The Narrow Corridor Quotes

“For my friends, everything; for my enemies, the law.”
― Daron Acemoğlu, Balance of Power: States, Societies, and the Narrow Corridor to Liberty

“It is the way the state and society interact and control each other that determines the capacity of our state, the policies of our government, and our resilience, prosperity, security, and ultimately, liberty.”
― Daron Acemoğlu, Balance of Power: States, Societies, and the Narrow Corridor to Liberty

“liberty requires not just the abstract notion that you are free to choose your actions, but also the ability to exercise that freedom.”
― Daron Acemoğlu, Balance of Power: States, Societies, and the Narrow Corridor to Liberty

“The only way of achieving durable liberty is to . . . forge the balance necessary for building a Shackled Leviathan. True liberty can flourish neither without a state nor under the yoke of a Despotic Leviathan. But there is no universal way of building a Shackled Leviathan . . . Every country’s prospects are molded by its unique history, the types of coalitions and compromises that are possible, and the exact balance of power between state and society.”
― Daron Acemoğlu, The Narrow Corridor: States, Societies, and the Fate of Liberty

“In the end it decided that power was the opportunity to acquire riches and prestige, to be in a position to hand out benefits in the form of jobs, contracts, gifts of money etc. to relations and political allies.”
― Daron Acemoğlu, The Narrow Corridor: States, Societies, and the Fate of Liberty

“In his book Republicanism: A Theory of Freedom and Government, Pettit argues that the fundamental tenet of a fulfilling, decent life is non-dominance—freedom from dominance, fear, and extreme insecurity. It is unacceptable, according to Pettit, when one has to live at the mercy of another, having to live in a manner that leaves you vulnerable to some ill that the other is in a position arbitrarily to impose.”
― Daron Acemoğlu, The Narrow Corridor: States, Societies, and the Fate of Liberty

“But dominance doesn’t just originate from brute force or threats of violence. Any relation of unequal power, whether enforced by threats or by other social means, such as customs, will create a form of dominance, because it amounts to being”
― Daron Acemoğlu, Balance of Power: States, Societies, and the Narrow Corridor to Liberty

“Thomas Hobbes saw things in the 1640s, as the English Civil War was raging, when he argued that people should “submit their Wills” to an all-powerful state, a Leviathan, which would then provide security and prosperity.”
― Daron Acemoğlu, Balance of Power: States, Societies, and the Narrow Corridor to Liberty

“梭倫一方面限制菁英對國家機器的控制、限制菁英對一般公民的宰割，另一方面卻提高國家的能力，這種做法並不是什麼古代文明的特例，而是制約國家巨靈的精義。只有社會樂於和國家巨靈合作時，國家機器才能建立更強大的能力，但是這種合作需要人民相信自己可以控制這頭怪獸。”
― Daron Acemoğlu, 自由的窄廊：國家與社會如何決定自由的命運

“The decline of labor coercion is not the only factor transforming the corridor. Another important economic trend, but with more complex, multifaceted implications for liberty, is globalization.”
― Daron Acemoğlu, Balance of Power: States, Societies, and the Narrow Corridor to Liberty

“Perhaps the most important was that Latin American society had been created on a premise of political hierarchy and inequality”
― Daron Acemoğlu, Balance of Power: States, Societies, and the Narrow Corridor to Liberty

“The first place in the world to grant female suffrage was Wyoming in 1869, earning it the nickname the Equality State.”
― Daron Acemoğlu, Balance of Power: States, Societies, and the Narrow Corridor to Liberty

“A common factor in the history of the demise of Italian communes and the overthrow of the Weimar and Chilean democracies is the power and opposition of landed interests, which made the corridor narrower and led to an increasingly polarized society. The Red Queen effect, in turn, became much more of a zero-sum, existential fight rather than a race between state and society that advanced the capacities of both. This is visible in the Italian case from the fact that the elites started fighting not just to increase their standing against the communes but to destroy them, and the communes came to view coexistence with the elites as impossible, preferring autocracy to the elites' creeping influence.

Machiavelli summed this up well in The Prince when he observed that

'the people do not wish to be commanded or oppressed by the nobles, while the nobles do desire to command and to oppress the people. From these two opposed appetites, there arises in cities one of three effects: a principality, liberty, or licence. A principality is brought about either by the common people or by the nobility, depending on which of the two parties has the opportunity. When the nobles see that they cannot resist the populace, they begin to support someone from among themselves, and make him prince in order to be able to satisfy their appetites under his protection. The common people as well, seeing that they cannot resist the nobility, give their support to one man so as to be defended by his authority.'

Macchiavelli is in fact identifying a force propelling many modern-day movements sometimes labeled 'populist.' Though the term originates with the late nineteenth-century U.S. Populist movement, exemplified by the People's Party, its recent specimens, even if diverse, disparate, and lacking a generally agreed definition, do have some common hallmarks. They include a rhetoric that pits the 'people' against a scheming elite, an emphasis on the need to overhaul the system and its institutions (because they are not working for the people), a trust in a leader who (supposedly) represents the people's true wishes and interests, and a repudiation of all sorts of constraints and attempts to compromise because they will stand in the way of the movement and its leader. Contemporary populist movements, including the National Front in France, the Freedom Party in the Netherlands, the Partido Socialista Unido de Venezuela (United Socialist Party of Venezuela) started by Hugo Chávez, and the Republican Party refashioned by Donald J. Trump in the United States, all have these features, as did the earlier fascist movements (though they augmented them with a stronger militarism and fanatical anticommunism). As in the case of the Italian communes, the elite may in fact be scheming and against the common people, but the idea that a populist movement and its all-powerful leader will protect the people's interests is just wishful thinking.”
― Daron Acemoğlu, The Narrow Corridor: States, Societies, and the Fate of Liberty

“El Leviatán con la cara de Jano La primera grieta de la tesis de Hobbes es la idea de que el Leviatán tiene una única cara. En realidad, el Estado tiene la cara de Jano. Una cara se parece a lo que Hobbes imaginó: impide la guerra, protege a sus súbditos, resuelve conflictos de manera justa, proporciona servicios públicos, comodidades y oportunidades económicas, establece la base de la prosperidad económica. La otra es despótica y temible: silencia a sus ciudadanos, es insensible a sus deseos. Los domina, los encarcela, los mutila y asesina. Roba el fruto de su trabajo o ayuda a que otros lo hagan.”
― Daron Acemoğlu, El pasillo estrecho: Estados, sociedades y cómo alcanzar la libertad

“Madison sostuvo que las Constituciones debían diseñarse de modo que «debe hacerse que la ambición contrarreste a la ambición».”
― Daron Acemoğlu, El pasillo estrecho: Estados, sociedades y cómo alcanzar la libertad

“la libertad comienza cuando la gente se libera de la violencia, la intimidación y otros actos degradantes. Las personas deben ser capaces de adoptar libremente decisiones sobre su vida y tener los medios para llevarlas a cabo sin la amenaza de un castigo inaceptable o unas sanciones sociales draconianas.”
― Daron Acemoğlu, El pasillo estrecho: Estados, sociedades y cómo alcanzar la libertad

“Liberty needs the state and the laws. But it is not given by the state or the elites controlling it. It is taken by regular people, by society. Society needs to control the state so that it protects and promotes people’s liberty rather than quashing it like Assad did in Syria before 2011. Liberty needs a mobilized society that participates in politics, protests when it’s necessary, and votes the government out of power when it can.”
― Daron Acemoğlu, Balance of Power: States, Societies, and the Narrow Corridor to Liberty

“Industrialists and professionals can flourish in the corridor both economically and politically, because they have assets (in the form of their expertise, knowledge, and skills) that remain valuable even as the economy transforms, and because their urban existence gives them new opportunities to organize and remain politically relevant in the midst of the Red Queen dynamics. Not so for landowners, who fear losing their lands, which are much more easily taken away from them than the factories of industrialists and the skills of professionals. Indeed, societal mobilization often comes with demands for loss of economic, political, and social privileges for landowners, and the situation in the Weimar Republic was no different (even if such attempts were stymied by President Hindenburg, who was himself from the Prussian landed aristocracy and sympathetic to their concerns). Landowners also feared, again rightly, becoming marginalized as the political center of gravity shifted away from them as a result of democratic politics. All of this made them skeptical of the burgeoning Shackled Leviathan.”
― Daron Acemoğlu, The Narrow Corridor: States, Societies, and the Fate of Liberty