James A. Robinson has 3 audiobooks on Listento.it, narrated by 4 narrators, with an average listener rating of 4.7★ across 148 ratings. The most-rated is Why Nations Fail.
Why Nations Fail
Summary
Brilliant and engagingly written, Why Nations Fail answers the question that has stumped the experts for centuries: Why are some nations rich and others poor, divided by wealth and poverty, health and sickness, food and famine? Is it culture, the weather, geography? Perhaps ignorance of what the right policies are? Simply, no. None of these factors is either definitive or destiny. Otherwise, how to explain why Botswana has become one of the fastest growing countries in the world, while other African nations, such as Zimbabwe, the Congo, and Sierra Leone, are mired in poverty and violence? Daron Acemoglu and James Robinson conclusively show that it is man-made political and economic institutions that underlie economic success (or lack of it). Korea, to take just one of their fascinating examples, is a remarkably homogeneous nation, yet the people of North Korea are among the poorest on earth while their brothers and sisters in South Korea are among the richest. The south forged a society that created incentives, rewarded innovation, and allowed everyone to participate in economic opportunities. The economic success thus spurred was sustained because the government became accountable and responsive to citizens and the great mass of people. Sadly, the people of the north have endured decades of famine, political repression, and very different economic institutions - with no end in sight. The differences between the Koreas is due to the politics that created these completely different institutional trajectories. Based on 15 years of original research Acemoglu and Robinson marshall extraordinary historical evidence from the Roman Empire, the Mayan city-states, medieval Venice, the Soviet Union, Latin America, England, Europe, the United States, and Africa to build a new theory of political economy with great relevance for the big questions of today, including: China has built an authoritarian growth machine. Will it continue to grow at such high speed and overwhelm the West? Are America’s best days behind it? Are we moving from a virtuous circle in which efforts by elites to aggrandize power are resisted to a vicious one that enriches and empowers a small minority? What is the most effective way to help move billions of people from the rut of poverty to prosperity? More philanthropy from the wealthy nations of the West? Or learning the hard-won lessons of Acemoglu and Robinson’s breakthrough ideas on the interplay between inclusive political and economic institutions? Why Nations Fail will change the way you look at—and understand—the world. PLEASE NOTE: When you purchase this title, the accompanying PDF will be available in your Audible Library along with the audio.
©2012 Daron Acemoglu (P)2012 Random House
The Narrow Corridor
Summary
From the authors of the international best seller, Why Nations Fail, a crucial new big-picture framework that answers the question of how liberty flourishes in some states but falls to authoritarianism or anarchy in others - and explains how it can continue to thrive despite new threats. Liberty is hardly the "natural" order of things. In most places and at most times, the strong have dominated the weak and human freedom has been quashed by force or by customs and norms. Either states have been too weak to protect individuals from these threats or states have been too strong for people to protect themselves from despotism. Liberty emerges only when a delicate and precarious balance is struck between state and society. There is a Western myth that political liberty is a durable construct, a steady state, arrived at by a process of "enlightenment". This static view is a fantasy, the authors argue; rather, the corridor to liberty is narrow and stays open only via a fundamental and incessant struggle between state and society. The power of state institutions and the elites that control them has never gone uncontested in a free society. In fact, the capacity to contest them is the definition of liberty. State institutions have to evolve continuously as the nature of conflicts and needs of society change, and thus society's ability to keep state and rulers accountable must intensify in tandem with the capabilities of the state. This struggle between state and society becomes self-reinforcing, inducing both to develop a richer array of capacities just to keep moving forward along the corridor. Yet this struggle also underscores the fragile nature of liberty. It is built on a fragile balance between state and society, between economic, political, and social elites and citizens, between institutions and norms. One side of the balance gets too strong, and, as has often happened in history, liberty begins to wane. Liberty depends on the vigilant mobilization of society. But it also needs state institutions to continuously reinvent themselves in order to meet new economic and social challenges that can close off the corridor to liberty. Today we are in the midst of a time of wrenching destabilization. We need liberty more than ever, and yet the corridor to liberty is becoming narrower and more treacherous. The danger on the horizon is not "just" the loss of our political freedom, however grim that is in itself; it is also the disintegration of the prosperity and safety that critically depend on liberty. The opposite of the corridor of liberty is the road to ruin. Includes a bonus PDF of the maps and figures from the book. PLEASE NOTE: When you purchase this title, the accompanying PDF will be available in your Audible Library along with the audio.
©2019 Daron Acemoglu, James A. Robinson (P)2019 Penguin Audio
El pasillo estrecho
Summary
La libertad no es el orden natural de la humanidad. En la mayoría de lugares y de épocas, los fuertes han dominado a los débiles y la libertad ha sido aplastada por la fuerza o por las costumbres y las normas. A menudo los Estados no han tenido la suficiente capacidad para proteger a los individuos o, por el contrario, han sido tan fuertes que la gente no ha podido defenderse de su despotismo. La libertad sólo surge cuando se logra un equilibrio delicado y frágil entre el Estado y la sociedad. El pasillo que lleva a la libertad es estrecho y sólo puede recorrerse si se produce una lucha constante entre el Estado y la sociedad. Pero, ¿en qué consiste esa lucha? En un recorrido fascinante que nos lleva del mundo árabe en tiempos de Mahoma a las ciudades-Estado de la Italia medieval, de la Latinoamérica de las dictaduras a la Suecia que inventó la socialdemocracia, de la caótica República de Weimar a la China imperial, El pasillo estrecho nos introduce en el que tal vez sea el proceso más fascinante de la historia: el de la obtención de la libertad. Una libertad que solo puede existir cuando la sociedad cuestiona el poder del Estado y de las élites, pero también cuando, al mismo tiempo, existe un Estado robusto capaz de defender nuestros derechos cuando estos se ven amenazados. Please note: This audiobook is in Spanish.
©2019 Daron Acemoglu and James A. Robinson (P)2020 Centro Libros PAPF, S. L. U., Deusto