Sự Suy Tàn Của Quyền Lực

by Moisés Naím, Trần Trọng Hải Minh (Translator)

Người sáng lập ra Facebook - Mark Zuckerberg - đã chọn cuốn Sự Suy Tàn Của Quyền Lực để mở đầu cho thử thách Năm Của Sách của mình, đồng thời, anh cũng đề xuất tác phẩm cho danh hiệu Cuốn Sách Của Năm (Book of The Year).

ĐÂY LÀ MỘT CUỐN SÁCH VỀ QUYỀN LỰC.

Cụ thể là bằng cách nào mà quyền lực lại đang trải qua một sự chuyển đổi mang tính lịch sử và có thể làm thay đổi thế giới. Quyền lực đang trải rộng, và những tay chơi lớn, đã thiết lập quyền lực từ lâu đời, ngày càng bị thách thức bởi những tay chơi mới và nhỏ hơn. Và những ai nắm giữ quyền lực đang bị cương tỏa hơn trong cách mà họ có thể sử dụng quyền lực.

Chúng ta biết rằng quyền lực đang chuyển từ cơ bắp sang trí não, từ Tây sang Đông, từ những tập đoàn khổng lồ sang những công ty khởi nghiệp lanh lợi. Nhưng chỉ biết vậy là không đủ. Quyền lực đang trải qua sự biến chuyển sâu sắc hơn nhiều, một sự biến chuyển đã không được nhận ra và hiểu biết một cách đầy đủ.

QUYỀN LỰC ĐANG SUY TÀN.

Genres: Nonfiction, Business, Politics, History, Leadership, Sociology, Economics

460 pages, Paperback

First published March 5, 2013

About the author

Moisés Naím is an internationally-syndicated columnist and best-selling author of influential books. In 2011, he launched Efecto Naím, an innovative weekly television program highlighting surprising world trends with visually-striking videos, graphics and interviews with world leaders which is widely watched in Latin America today. Dr. Naím gained international recognition with the successful re-launch of the prominent journal Foreign Policy and, over his fourteen years (1996-2010) as editor, turned the magazine into a modern, award-winning publication on global politics and economics.

Author of books:
* Paper Tigers and Minotaurs: The Politics of Venezuela's Economic Reforms (1993, economics)
* Altered States: Globalization, Sovereignty and Governance (2000, economics)
* Illicit: How Smugglers, Traffickers and Copycats Are Hijacking the Global Economy (2005, economics)
* The End of Power: From Boardrooms to Battlefields and Churches to States, Why Being in Charge Isn't What It Used to Be (2013, social studies)

Reviews

[Katie · Rating 3 out of 5]

Interesting thesis, but it could have been said in 30 pages rather than 300. The writing is dull and dry. The examples are broad but the research is not deep. There are too many statistics and not enough stories. The evidence cited is shallow enough that the book is not convincing and the writing repetitive enough that it is not engaging.

[BlackOxford · Rating 2 out of 5]

The Ultimate Free Market


This is a subtle argument about a not so subtle phenomenon - getting others to do what they wouldn’t otherwise.

Power may be the real Original Sin. None of us likes being subject to it, but we all use it; many of us aspire to it; and some of us create inestimable destruction with it. Children are inevitably subject to the power of their, employees to the boss, and the boss to the state. All of us at some point in our lives resent it. But very few of us forego it if we have acquired it. Indeed, once we have power we tend to consider it ours by right.

Moisés Naim knows that power has become more concentrated, more globally exercised, and more deadly than ever before. His book’s title therefore is somewhat misleading. Power is not about to become a scarce commodity. Rather his point is precisely that power has become so commodified as to become subject to the same market forces as the other objects of need and desire in the world. His thesis is arresting:

“To put it simply, power no longer buys as much as it did in the past. In the twenty-first century, power is easier to get, harder to use—and easier to lose. From boardrooms and combat zones to cyberspace, battles for power are as intense as ever, but they are yielding diminishing returns. Their fierceness masks the increasingly evanescent nature of power itself.”

Naim’s argument is primarily economic rather than technological or cultural: “… the more fundamental explanation as to why barriers to power have become more feeble has to do with the transformations in such diverse factors as rapid economic growth in many poor countries, migratory patterns, medicine and healthcare, education, and even attitudes and cultural mores—in short, with changes in the scope, state, and potential of human lives.” Essentially, globalisation does to power what it also does to everything else that is bought and sold: it makes it cheaper to buy and creates a much bigger market of people who want to buy it.

So as the competition for power has developed, the hold by the powerful on power becomes more fragile: “The decay of power does not mean the extinction of those megaplayers. Big government, big armies, big business, and big universities will be constrained and confined as never before, but they will certainly stay relevant and their actions and decisions will carry great weight. But not as much as before. Not as much as they would like. And not as much as they expected. And though it may seem to be an unalloyed good that the powerful are less powerful than before (after all, power corrupts, doesn’t it?), their demotion can also generate instability, disorder, and paralysis in the face of complex problems.”

It is at this point that I begin to lose the plot, get increasingly confused, and end up angry at Naim’s crypto-fascism. If the world has complex problems that only stable power can address effectively, what can any of us do, even the most powerful to reverse or at least mitigate the effects of the global market for power? Naim suggests the need for a “common power.” What could such a thing be? A global political entity? A military force? A kind of secular church?

All these possibilities and more are clearly beyond hope and reach, even if we could figure out how to prevent the worst excesses of the power of such an entity. Naim doesn’t know what such a common power might look like, where it might originate, or how it might be maintained. He says he just wants to start a discussion. He wants us to understand the decay of power as a first step. That the second step is as practically remote as as finding a time warp in a black hole, indicates that Naim’s point is purely academic in the worst sense.

Naim longs for the old days. Don’t we all? Haven’t we always? Meanwhile power remains as problematic as it always has been: can’t live with it; can’t live without it.

[Bill Pardi · Rating 3 out of 5]

The End of Power by Moisés Naím has some problems, more on that later. But something fundamental bothered me about it the entire time I was reading it. After a few weeks of reflecting on it here and there I figured it out—it was the title. This book is not about the end of power at all, it's about the shifting of power. The book title was likely concocted by the publisher's marketing department. Let's face it, definitive, catastrophic statements sell better than ideas about movement or shifts. But the title sets up a premise that the content doesn't really hold up. Sure, power and influence are decaying or even ending for some traditional institutions. But it's not "ending" all together, it's shifting to different groups and in many cases to individuals. This is key, and while Naím certainly does explore this shift, it's somehow not contextualized properly in this book. Because of that I found myself arguing with a great many of his examples of power's decline with a "yea, but…"

Naím is an economist, and The End of Power is at its core a different pivot on a now common thread in current social, philosophical, political, business and technology writing: that the old guards of influence and control are transferring, reluctantly in most cases, to new players and individuals. Naím spends much of the book describing how big governments, religions, corporations and military forces no longer carry the same authority they used to. Power he writes, is easier to gain, easier to lose, and more dispersed than ever before.

Unlike a lot of conventional wisdom, Naím doesn't attribute the power shift primarily to the influence of technology, but rather he credits the three "M" revolutions of "more, mobility, and mentality." The "more" revolution occurs because we have more of everything, be it products, ideas, food, social networks, etc., and more people to choose among these things. This, he argues, overwhelms the ability of a small number to maintain any type of control. We have more to choose from, and choose we do. The "mobility" revolution refers to the ability to move around, and away from being a captive audience to anyone or anything we don't like. Naím points to evidence that suggests as incomes rise throughout the world people can move themselves more easily than ever before to areas that carry more affinity to their current likes and aspirations. Tying all this together is the "mentality" revolution, a movement of expectations and values that allow people to evaluate just about everything on its merit and not take much for granted any more. People are becoming much more savvy in evaluating the claims of the establishment and more apt to question existing authorities. Technology is an enabler in all three, but not the root cause.

When taken for its main points, The End of Power certainly presents a reasonable case for how power is shifting in modern society and is consistent with the trends we've been seeing for the last 30-40 years. But as a book it's a difficult read. Naím lays out his main argument in the first chapter, but after that the narrative gets muddled, and Naím jumps from one idea to another in seemingly random fashion. It's consistency comes in being self-referential and verbose. Naím often repeats the same concepts, and uses way too many words to express them. While I think Naím gets it mostly right when it comes to the ideas, there are better treatments of his subject matter.

[Thomas · Rating 4 out of 5]

A couple of weeks ago I saw a PBS NewsHour interview with Moisés Naím on his new book, THE END OF POWER, and I just had to read it. I did so this week. I found it to be a fascinating examination of the erosion of centralized authority in a broad pantheon of fields: government, finance, the military, education, business, religion, philanthropy, labor unions, even competitive chess. Naím draws intriguing examples from the proliferation of sovereign states and from such disparate entities as the AFL-CIO, hedge funds, the Soviet Union, the Gates Foundation, al Qaeda, charismatic and Pentecostal churches, Silicon Valley startups, and even the recent explosion of teenage grandmasters in chess--all to document his subtitle: FROM BOARDROOMS TO BATTLEFIELDS AND CHURCHES TO STATES, WHY BEING IN CHARGE ISN'T WHAT IT USED TO BE. Naím zeroes in on three big cultural changes worldwide: more of everything, open movement, and a new mentality. These he pins to the erosion of power. A word to the wise: Although the text runs only 244 pages and the writing is accessible enough to be read by almost anyone, this is a book of serious intellectual heft. The ideas are substantial and consequential, so I don't recommend it to everyone. Moreover, I have some qualms that Naím's thesis doesn't neatly fit certain industries (such as banking or energy, both of which are more concentrated than ever), and I wasn't quite satisfied with Naim's limited policy prescriptions. Still, I found this to be a worthwhile and very interesting book.

[Athan Tolis · Rating 2 out of 5]

The End of Power starts like dynamite.

Moises Naim, an extremely well-respected and well-informed author (he thanks everybody who's anybody in the acknowledgments except perhaps for David Beckham) is truly on fire to begin with. He starts the book by telling you what power is. He defines it as the ability to make others do what you want them to do. It's not about the size of your army or your nuclear stockpile or your advertising budget. It's the ability to get your way.

Next, he sets up a matrix, Mc Kinsey style. Two types of power, hard and soft. And each breaks down in two. So hard power breaks down to coercion and bribery. Soft power breaks down to code and persuasion. So "if you don't eat your broccoli you don't get to play with Lego" as well as "if you don't eat your broccoli you'll have a spanking" are both coercion. On the other hand "if you eat your broccoli you can then have ice cream" is bribery. That's hard power, because I have ways to make you change your mind. On the other hand if the pope says you should practice abstinence, that's soft power, he can't do much to keep you chaste. He sets a moral code and that's that. Similarly, if Patek Philippe buy the back cover of the Economist every week and your wife asks you for a diamond-crusted watch (or you decide to buy a little something for the next generation) that's persuasion, but there's nothing in it for you directly.

And of course power is seldom on one vector only. The pope, for example, may be going beyond code. If you don't follow his rules, it may later cost you salvation. And if you do, you might go to heaven. So you could argue it's 70% code, 15% coercion and 15% bribery. You get the idea.

With those analytical tools in place, the author then explains that three revolutions have taken place, all of which significantly limit power today.

The "more" revolution is self-explanatory. For example, the UN had 55 members in the forties, it has 197 members today. There are more countries out there and that makes for more voices, more alliances and more freedom.

The "mobility" revolution is a bit of a misnomer. It is meant to be a catch-all that accounts for a bunch of concepts. Ideas move quicker because information is spreading faster. People can move more, but it's mainly figurative. Technology allows a doctor in India to look at your x-rays, for example, and that's as good as having him there in the ward. Phone cards (which Moses Naim rates higher in impact than the Internet so far in terms of shrinking our world) have made it possible for emigrants to stay in touch with their families etc. In summary, distances are much shorter than they used to be, all borders have become porous, there's no longer such thing as a captive audience, and that limits local power.

The "mentality" revolution is the third major force that attenuates power worldwide and, to cut a long story short, it's to do with the fact that ideology across the world seems to be converging toward more liberal ideals, but also with the thing that people have the tools and the information to think for themselves.

You can already discern that the three "revolutions" are a bit blurred. Maybe the need to get them all start with an M had an influence. Frankly, getting them all to be adjectives or nouns might have helped more, from where I'm sitting.

Less facetiously, the author never, not once, goes back to applying the "three revolutions" to the four-way setup that defines power. He quotes from everybody, he lays out a million examples, he writes extremely well, but with the best possible intentions I failed to see why he introduced the whole setup only to never use it again.

You do learn a lot from reading the book. For example, you learn about the decline of Catholicism in Latin America, you learn about the uncontestable spread of democracy across the world, the journey you embark on with Moises Naim is never boring or tedious.

The destination, however, is unclear. The intention of the book was to convince me that we face the End of Power. The only thing I took away is that the world is a lot more complex than it used to be and a lot more difficult to analyze with the tools we have. But I would have loved an attempt at using the tools, especially after I've seen them laid out.

So this would be a three star book from my angle, but I've taken one off, to reflect that the author quotes Tom Friedman. Please give us all a break! I jest. I took off the third point because the author totally mangles the concept of Entropy, with which I am familiar from the Thermodynamics I studied a long time ago. In reading a book, I trust an author to know what he's talking about. I caught him out on Entropy and my trust in his ability to analyze rather than quote got shattered.

Shame, because when I started reading The End of Power I could not get enough of telling everybody how much I was enjoying it. As I ploughed my way through, it became increasingly evident that Moises Naim was going to fail to convince me of his main thesis. "Being confused about more difficult problems" would actually have cut it for me. But I'm merely unconvinced.

[Maria Ferreira · Rating 4 out of 5]

Moisés Naím (nascido em 1952) é um escritor e colunista venezuelano e, desde 1996, o editor-chefe da revista Foreign Policy.
Moisés tem escrito muito sobre política e economia internacionais, desenvolvimento económico, organizações multilaterais, política externa as consequências na globalização.

Escreve artigos de opinião para o L'Espresso, Foreign Policy e The New York Times, The Washington Post, Newsweek, TIME, Le Monde, Berliner Zeitung e muitas outras publicações internacionalmente reconhecidas.

Naím, foi Ministro de Comércio e Indústria da Venezuela e desempenhou um papel central no lançamento inicial das grandes reformas económicas no final dos anos 1980 e início dos anos 1990.
Foi professor e reitor do Instituto de Estudos Superiores de Administración (IESA), uma escola de negócios e centro de investigação em Caracas.
Foi diretor executivo dos projetos de reformas económicas sobre a América Latina no Fundo Carnegie para a Paz Internacional.
Moisés Naím é membro do Conselho Internacional de Mídia do Fórum Económico Mundial e é o presidente do Grupo dos Cinquenta, uma organização dos CEOs das empresas mais progressistas da América Latina. Dr. Naím adicionalmente tem assento no Conselho Consultivo da Global Financial Integrity.

Vasto currículo e uma visão holística dos poderes e micropoderes instituídos na nossa sociedade. Das grandes empresas económicas ao poder do estado, das igrejas às famílias.
Um livro que abre os horizontes a todos aqueles que anseiam compreender como o fenómeno do poder aparece e desaparece com um ciclo de vida natural.

A história explica, os acontecimentos ocorridos ao longo dos milénios vão mostrando de onde partimos e porque partimos, também nos mostra como estamos hoje, mas não nos mostra o caminho a seguir.

Segundo Moisés o poder antigamente era percebido de modo diferente, os grandes senhores das grandes Famílias, detinham o poder absoluto, donos das grandes empresas e das grandes fortunas, eram também os senhores do conhecimento e manipulavam a sociedade que se subjugava e aceitava esse poder, sem barafustar, não estava nas suas mãos interferir com a ordem pré-estabelecida.

Revoltas e batalhas, ao longo dos séculos origina tumultos, uns estados querem a supremacia internacional e outros vão resistindo e estabelecendo alianças.
Moisés faz a analogia entre o poder e o elevador, umas vezes sobe outras desce, e tem sido assim ao longo dos séculos, conquistam-se territórios, formam-se impérios, destroem-se impérios e liberta-se os povos.

Este desvario não acontece apenas no poder doas Nações, também acontece nas grandes empresas. Criam-se empresas, fundem-se, desunem-se e morrem.

O culpado disto tudo somos nós, os seres humanos, porque a sede de poder é incomensurável, de geração em geração vamos repartindo o poder dando origem aos micropoderes.

Estes micropoderes, são o resultado, segundo Naím, de 3 revoluções que foram ocorrendo ao longo da nossa história. A revolução do Mais, a Revolução da Mobilidade e a Revolução da Mentalidade.

A revolução do Mais tem a ver com o facto de os seres humanos serem imensamente insatisfeitos, querem ter tudo, sempre mais, acham que têm esse direito e que o estado tem por obrigação lhes proporcionar.

A Mobilidade deu-se com o desenvolvimento dos meios de transporte, que impulsionou os movimentos dos cidadãos de uns sitios para outros, os povos movimentam-se levando consigo a cultura, as tradições e as religiões.

A revolução da Mentalidade foi a última bolacha do pacote, pois a literacia exponenciou o pensamento e o conhecimento. Acrescentando o desenvolvimento tecnológica em geral, e em particular, das Tecnologias de Informação e Comunicação, que dissemina o conhecimento pelos quatro cantos do mundo, deu origem aquilo que se designa pelos micropoderes.

Estes micropoderes que os cidadãos hoje detêm limita, e muito, os poderes do estado, porque os governos e as empresas são escrutinados a toda a hora, como se tem vindo a observar amiúde, organizações como o "Tea Party" ou os movimentos como a "Primavera Árabe", os “Black Lives Matter”, ou o “MeToo” entre outros, tende a trazer para a discussão pública a voz dos cidadãos, mais que trazer a voz, traz também a sociedade que se une em torno de causas que, se não forem atendidas pelos estados pode ocasionar o derrube de governos. Na nossa história nunca os governos tiveram tamanha limitação governativa.

Não só os governos são escrutinados como as grandes empresas e a igreja. Uma por vias dos sindicatos, da concorrência do mercado e da má fama, outras, por via da desacreditação da mensagem devido, essencialmente aos avanços da ciência, que explicam muitos dos fenómenos que antes desconhecíamos.

Livro interessante e bem escrito. Recomendo.

[TarasProkopyuk · Rating 5 out of 5]

Очень мощная книга!

Во-первых, автор не просто диванный аналитик, а бывший исполнительный директор всемирного банка, а также ранее занимал должность министра торговли и промышленности Венесуэлы. Наим также известный политолог, его институт Готтлиба Дуттвайлера включил в список 100 самых влиятельных мыслителей современности, работал главным редактором журнала Foreign Policy.

Во-вторых, Наим приводит очень убедительные данные, факты и внушительные аргументы и аналитику того, что власть в разных её проявлениях попросту с каждым годом размывается и теряет свое влияние которое, она имела еще "вчера". Какая власть? Практически повсеместная! Ее теряют не только президенты, правительства, парламенты, военные институты, силовые ведомства, а и практически все руководители государственных образований и даже некоммерческие, религиозные, благотворительные и другие им подобные формы образований международных организаций и организаций более скромного, локального масштаба в странах, городах и даже в маленьких поселениях.

А еще в книге приводится множество примеров того каким именно образом происходит данная трансформация в обществе. Здесь также приводится убедительные аргументы и есть рассуждения автора о причинах такой ситуации. Это и, конечно же, прогресс коммуникации между людьми с помощью средств связи, существенная роль интернета, роль образования как один из основных и важнейших источников "освобождения" человека, наций и народов от политиков и руководителей тех или иных ведомств, которые все еще хотят жить в условиях, будто они в древнем мире и большая часть населения должна "считаться с ними" только из-за этого одного факта, а не смиренно выполнять роль "слуги народа", если уж они выбрали такой путь, и ещё много других менее важных факторов, которые поспособствовали потери власти в пользу человечеству в целом.

И это не только речь идет о цветных и прочих часто воспламеняющихся революциях в странах третьего и остального "отстающего" мира. Речь также идет о "сдачи власти" в самых передовых государствах таких как США, Канада, Великобритании и остальные страны-лидеры ЕС и большей восьмерки.

Одними словами мы с вами скорее всего в ближайшие несколько лет или десятилетий станем свидетелей того как падет "политический строй" в своем современном виде и человечество получит уже не новую власть в привычном понимании этого слова, а настоящих служителей народов.

Кто сомневается, обязательно посмотрите вот это видео и вы о многом чем после этого задумаетесь - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tJoII... В нем вы найдете методы и инструменты того как с помощью одной лишь идеи, стараниям и настойчивости можно совершить немыслимые результаты и заставить власть имущих не только считаться с вашими правами, но и заставить их более ревностно исполнять свои обязанности.

[Fabio Luís Pérez Candelier · Rating 3 out of 5]

"El fin del poder" de Moisés Naím, ensayo que se adentra en los entresijos que caracterizaron al poder y sus posibilidades para mostrar como dichas características al día de hoy se encuentran bastantes mermadas; como hay un abismo en la percepción de fortaleza que genera hacia afuera de sus dominios y la aplicabilidad real que posee a la hora de imponer sus designios.

[Moumeeta · Rating 5 out of 5]

The end of power by Moises Naim

This book has had me in its grip like few nonfictions have. I started this book simply because of Mark Zuckerberg’s Year of Books suggestion on Facebook. I was interested in experiencing the reading of a book at the same time that thousands others were reading it and discussing it online. That hasn't really happened. No posts have emerged from the page after the suggestion. :/

So it is gratifying that I liked the book so much. I started off disagreeing with a lot of the notions being put forward. For a while the writer seemed to be an apologist for the failures of capitalism. It sounded to me like he was going to conclude with the suggestion that for all its failures, capitalism is necessary for the broadest good etc.

In the first chapter he defines power and says that it is decaying.

“Power becomes entrenched as a result of barriers that shield incumbents from rivals.” This is surely changing as shown by the numerous examples he gives. These examples reel you in with their fascinating facts. One thing that helped me trust the book was that I did not feel the facts about emerging countries were being misrepresented to reach a conclusion. A few books I have read do this, on the assumption that the readers would not be from these countries and would have no way of knowing except from hyped media reports.

He then talks about how measuring power is virtually impossible. We know when it exists. We know it has limits but we do not really discuss power in any meaningful way except in terms of ranking which is subjective to the criteria used. He defines Power as “the ability to direct or prevent the current or future actions of other groups and individuals”. He dwells on the channels through which power is exercised. He talks about the importance of barriers to power and how these are radically falling. So while there may not be a shift in power, there is a severe limiting of the ability to exercise power. While I was reading this, it reminded me of an article on how marriage is about power and traditionally had the man wielding it. Economics is the most obvious base of power. Chastity of women was emphasised so hard so that men invest only in their own offspring. Codes of power related to shaming or killing women over chastity. Then love marriages upended this code by making marriage about companionship and not offspring. But the ability of women to earn was what changed the power structure effectively for individual women. It removed the most important barrier to power. Thus, while power has definitely not shifted, the changes of the past century severely constrain the earlier power of husbands.

One of the most interesting parts (and this book has many) is about Max Weber. He is known as the father of modern social science. “And so, Weber believed, the key to wielding power in modern society is bureaucratic organisation. Bureaucracy to Weber was far from the dirty word it has become today. It described the most advanced form of organisation humans had achieved and the one best suited for progress in a capitalist society.”

Moises’ theory of “How Power Lost its Edge” is based on the idea that three factors propelled the decay of power. These are the “More” , “Mobility” and “Mentality” revolutions. More refers to the fact that there is More of everything today than there ever has been in the history of the world. There is apparently much to celebrate as more people have more things. I was very incredulous about this chapter. Anyway, the More everything means that people “become more difficult to regiment and control”. The Mobility revolution means that power loses its grip over a “captive audience” as people move out from under it and go where they want in today’s world. “Nowadays remittances are more than five times larger than the world’s total foreign aid and larger than the annual total flow of foreign investment to poor countries.” These lead to the Mentality revolution which indicates the disconnect between aspirations and reality. “It breeds skepticism and mistrust of authority and an unwillingness to take any distribution of power for granted.” These three revolutions pose challenges to power in all its channels.

The next few chapters elaborate on exactly how this is unfolding. The examples drive home the point effectively. This is why I loved the book. That it changed an important way of perceiving the world. By the end I was taking for granted the assertion that power is indeed unstable and dangerously so.

My only gripe is that the last chapter which I hoped would talk about some kind of strategy was a disappointment. It legends promisingly as “So what? What to do?” and then comes off saying very little. It does say what Not to do. (Don’t rank power. It is utterly meaningless. Don't encourage the “Terrible simplifiers” who will use disenchantment to gain temporary power and merely cause instability.) But the “Bring Trust Back” suggestion is incomprehensible. That seems to me to hinge on the Beginning of Responsibility by those who govern.

This leaves the hopeful assertion that there will be disruptive innovation in politics as we are “on the verge of a revolutionary wave of positive political and institutional innovations” on a shaky note.

But, like i said, the impact of the idea that Power is decaying and it affects us big time, is a forceful one.

[Jonathan Mckay · Rating 2 out of 5]

A dangerous simplification.

The author claims that power is diluting due to revolutions happening in the areas of More, Mobility, and Mentality. This is a grand claim and a nice alliteration, but I would expect solid evidence and a robust framework to back it up. Naim does not deliver.

More - Capital in the 21st century does a very good job of how economic inequality is growing and likely to continue. While Piketty doesn't try to forge a link between wealth and power, I feel comfortable arguing that the gini index of power is likely associated with the gini index of wealth. Naim neither establishes an equivalent metric, nor addresses this trend at all.

Mobility - Some people are more mobile now, yes. Are we witnessing a revolution in mobility? World 3.0: Global Prosperity and How to Achieve It has a much more convincing argument that this is not the case.

Mentality - New players are disrupting the battle for 'hearts and minds' across the globe, but is this a new development? Tim Wu's The Master Switch: The Rise and Fall of Information Empires makes a much more convincing argument that we have seen historical cycles of media disruption and consolidation, suggesting we are in the midst of a cycle, not a revolution.

Naim also manages to mangle the definition of entropy and completely misread the implications of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Power is changing, yes. Is power diluting? Maybe. But Naim does not make a convincing case, nor does he give a definition of what diluting power actually means.

[Vinod Ravi · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book should be a (new) compulsory text for anyone studying / interested in power and politics. Systematic and comprehensive account of how power is not only shifting but inherently changing. Not all of it is necessarily his own original thought, but Naim nonetheless offers a compelling argument as to why we need to recognize that power is not only changing hands, but that that our fundamental conceptions and assumptions surrounding 'power' are in need of redefinition as well. Loved it.

[Alejandro Teruel · Rating 4 out of 5]

Siempre había considerado a Moisés Naím como un economista por lo que me sorprendió que en una entrevista televisa reciente lo presentaran como economista y periodista. Sin embargo, revisando con calma su trayectoria profesional encuentro que la presentación es muy justa y que su labor como columnista y articulista muestran claramente sus dotes como divulgador de temas desde una óptica que nunca reniega de su formación como economista. En El fin del poder encontramos un libro prolijo en datos llamativos al servicio de una tesis interesante pero no muy profunda. Considerando la polémica que se produjo cuando Francis Fukuyama escribió El fin de la historia y el último hombre (1992) y la desesperada defensa que esgrimió Fukuyama de que tal título se refería al fin de la historia en un sentido hegeliano, es evidente que el título de este libro de Naím tiene más de ardid publicitario que de fondo.

El libro trata sobre los cambios del poder y la tesis es que los grandes y tradicionales ejercedores del poder (las grandes potencias, los grandes ejércitos, las grandes corporaciones, los grandes partidos políticos, las grandes instituciones religiosas) cada vez cuentan con menos poder efectivo y más posibilidades de perder su poder relativo debido a la agilidad y el poder de veto u obstaculización de agentes más pequeños, la disminución de barreras de entrada a nuevos actores y la visibilidad de escándalos divulgados por medios sociales. Naím empaqueta las razones de manera mnemónica en más (el crecimiento de la población, de actores, de recursos distribuidos en la población, etc.), movilidad (más posibilidades que la población migre o se mude en búsqueda de mejores condiciones y oportunidades de vida) y mentalidad (actitud).

Curiosamente, en 1990, Alvin y Heidi Toffler escribieron un libro tanto o más prolijo, que el de Naím titulado mucho más honestamente como El cambio del poder: Conocimiento, bienestar y violencia en el umbral del siglo XXI, el tercer libro de la trilogía que comenzó con el impactante El shock del futuro (1970) y La tercera ola (1980) que expone:

El cambio del poder sostiene que las absorciones y reestructuraciones corporativas que hemos visto hasta ahora no son más que las primeras salvas de batallas empresariales -mucho mayores y completamente insólitas- que aún están por librarse.[...]

En resumen, El cambio del poder trata el tema de las crecientes luchas por el poder que afrontamos todavía a medida que la civilización industrial va perdiendo su dominio del mundo y surgen nuevas fuerzas [...]

[...S]e centra en el papel -profundamente modificado- del conocimiento en relación con el poder. Presenta una nueva teoría del poder social, y examina los cambios que se avecinan en los negocios, la economía, la política y los asuntos mundiales.

Los Toffler van más allá que Naím en los contextos de poder e incluyen cambios en las relaciones de poder en ambientes como el de los docentes y sus alumnos, el gerente y los trabajadores que reportan a él, los marginados. Curiosamente, Naím no menciona el libro de los Toffler, a pesar de que mucho del territorio cubierto por Naím constituye una actualización del mapa esbozado por los Toffler, los cuáles a su vez se fundamentan en una serie de pensadores previos. De hecho los grandes temas tratados por Naím en relación al poder (Comprender el poder, poder y estructura organizacional, poder político, poder militar, poder geopolítico, poder empresarial, poder sindical, poder de las iglesias, poder de las ONGs, poder de los medios) se acerca mucho a los temas tratados por los Toffler, según puede desprenderse de los títulos ede las secciones en que organiza su bibliografía: La filosofía del poder, Burocracia y organización social, Empresa/Economía/Finanzas, Medios de Comunicación, Política, gobierno y Estado, Religión, Temas militares, Relaciones mundiales, Socialismo y marxismo, Fascismo, Investigación y espionaje, Conocimiento y sociedad, Informática y comunicaciones, Ciencia y tecnología, Historia y biografía. La poca profundidad del análisis de Naím y Toffler resalta al tomar en cuenta el papel central del análisis del poder en el pensamiento posmoderno de autores como Michel Foucault, Roland Barthes, Jacques Derida, George Bataille, Jean Baudrillard o Jürgen Habermas, ninguno de los cuales amerita siquiera una mención en cualquiera de los dos libros.

En su prefacio, Naím reconoce que su libro nace de las frustraciones que vivió como Ministro de Fomento del posteriormente derrocado presidente venezolano Carlos Andrés Pérez, un apuballante choque que se dio entre una concepción clara, correcta pero profundamente tecnócrata de la dirección económica de un país y la realidad política y social del mismo. Es fascinante seguir la evolución del pensamiento de Naím, convertido prácticamente en exilado de su propio país y mucho más consciente de la necesidad de entender la realidad sociopolítica y de comunicar la economía con la política.

Al comparar, aunque sea de lejos, El cambio del poder (Powershift) con El fin del poder surge la pregunta de si cada generación necesita que le recuerden que el poder es transitorio (sic transit gloria) y está en constante cambio. Uno fácilmente se imagina un intelectual griego lamentando el fin del poder helénico y el surgimiento de los prágmáticos romanos, el romano lamentando el cambio de poder generado por la incorporación de bárbaros al ejército romano y así hasta los cambios de poder generados por la Revolución Francesa, el imperio napoleónico, el colapso del imperio austrohúngaro o el imperio británico para nombrar solo algunos ejemplos limitados a Europa. En todos ellos, hubo profundas cambios de más, movilidad y mentalidad, hubo quienes lamentaron el final de una época de grandeza y estabilidad y quienes saludaban el auge de una nueva época de mayor autonomía y dinamismo. Esta perspectiva histórica, de largo plazo, ¿echa por tierra el trabajo de Naím? No lo creo; considero que cada generación tiene que estudiar y accionar su relación con el poder. En este sentido conviene recordar algunos de los veinticinco supuestos que los Toffler incluyen en la séptima parte de su libro:

1. El poder es inherente en todos los sistemas sociales y en todas las relaciones humanas[...]

2. [...] la pérdida de poder por parte de uno no siempre es una ganancia de poder para otro.

8. La violencia, que se utiliza principalmente para castigar, es la fuente de poder menos versátil[...]

9. Las relaciones de clases, razas, géneros, profesiones, naciones y otras agrupaciones sociales se ven incesantemente alteradas por cambios en la población, la ecología, la tecnología, la cultura y otros factores. Estos cambios llevan al conflicto y se traducen en una redistribución de los recursos del poder.

10. Cuando los sistemas del poder están lejos del equilibrio, pueden producirse cambios repentinos y aparentemente extraños. Esto se debe a que cuando un sistema o subsistema es altamente inestable, los efectos no lineales se multiplican. Grandes aportaciones de poder pueden producir pequeños resultados. Pequeños acontecimientos pueden desencadenar la caída de un régimen. Una tostada quemada puede llevar a un divorcio.

11. Si tanto la concentración excesiva de poder como la concentración escasa de él dan como resultado el horror social, ¿qué cantidad de poder concentrado resulta ya excesivo? [...]

En resumen, a pesar que el libro se hace pesado y repetitivo, vale la pena echarle un vistazo para tener una mejor idea del panorama actual y como punto de partida para percepciones y análisis más profundos sobre el tema del poder en el mundo de principios del siglo XXI.

[Maciej Nowicki · Rating 4 out of 5]

The End of Power by Moisés Naím talks about sources of power and explains that there is a mutation of power happening right now. The general narrative is that power is concentrating, that inequality of wealth and inequality of income has become more radical. The wealthy have more and therefore have more power, money and opportunities to buy politicians and distort public policy in ways that reinforce the trends towards inequality. However, Naím argues that power has become easier to get, harder to use and faster to lose.

Anyway, the book starts with an explanation of what power is and it says that “Power is the ability to direct or prevent the current or future actions of other groups and individuals. Or, put differently, power is what we exercise over others that leads them to behave in ways they would not have otherwise have behaved.”

Then, Naím goes to the main concept of the book which is the erosion of power. He argues that power is becoming harder to use, there are far more constraints on those that have power and, finally, power is becoming more slippery. In other words, Moisés Naím looked at various statistics in many areas, such as governments, armies, labour movements, culture, church and, of course, the media and business and explains what has happened to power. He presents the fact that politicians, people in power, CEOs all the people who once almost had that absolute control, who really could do whatever they wanted, are no longer able to execute that absolute control with the same degree of freedom that once existed. It doesn’t matter if talk about CEOs, presidents, military leaders or even pope, their power becomes more fragile vs individuals. In addition, turnover rates of the powerful are now much higher than it used to be.

The author goes through different areas which used to define power and affected its level. For instance, he explains the erosion of the barriers that used to protect the reduced space of the most powerful people. The tumbling down of barriers is produced by many factors such as demographic, economic, political and technological changes and also by changing social values, expectations and norms. Other reasons are economic growth, the increase in migrations and the improvement of health services and education systems in poor countries.

We also have to understand how power works. We must take into account that it doesn´t exist in isolation and, commonly, is wielded by many players. In many cases, the whole structure of connections is vulnerable vs new stakeholders and is built on shared interests and trust. These interests sometimes are selective.

Furthermore, Naím claims that the sources of power are in a constant move so despite the previously mentioned conditions it´s also impossible to foresee it precisely. We have Legitimate Power based on their position or role. It’s determined by the hierarchy of the organization. Next, Coercive Power...(if you like to read my full review please visit my blog https://leadersarereaders.blog/the-en...)

[Erhardt Graeff · Rating 3 out of 5]

Moise Naim offers an exhaustive account of all the ways power is more diffuse and less easy to hold onto in the contemporary era. The "end of power" affects all players too: corporations, philanthropies, religions, NGOs, and of course governments. He argues this is the result of three concurrent revolutions:

1) The More Revolution: there is more of everything now, especially people who live longer and have access to more economic and technological resources, and it is "overwhelming the means of control"

2) The Mobility Revolution: all these people are moving more than prior generations, and that makes them harder to control; they are no captive audiences anymore

3) The Mentality Revolution: people's expectations are outpacing the capacity of governments to satisfy them; new standards and norms mean people aren't captive to old institutions

It's nearly impossible to summarize all the ways in which Naim catalogues power's decay across different sectors and venues. It's so exhaustive, it's exhausting to read. At times his tone is strident and evangelistic. He isn't wrong, or at least is arguments always seem sound and obviously come from a careful and well-informed observer of the global socio-politico-economic landscape. But at times it reads like a string of popular essays.

Despite my problems with the writing style—and his unexpected recommendation to strengthen political parties as one counteraction—this is an important book, especially if it is being read and taken seriously by half of the major world leaders who blurbed the book. This was even the inaugural book of Mark Zuckerberg's Facebook book club!

I expect we will be talking about the "End of Power" for many years to come: it's worth a thorough browse.

[Kay · Rating 1 out of 5]

Okay, I admit it. I was curious about this book because Mark Zuckerberg tried to make it happen. When he announced that reading was a worthwhile pursuit after all and maybe some people should get off the internet for a bit to more deeply engage in concepts presented in book form, my interest was piqued. What book could have made Mr. Facebook try to get the whole of his social media network to read?

The result is what you might expect. It's the kind of think book high-powered business executives turn to when they want to do some deep thinking. It references disruption and the innovator's dilemma, so you can see why it might appeal to one of Silicon Valley's most powerful college dropouts.

While there are some interesting concepts in this book and it comes up with a fairly persuasive umbrella concept for thinking about changing dynamics in the wold today, it's not what you might think of as a good book. Long stretches of it are incredibly dull and many of the examples cited are overly obvious. I enjoyed the chapter about military power and mostly thought the stuff about corporations seemed right. But his stuff about churches, media and colleges seemed a bit half-assed. Though similar dynamics certainly exist, for-profit colleges don't pose the same threat to traditional ones in the same way new technologies disrupt old ones -- or at least they haven't yet.

Certainly there was some interesting stuff to chew on in here, but I don't think it's as life-changing for me as it is for someone like Zuckerberg. Perhaps because no matter how the power dynamics are shifting, I'm still not the one wielding it.

[Batul · Rating 1 out of 5]

Finally, here's a book that's annoying enough for me to actually spend time explaining the 1 star rating I've given it. If I had a "forced to skim because I feel guilty about not finishing a book I bought" shelf, this book would be the prime exhibit.
Naìm tries to argue that power itself is decaying, not merely shifting or being redistributed among more numerous and more mobile actors who've undergone a radical shift in mentality. However his insistence on this point is what makes it both absolutely unconvincing and conceptually unsound. At best, notwithstanding the sheer dryness of the text, Naìm could have spent more time making his argument more cogent and clear. At worst, the book merely repackages done-to-death debates and observations about the shift in the operation of power in the 21st century as some sort of novel and revolutionary idea. For my part, I suspect it's the latter. It's reminiscent of a term paper submitted by an overzealous college freshman, wherein the patently absurd thesis is more than disproven by the counterarguments. The "analysis' is nothing short of an avalanche of cherry picked, superficial statistics and anecdotes. Also, did the author ever revisit his definition of power after he finished writing it in chapter 1?
Don't waste your time or money on this one.

[Frank Kelly · Rating 5 out of 5]

Pardon the play on words but this is a very powerful book. Naime attempts to delve into why ever major traditional source of power we have known for generations - indeed centuries -- has been rocked and knocked from their pedestals. I do not agree with a number of his conclusions but I am somewhat haunted by the book (in a good way). My view is we have entered a new Dark Ages of sorts, where materialism, fear and the collapse of faith in God has led to the implosion in faith and respect for political leaders, religious leaders (aside from Pope Francis who's wild popularity since being elected Pope shows just how starved the world is for virtuous, selfless leadership).

The question I have is: Who really wants to be in a position of power these days? Those dedicated to their families and prudent, thoughtful, balanced lives are either strongly discouraged from standing up for positions of power or don't stand a bats chance in hell of getting there even if they wanted to. Naime has ignited a critical question - and challenge - we all have to ask ourselves and deal with now in order to give future generations hope - at least more hope than this generation seems to have in the role of those who hold power.

[Laurie · Rating 4 out of 5]

Sometimes a bit long and repetitive, and I didnt think the title appropriate until the last chapter, since I agreed with another comment that power has shifted more than disappeared. But his points are all valid and his writing fluid and enjoyable to read, if overly long. The last chapter, though, especially gave me food for thought. I have long felt the loss and the need for elected representatives whom I can trust to follow the guidelines of a philosophy spelled out in the platform of a political party. I want to be able to TRUST them and to leave them the task of governing. I think Naim has put his finger on something very important, even essential, for our future, which would help meet the challenge of balancing tyranny and anarchy. How hard will/would it be to follow this path??? In the US, we have strayed far.

[John · Rating 3 out of 5]

The End of Power expands the banal point that challenges to power in business, politics, religion and other realms arise more quickly, less predictably and more successfully than ever before in human history. The author attributes this shift in power dynamics to material abundance, population mobility, and rising aspirations among societies as they climb Maslow's hierarchy. From here he proposes new social, political and economic mechanisms to harness power and avoid chaos. If this logic flow seems straightforward but debatable to you before reading the book it will likely seem more so afterwards.

[Lloyd Fassett]

1/5/14 heard about it because the general press covered the fact that Mark Zuckerberg is kicking off his 'book every two weeks book club' with it on Facebook and, well, you know, that's ironic that I would find out about it that way and it's probably ironic that you're reading this.

[Pablo Donetch · Rating 4 out of 5]

Moisés Naín propone una tesís interesante aunque no tremendamente reveladora: el poder cambia de mano mucho más rápido ahora que en la edad media o en los años 70s y las RRSS son la principal fuente de cambio.
Es un buen libro, pero no le va a cambiar la manera en que mira el mundo.

[Artur Benchimol · Rating 3 out of 5]

Interesting and current. The problems are all over us, his framing is what makes the book.

[Justin Williams · Rating 1 out of 5]

This would have been an interesting essay. Instead it was a dry, repetitive 300 page thesis.

[Ietrio · Rating 1 out of 5]

You shall not have other gods but the government, and the government should be named by someone Naim likes.

[David Dinaburg · Rating 2 out of 5]

Ouroboros—the serpent eating its own tail—is a cross-cultural image whose genesis seems to stem from a society’s sense of repetition and inevitability; nothing ends and nothing is new. Such it is with The End of Power; not simply with its premise— “power” rarely strays from a definition circumscribed by the international language of MBA-holders and global politicians—but with its examples, citations, and style:

Take, for example, the case of the young Norwegian champion Magnus Carlsen, another chess phenom who in 2010 became the world’s No. 1 player, at age nineteen. According to D.T. Max, who profiled him for The New Yorker, Carlsen’s success had more to do with his unorthodox and surprising strategies (relying in part on his prodigious memory) than with computer-based training: “Because Carlsen has spent less time than most of his cohort training with computers, he is less prone to play the way they do. He relies more on his own judgment. This makes him tricky for opponents who have relied on software and databases for counsel.”

Yet this appreciable novelty is apparently viewed askance when it shifts from chess to publishing a geopolitical economic treatise; many recent pop-econ books cite the same crusty old studies from the same Wharton school economists and Bschool professors that weaned a generation of modern investment bankers and CEOs on the same markets-first pap and pablum. Expectations have become so warped—surely in part catalyzed by the formulaic demolition and rebuilding of the MBA-psyche that creates legions of interchangable “opponents who have relied on software and databases for counsel”—that modern accountability procedures are seen as an assault on “power” itself.

The decoupling of power from size, and thus the decoupling of the capacity to use power effectively from the control of large Weberian bureaucracy, is changing the world. And this decoupling invites a disquieting thought: if the future of power lies in disruption and interference, not management and consolidation, can we expect ever to know stability again?

Elegant phrasing—the italics are part of the original text—but it isn’t accurate.

Such resources are a necessary precondition of power; but without an effective way of managing them, the power they create is less effective, more transient, or both. Weber’s central message was that without a reliable, well-functioning organization, or, to use his term, without a bureaucracy, power could not be effectively wielded.

Bureaucracy decoupled from size doesn’t make it ill-functioning. Simply because it “merely” takes a dozen employees to manage the billions of photographs off-loaded to Instagram, the ur-example that is trotted out to show “disruption” more often than not in The End of Power, shows highly effective management and more power concentration. Instagram was acquired by one of the largest companies on the planet: folded into a huge bureaucracy. And that business model—Make tech, get acquired by Apple/facebook/Microsoft—is more on-trend than ever. Why go public when you can get acquired, and start a new business? So where, again, is the purported lack of “well-functioning organization” in modern business? Instagram is different from Kodak—fewer employees, for one—but to brand Instagram “disruptive” simply because it supplanted one of the old guard isn’t grounds to Cassandra the whole thing as the “end of power.”

What The End of Power contains is an elegy for older businesses—the Kodaks—and this theme is continued throughout the book. If your ideology is similar to mine, I lament your lack of agency—but woe unto thee if your schemes differ, or onto you shall I affix the label of “disruptor.”

As retired General Wesley Clark, a Vietnam veteran and former Supreme Allied Commander Europe of NATO, told me: “Today, a division commander can directly control attack helicopters 30 to 40 ahead of the battle, and enjoy what we call ‘full spectrum dominance’ [control of air, land, sea, and cyberspace]. But there are things we were doing in Vietnam that we cannot do today. We have more technology but narrower legal options.” The “success” of an autocratic Russia’s savage tactics in Chechnya or of Sri Lanka’s brutal suppression of the Tamil Tigers are bloody examples of what it takes for superior firepower to win today over a tenacious, if militarily weaker, adversary.

It is the classic cartoon violence conundrum; the child-viewer knew that having an aggressive weapon—the cutting edge on Leonardo’s katanas or the fire-blasts from Wheeler’s Captain Planet ring—are a liability, not an asset, in battling the villain. Much better to have a blunt instrument, to at least give the illusion of non-lethality (bad-guy longevity for the sake of the writing staff, if nothing else). Overwhelming, murderous force is not allowed; not if you want to be the hero.

Javier Solana, the Spanish foreign minister who in the mid-1990s became secretary-general of NATO and then the European Union’s foreign policy chief, told me: “Over the last quarter-century—a period that included the Balkans and Iraq and negotiations with Iran, the Israeli-Palestinian issues and numerous other crises—I saw how multiple new forces and factors constrained even the richest and most technologically advanced powers. They—and by that I mean we—could rarely do any longer what we wanted.”

Aw shucks, another military leader constrained by humanitarian concerns and accountability. Why hast thou forsaken me, power?! Not to be flippant, but the stunning lack of self-reflection by the general and secretary-general—as well as the context into which their quotes were dropped—demands the quasi-biblical “thee’s” and “thou’s” of those certain in the unassailability of their ideals.

There is more self-deception throughout The End of Power than the simply the moaning of the powerful:

The decay of power creates fertile soil for demagogic challengers who exploit disappointments with incumbents, promise change, and take advantage of the bewildering noise created by the proliferation of actors, voices, and proposals. The confusion created by changes that come too fast, that are too disruptive and undercut old certainties and ways of doing things offer great opportunities for leaders with bad ideas...Of course, demagogues, charlatans, and snake-oil peddlers are nothing new; history is replete with the stories of those who have gained power and whose stay at the top had terrible consequences. What is new is an environment where it has become far easier for newcomers—including those with toxic ideas—to acquire power.

Which means, basically, that leaders with “good” ideas—traditional ideas I agree with—are stuck dealing with vetoes, committee wrangling, pesky oversight and accountability hearings, and a dozen other diminutions of power, while those with bad ideas are taking advantage of the noise to seize ever more power and ruin everything. So power is ending, unless it’s for people who should be kept powerless, in which case, they are seizing power in fresh new ways. Which is horrifying to me because my Coase diagram doesn’t know how to label and apply the traditional metrics based off these new players.

The role of new technology is unclear in the diminution of power; to understand how things like drones and Twitter currently impact geopolitical regimes, you probably need to understand things like drones and Twitter:

Drones are not a new concept. But technological advances in recent decades have made them much more powerful, and their low cost and ability to fly unmanned make them more attractive for combat missions. And they are finding nonmilitary uses—for example, by real estate agents filming houses from above, ecologists monitoring the rainforest, and ranchers following their herds of cattle as they roam the prairies.

As far as U.S. real estate agents go, they are breaking the law. As soon as your use a drone for commercial photography purposes, it is illegal. So take your pictures of birds and clouds, but if you sell them, or have them linked to your business—in this case, the advantages of an aerial view of a home—then you are breaking drone-law. Unless you have Special Airworthiness Certificates - Experimental Category (SAC-EC) for civil aircraft. Do you have SAC-EC? If so, I sure hope you’re a drone manufacturer and you’re only flying your camera-drone around for the purposes of R&D, market surveys, or crew training. Since that’s all that’s allowed. Legally. See you in 2015, aerial-drone-based photography, when you might become a viable, legal business model. But for now, let’s get back to the parade of horribles:

As Stanford University’s Francis Fukuyama, who has been building his own drone to take better nature photos, has observed, “As the technology becomes cheaper and more commercially available, moreover, drones may become harder to trace; without knowing their provenance, deterrence breaks down. A world in which people can be routinely and anonymously targeted by unseen enemies is not pleasant to contemplate.”

Again, unless these bird photos are solely for private use, Mr. Fukuyama is breaking the current regulations simply by taking UAV-nature photos while simultaneously bemoaning the frontier-freedoms of wild west drone-ownership as they might apply to everyone else. “Drones for me, but not for those others whose provenance I don’t know.” “Deterrence breaks down”? Deterrence to what? Load a drone up with explosives and smashing into something? Creepily following your ex-spouse? Irritating your neighbors? You can do all of these things without the gift of flight. It sounds like hypothetical fear mongering to me, which is particularly galling when Mr. Fukuyama is clearly exploiting the technology to his own benefit. So, again, his personal power is increasing—he can build drones to take “better nature photos” thanks to drone technology. But it can also be used by others, for things I don’t like or are dangerous to me. That’s called…all technology. Sticks to protect the weak from the muscled, longbows to stop a Feudalism’s lord-funded heavy cavalier, machine guns to thwart massive standing armies. And now we wait to see what the internet is created into overcoming.

The End of Power is not bad, it’s just rote. And frustrating. It is hard to see what benefit it brings to a discussion, outside of assuaging the powerful for failing to reach the imaginary apex their election/coup/promotion led them to expect. Jessica Mathews, president of the Carnegie Endowment, carried one of the high points of the book:

Do you trust the government in Washington to do what is right, all or most of the time? Until the mid-sixties, 75 percent of Americans answered yes. A slide then began and continued steeply downward for fifteen years, so that by 1980, only 25 percent said yes. In the interim, of course, we the Vietnam War, two assassinations, Watergate and the near-impeachment of the president and the Arab oil embargo. So there were plenty of reasons for people to feel estranged, even antagonistic. But what matters most is that the trust did not recover. For the last three decades, the approval level has bumped from around 20 to 35 percent. The trust percentage fell below half in about 1972. This means that anyone under the age of forty has lived their entire life in a country the majority of whose citizens do not trust their own national government to do what they think is right. Through four long decades, none of the massive changes Americans have voted for in leadership and in ideology have changed that. Think what it means for the healthy functioning of a democracy that two-thirds to three-quarters of its people do not believe that their government does the right thing most of the time.

This is quoted a second time near the conclusion of the book: “This means that anyone under the age of forty has lived their entire life in a country the majority of whose citizens do not trust their own national government to do what they think is right.” It bears repeating a few dozen more times. It is shocking in its banality. And it feeds into the great strength of The End of Power—its forward-facing speculation. Unlike the idyllic The New Digital Age, The End of Power is restrained in its predictions and subtle in its advice. It strikes such a moderate tone that the reader never feels bullied or lectured at. The first two hundred pages inform the final forty; you can’t simply skip to the end and pick up the salient points. Even though the majority is a frustrating slog of samey-same 20th century economic theory injected with digital-technology apocalyptic prophecy, the wrap-up is worth the price of admission.

[Mal Warwick · Rating 5 out of 5]

Mark Zuckerberg hit it out of the park with this one, the first selection in his attempt to channel Oprah Winfrey with his own “book club.” The End of Power is a remarkably insightful inquiry into the limits of power in today’s wired world, when a tiny group of fanatics can upend national policy half a world away. As Naim writes, referring not just to global leadership but to corporate executive suites, established churches, and the military, “the powerful are experiencing increasingly greater limits on their power. . . In the twenty-first century, power is easier to get, harder to use — and easier to lose.”

We often speak of the complexity of the modern world, but we tend to lose sight of just how complex it is. Consider this: in 1941, when I was born, world population stood at roughly 2.3 billion, whereas today we humans number 7.2 billion. Then, there was a total of 61 sovereign states on the planet. Today, there are 193 members of the United Nations, more than three times as many. But the number of players on the world stage today is far greater than that, including a plethora of global and regional organizations and what the media has come to call “non-state players” such as ISIS and Al Qaeda, all of which have come into being in the last seventy years. The upshot is that a US State Department list of treaties currently in force runs to almost five hundred pages! Add to these facts the speed and breadth of reach of information technologies and “profound shifts in expectations, values, and social norms,” and the case seems made. “But the more fundamental explanation as to why barriers to power have become more feeble,” Naim writes, “has to do with the transformation in such diverse factors as rapid economic growth in many poor countries, migratory patterns, medicine and healthcare, education, and even attitudes and cultural mores.” In the midst of all this complexity, how could anyone hope to be the master of all he surveys?

Naim analyzes the means by which power is expressed, referring to them as Muscle (coercion), Code (obligation), Pitch (persuasion), and Reward (inducement). He posits three overarching phenomena that give rise to weakening the barriers to power: the More revolution (there’s more of everything now), the Mobility revolution (we and our money, not just communications, move around a lot faster now), and the Mentality revolution (“taking nothing for granted anymore”). Like any typology, Naim’s are debatable — other thinkers may carve up reality along different lines — but they ring true to my ear. After all, to note what he calls “a cascading diffusion of power,” we have only to look at the gridlock that has overtaken the political process in many nations (not just the US) and the shocking ability of micropowers — those “non-state actors” — to change the course of world history. Even “a core axiom of war has been stood on its head. Once upon a time, superior firepower ultimately prevailed. Now that is no longer true.” There are parallel developments in nearly every realm of human endeavor. For example, “the advantage long considered to be built into corporate scale, scope, and hierarchy has been blunted, or even transformed into a handicap.”

These are not superficial changes or limited to one region of the globe. “[S]ince 2004,” Naim writes, “three-quarters of the world’s economies have made it easier to start a business.” Rising competition, indeed!

Naim sees these developments as fraught with risk. He writes of five significant ones: Disorder (obviously), De-Skilling and Loss of Knowledge (witness Fox News), the Banalization of Social Movements (through social media, “sound bites,” and oversimplified pitches by politicians and NGOs), Boosting Impatience and Shortening Attention Spans (just look around), and Alienation (obviously).

The End of Power is endlessly thought-provoking — a worthy addition to our understanding of the way the world works today.

Moises Naim has an extraordinary resume. Born in Libya, educated at MIT, a former Venezuelan Minister of Trade and Industry and former Executive Director of the World Bank, he was the editor in chief of Foreign Policy magazine from 1996 to 2010. The End of Power is only the latest of the more than ten books he has written or edited.

[Sean Goh · Rating 2 out of 5]

The central thesis is interesting enough, but the book is filled with a lot of interesting examples (I learnt that Spain / Portugal and other European countries have only been democracies since the 70s, for example) that don't do much to advance the ideas introduced in the first chapter. They end up becoming superficial hopping from topic to topic (especially obvious in the chapter on religion on 3 other things). Save your time, read a summary.
_______
Power is defined as the ability to direct or prevent the current or future actions of other groups and individuals.

4 channels of power:

Muscle: threat of violence, coercion through application of brute force or removal of privileges.

Code: Ethos, appeal to higher moral codes, traditions. E.g. Ten Commandments.

Pitch: Persuasion as seen in advertising

Reward: Deployment of material benefits to sway behaviour.

These channels can be distinguished by two criteria:
-Does the manipulation change the situation or just the perception of the situation?
-Does the manipulation offer an improvement of the situation, or does it lead the party to accept a result that is not an improvement?

Econs 101: The more market power players possess, the more concentrated the industry is likely to be (fewer firms accounting for more of the revenue)
Market power is a result of barriers to entry, be they natural (high capital costs e.g. airplane manufacturing) or artificial (intellectual property rights e.g. pharma drugs). And the barriers to entry are falling or becoming more porous.

Max Weber theorised that without a reliable, well functioning organisation (i.e. a bureaucracy [yes irony hurhur]) power could not be effectively wielded.
To him a bureaucracy featured specific jobs with detailed rights, obligations responsibilities and scope of authority as well as a clear system of supervision, subordination and unity of command. Its internal workings were based on the application of clear and consistent rules for everyone regardless of SES, family, religious or political links.

When people are more numerous and living fuller lives they become more difficult to regiment and control.

Micropowers cannot match the superpowers in raw power, but they wield disproportionate influence due to the newly expanded scope for techniques like vetoes, foot-dragging, diversions and interference.

Too much power leads to tyranny. Too little leads to anarchy and ineffectuality.
Too little power leads to short-term planning and acting as long-term plans cannot be enacted and sustained due to shortened tenures of leaders.

Fragmentation of power in the political system may lead to gridlock (as seen in the US) and the propensity to adopt minimalist decisions at the lat minute, eroding the quality of public policy.

Weber: The state claims the ultimate monopoly on violence, using it to keep society safe. Previously guerilla fighters would seek popular support to legitimise their violence. Now it is increasingly borderless.

In an increasingly borderless world the bargaining power of unions is steadily eroding.

The only way to counter gridlock in a vetocracy is to make it less democratic, to concentrate power more.

The fragmentation of power and general uncertainty makes it easier for "Terrible Simplifiers" to exploit the confusion and noise by making vague promises and using demagogy. (Trump hurhur). To face up to them first one must accept the reality of fragmentation, before carefully scrutinising their promises.

[Shannon Clark · Rating 4 out of 5]

Thought provoking and a good thing to have read - however I do think some of his conclusions are weakened by context (i.e. he's focused only on certain aspects of power and certain networks). Not sure I fully agree he has proven his thesis - though the basic message that "power" today isn't the same as power was in the past is fairly true - if also not as notable as he seems to think it is.

I don't mean to be harsh - I learned a great deal and enjoyed reading this book for the thought provoking aspects of it - but I also didn't love this bunch unequivocally - I think it needs to be tempered with some better works on networks and on influence (and on how you can have "power" in less obvious ways.

For example in networks the real "power" to get the network to take some action isn't always with the most well known or prominent or clearly "powerful" people in that network - at least measured by typical means such as titles. Instead in many companies (to take one familiar network) and extending the company to their related network (partners, suppliers, customers, employees etc) the real power to impact change across that network may be somewhere other than just the CEO - it may be in some key cross-functional employees who bridge the disparate parts of that network together and help shape the common messages and missions. It may be outside of the company in the form of key customers or partners. It may be clear when you start to study it - or it may be very very subtle (i.e. it could be a big customer "throwing their weight around" to force certain changes - or it may be more subtle - a smart marketer or even smart HR person who initiates major changes through subtle shifts in language and message.

[Ronald · Rating 2 out of 5]

I really want the authors thesis to be true.
But he really does not support his conclusion with what is presented in this book. His citations more often than not do not actually support the point he is making and using those work for support. The writing is also inconsistent and claims made at the start of the book are not carried through the book. At first he claims Facebook / Twitter had little or no real influence on social changes and yet later he claims those social media are all powerful.
He makes lots of statements but does not follow up. He also ignores the part where large companies fire a CEO for doing something wrong as if that was the end of the wrong doing. Forgetting that the CEO is replaced by another figurehead and nothing changes and the giant company still does the evil. The fired CEO gets his Golden Parachute worth millions and then replaces the next fired CEO.

The biggest mistake with the book is that the authors words actually show that power is actually being collected by fewer people / companies / governments at a more rapid pace. What he claims is the dissolution of power is actually large companies / governments being hit by what people call Disruptors. He also totally ignores the influence of big media companies such as FOX and MSNBC in shaping public opinion.

I was very disappointed with this book and it worries me that this book was recommended by Mark Zuckerberg as something that people should read.

[Craig Newmark · Rating 5 out of 5]

(Speaking for myself only, not the site I founded which is generously cited in this book)

Power is flowing to regular people, people who've never had much of a voice, largely facilitated by the Internet.)

The End of Power discusses the categories of power and influence, and how the nature of power is decentralizing at an evolutionary pace. (Not so bad, since modern revolutions get people killed, and often the new boss is as bad as the old boss, or worse.)

Maybe End of Power will inspire more people to work with one another, to acquire the grassroots-based power that balances top-down traditional power.

The book deserves more about the hope it offers, but it's time to actually do something inspired by that hope.