by Acemoglu and James Robinson in 2012, the book "The Narrow Corridor" written in 2019 is actually like a sequel. While reading, it gives the feeling that they made a move to see and fill the points they left incomplete or could not fully see in the first book, and it must be said that this is a very successful effort. In the first book, they mostly investigate the origin of prosperity being something possessed by some countries and civilizations and not possessed by others. They try to formulate the answer they give to this question simply through the distinction between civilizations and countries with inclusive and extractive institutions.
Although this formula is sufficient to explain what they mean, it remains quite insufficient to explain the whole process. Because justifying whether countries with or without such institutions have prosperity or not, like an on-off switch, actually meant ignoring the historical process. In this book, they focus more on the process and try to see the process not only through the eyes of an economic historian, but also as a political scientist, sociologist, ethnographer, and even anthropologist.
Prosperity, Freedom and Democracy Tripod
While they focused more on prosperity in the first one, they establish a tripod in this book: they add freedom and democracy next to prosperity. They worry more about the existence or absence of this tripod. The starting point of both books is a criticism of the answers given by social sciences to the question "Why do some countries have freedom, democracy and prosperity while others do not?" until today. The criticism is extremely justified, because the answers given until today are the answers we express more in the parenthesis of "... is destiny" in Turkish: Theses we explain as "Geography is destiny", "culture is destiny", "history is destiny", "having or not having technology is a destiny", or "whether a country, a civilization has a charismatic leader, a leader culture or not is destiny".
Struggle Between State and Society
It can be said that Acemoglu and Robinson base their main theses on this: On one side is the state, and on the other side is the society. Human history continues with the struggle between these two. That is, on the one hand, the absolute dominance that the state structure, the state apparatus tries to establish over people and societies, and on the other hand, the war that people and societies wage so that the state cannot establish dominance over them. Their rejection of state authority. All history is shaped by the conflict between these two.
When we look at what happened in geographies and cultures where this conflict was won in favor of the state, the example of China today is very valuable in terms of visualizing this. The Chinese tradition is not a geography where this war was newly won in favor of the state - China has been ruled this way for about 2500 years. At the point it has reached today, China is closer than ever to the point of absolute state sovereignty.
Authority Vacuum and "Cage of Norms"
According to some perspectives, the disappearance of the state apparatus argues that societies, people, peoples can easily agree with each other and continue a stateless social structure in a more livable, more humane way. However, examinations and researches show that historically this is not quite so. If we need to start the examination from today's world, it is possible to say that the countries we can give as examples to such societies are countries like Yemen, Afghanistan.
So what fills the authority vacuum experienced? As a professor I love very much said, "Nature does not accept a vacuum" and the authority vacuum is immediately filled by other powers. Tribes, clans, certain interest groups undertake the function that the state cannot fulfill, the roles it cannot undertake here.
In this structure called Cage of Norms, rules and traditions are not open to change due to their structures. In other words, in the Tiv tribe, the elderly will have a hierarchical superiority over the young even a hundred years from now, and something like women having equal rights with men cannot even be proposed.
The Narrow Corridor and Western Democracy
Is it a destiny to have or not to have the trilogy of democracy, prosperity and freedom, which we see in very different history, culture and geographies as being so central to the supreme interests of humanity? Of course not. This is not a reward bestowed on some civilizations, some cultures, but it is necessary to go through an evolutionary path to reach this. At this moment in history, we see that Western democracy is the one that has passed through this evolutionary path most successfully.
Actually, the point on which the main thesis of the book is based is exactly this: They say that the struggle between the state and society, that is, between the will to rule from top to bottom and the will to rule from bottom to top, has found a balance and this balance has opened a narrow corridor with the fastest progress momentum right in the middle of the flow of history that can go in favor of the state and in favor of society.
Democracy Crisis and Future
The models established by Acemoglu and Robinson are quite useful for eliminating the doubt that democracy is of vital importance for us. The democratization impulse in the world is so strong that; while only 30% of the world countries were democratic in the 1960s, we see that this rate increased to 60% when we came to the 2000s.
However, we see a new trend that started with 2010 and started to harden in 2015: A decline in the democracy qualities of countries. Especially after 2015, we notice that support for democracy has started to fall in all world societies. This is a clear indication that the world has entered a democracy crisis.
This dangerous trend allows "popular politics" to come to the fore all over the world. World societies that cannot find what they expect from the promise of democracy, prosperity and freedom turn to their old social values, traditions and customs as salvation. Opportunist right-wing politics exploits the feelings of "democracy resentfuls" and consolidates them in their favor with the promise of a golden age.
While facing a huge problem like the "role of humanity" that we need to redefine with the AI Revolution we are on the verge of, we are at a historical turning point where we have to struggle with multi-dimensional problems such as collecting the pieces of our failed democratic progress experience and facing a very capable power coalition trying to establish the single-centered power dominance system that we have avoided as humanity throughout history by benefiting from it.
