Why Nations Fail: The Origins of Power, Prosperity, and Poverty

by Daron Acemoğlu

Gradual change also prevented ventures into uncharted territories. A violent overthrow of the system means that something entirely new has to be built in place of what has been removed. This was the case with the French Revolution, when the first experiment with democracy led to the Terror and then back to a monarchy twice before finally leading to the French Third Republic in 1870. It was the case in the Russian Revolution, where the desires of many for a more equal system than that of the Russian Empire led to a one-party dictatorship that was much more violent, bloody, and vicious than what it had replaced. Gradual reform was difficult in these societies precisely because they lacked pluralism and were highly extractive. It was the pluralism emerging from the Glorious Revolution, and the rule of law that it introduced, that made gradual change feasible, and desirable, in Britain.