Daron Acemoglu and James A. Robinson – The Narrow Corridor: Book Review & Audio Summary

Book Info

• Book name: The Narrow Corridor: States, Societies, and the Fate of Liberty
• Author: Daron Acemoglu, James A. Robinson
• Genre: History & Politics, Social Sciences & Humanities
• Pages: 416
• Published Year: 2019
• Publisher: Penguin Press
• Language: English
• Awards: Winner of the 2020 Lionel Gelber Prize for the best book on international relations, Winner of the 2020 Cundill History Prize

Audio Summary

Synopsis

In “The Narrow Corridor,” MIT economist Daron Acemoglu and University of Chicago professor James A. Robinson explore why liberty has been so elusive throughout human history. Drawing on centuries of examples from ancient Sumeria to modern Nigeria, they argue that true freedom requires a precarious balance between state power and societal strength. Too much state control leads to despotism, while too little creates violent chaos. The authors introduce the concept of the “narrow corridor”—a delicate path where states are strong enough to prevent violence but constrained enough by society to prevent tyranny. This groundbreaking work challenges conventional thinking about democracy and development, offering fresh insights into why some nations thrive while others struggle with oppression or anarchy.

Key Takeaways

• Liberty fundamentally means freedom from violence, intimidation, and domination—not just abstract political rights
• True freedom requires a constant balance between a strong state (the Leviathan) and an empowered, mobilized society
• The “narrow corridor” to liberty is both difficult to enter and challenging to maintain, requiring ongoing cooperation and tension between government and citizens
• Both despotic states (too much power) and absent states (too little power) fail to deliver liberty—the sweet spot lies in between
• Historical and modern examples show that without societal mobilization to check state power, even well-intentioned governments can become tyrannical

My Summary

Why Another Book About Liberty Matters Right Now

I’ll be honest—when I first picked up “The Narrow Corridor,” I wasn’t sure we needed another book about liberty and democracy. We’re drowning in political commentary these days. But Acemoglu and Robinson have done something different here, something that kept me reading late into the night and scribbling notes in the margins.

What struck me immediately was their willingness to look beyond the usual Western-centric narratives about freedom. They start with the Epic of Gilgamesh, for crying out loud—a 4,200-year-old Sumerian text. That’s not your typical political science approach, and it’s exactly why this book feels so refreshing.

The authors, both heavyweight economists (Acemoglu at MIT and Robinson at the University of Chicago), bring serious academic credentials to the table. But they’ve managed to write something that doesn’t feel like homework. Their central argument is deceptively simple: liberty isn’t just about having the right constitution or the right leader. It’s about maintaining a perpetual, dynamic tension between state power and societal power.

The Gilgamesh Problem: An Ancient Dilemma That Never Went Away

Let’s talk about King Gilgamesh. Here’s a guy ruling over Uruk, one of humanity’s first great cities, complete with impressive architecture and bustling markets. Sounds great, right? Except Gilgamesh was a monster. He literally strutted around murdering people’s sons and raping their daughters.

The people begged the gods for relief, and the god Anu created Enkidu—a man equal to Gilgamesh in strength—to balance him out. At first, it worked. Enkidu pushed back against the tyranny. But then something predictable happened: the two became friends and started conspiring together. Instead of checks and balances, you got double the despotism.

Acemoglu and Robinson call this the “Gilgamesh problem”: how do you control state power so it benefits rather than oppresses society? This isn’t just an ancient question. I found myself thinking about modern parallels constantly while reading this section. How many times have we seen reformers come to power promising change, only to become part of the problem?

The Uruk example illustrates a crucial point: society wasn’t mobilized. Regular people had no political power, no way to organize and push back effectively. The elites—Gilgamesh and Enkidu—had zero incentive to be benevolent. This pattern repeats throughout history, from ancient empires to modern dictatorships.

Understanding the Narrow Corridor

Here’s where the book’s central metaphor comes in, and it’s brilliant in its simplicity. Liberty exists in a narrow corridor between two dangerous extremes.

On one side, you have the despotic Leviathan—an all-powerful state that dominates society. Think Stalin’s Soviet Union, Mao’s China, or the countless military dictatorships that have plagued human history. These states are strong, sure, but they use that strength to crush individual freedom.

On the other side, you have the absent Leviathan—a weak or nonexistent state that can’t maintain order. The authors use 1990s Nigeria as a prime example, and their description is harrowing. Under General Sani Abacha’s kleptocratic military dictatorship, Lagos descended into chaos. Corpses littered the streets alongside mounting garbage. Gang members called “area boys” terrorized citizens with murder and robbery. No electricity, no running water, no functioning government services.

The narrow corridor lies between these extremes. It’s where the state is strong enough to prevent violence and provide basic services, but society is organized and powerful enough to prevent the state from becoming tyrannical. It’s called a “corridor” rather than a “door” because entering it is just the beginning—you have to keep walking, keep maintaining that balance. And it’s “narrow” because it’s incredibly difficult to achieve and sustain.

Why the Corridor Metaphor Resonates

I love this metaphor because it captures something that simpler frameworks miss: liberty is dynamic, not static. You don’t just achieve it and then relax. It requires constant work, constant negotiation between state and society.

Think about it in terms of your own life. If you’ve ever been part of any organization—a company, a club, a homeowners association—you’ve seen this dynamic play out. Too much centralized control and people feel oppressed and disengage. Too little structure and things descend into chaos. The sweet spot requires ongoing communication, occasional conflict, and constant adjustment.

Now scale that up to entire nations with millions of people, centuries of history, and deeply entrenched power structures. Suddenly, you understand why liberty has been so rare throughout human history.

The Violence Problem: Hobbes Was Right (Sort Of)

The book spends considerable time with Thomas Hobbes, the 17th-century philosopher who famously argued for an all-powerful sovereign to prevent society from descending into a “war of all against all.” Acemoglu and Robinson give Hobbes credit where it’s due while also pointing out where he went wrong.

Hobbes was right that without a strong central authority, human societies tend toward violence. The authors cite research by Steven Pinker showing that in ancient hunter-gatherer societies, more than 500 out of every 100,000 people died violent deaths annually. Over a 50-year lifespan, that means roughly a quarter of everyone you knew would die violently. Let that sink in for a moment.

Living under those conditions would be absolutely terrifying. You couldn’t plan for the future, couldn’t invest in anything long-term, couldn’t trust anyone outside your immediate kin group. Hobbes correctly identified that a powerful state—a Leviathan—was necessary to escape this nightmare.

But here’s where Hobbes got it wrong: he assumed any Leviathan was better than none. He didn’t adequately consider that the Leviathan itself could become the primary source of violence and domination. History has provided us with countless examples of states that murdered their own citizens on scales that would make ancient tribal warfare look tame by comparison.

Modern Applications of the Violence Question

This discussion of violence and state power has immediate relevance to contemporary debates about policing, military intervention, and government authority. We’re constantly negotiating these questions in our own society.

Should we defund police departments or reform them? The narrow corridor framework suggests the answer isn’t simply “more police” or “fewer police,” but rather: how do we ensure law enforcement is strong enough to prevent violence while remaining accountable to the communities they serve?

What about international intervention in failed states? The absent Leviathan creates humanitarian disasters, but imposing order from outside often creates resentment and new forms of domination. The narrow corridor doesn’t offer easy answers, but it provides a better framework for thinking through these dilemmas.

Society’s Role: Why Mobilization Matters

One of the most important insights in “The Narrow Corridor” is that society isn’t just a passive recipient of state action. For liberty to exist, regular people need to be organized, mobilized, and capable of pushing back against state overreach.

This is where the book really challenged my thinking. I’ve always understood that democracy requires citizen participation, but Acemoglu and Robinson go deeper. They argue that societal mobilization needs to be constant and evolving. It’s not enough to have occasional elections or the theoretical right to protest. Society needs actual power—the ability to say “no” to the state and make it stick.

What does this look like in practice? It means having independent institutions: free press, civil society organizations, labor unions, business associations, religious groups, and countless other organizations that exist outside direct state control. It means having legal systems where citizens can challenge government actions. It means having cultural norms that value questioning authority.

But here’s the tricky part: society also needs to be cohesive enough to work together rather than tearing itself apart. If society fragments into warring factions, you end up back in Hobbes’s war of all against all, and people start begging for a strong leader to restore order—even at the cost of liberty.

Practical Applications for Building Societal Power

Reading this section made me think about my own participation in civic life. How often do I just complain about government policies without actually doing anything? The narrow corridor framework suggests that maintaining liberty requires active engagement, not passive consumption of news.

Here are some concrete ways the book’s insights apply to daily life:

Join and support independent organizations. Whether it’s a local community group, a professional association, or a cause you care about, these organizations form the fabric of civil society. They’re not just about their specific missions—they’re training grounds for democratic participation and counterweights to state power.

Engage with local government. National politics gets all the attention, but local government decisions often affect your life more directly. Attending city council meetings, joining school boards, or participating in neighborhood planning sessions might seem boring, but this is where you learn to exercise societal power.

Support independent journalism. A free press is crucial for holding power accountable. Subscribe to newspapers, support investigative journalism, and be willing to pay for quality information. The decline of local news in particular has weakened society’s ability to monitor what governments are doing.

Build bridges across divides. Remember, societal fragmentation threatens liberty as much as state domination. Making an effort to understand people with different political views, backgrounds, or experiences strengthens the social fabric necessary for the narrow corridor.

Understand the rules and use them. Liberty depends on institutions and laws, but only if people know how to use them. Understanding your rights, how government processes work, and how to effectively advocate for change is crucial.

Historical Examples That Illuminate the Present

One of the book’s great strengths is its use of historical examples from around the world. Acemoglu and Robinson don’t just focus on the usual suspects—England, America, France. They examine cases from every continent and every era.

While the summary I received only touched on a few examples, the book apparently ranges from ancient Athens to modern China, from the Zulu kingdom to contemporary India. This global perspective is crucial because it shows that the narrow corridor isn’t culturally specific. It’s not about “Western values” or any particular religious or philosophical tradition. It’s about the fundamental dynamics between state and society.

The Nigeria example particularly stuck with me. Here was a country with enormous natural resources, a large population, and significant human capital. Yet under Abacha’s kleptocratic rule in the 1990s, it descended into conditions that seem almost medieval. The state existed primarily to enrich the dictator and his cronies, not to serve citizens. Meanwhile, society was too fragmented and intimidated to push back effectively.

This wasn’t some ancient history or exotic foreign place—this was the 1990s, within my lifetime. It’s a sobering reminder of how quickly things can deteriorate when the balance between state and society breaks down.

Strengths and Limitations of the Narrow Corridor Framework

Let me be clear: I think this book makes a significant contribution to how we think about liberty, democracy, and development. The narrow corridor framework provides a more nuanced and realistic model than simplistic narratives about “good governance” or “democratic transitions.”

The book’s main strength is its recognition that liberty is dynamic and requires ongoing work. Too many political theories treat democracy as an endpoint—once you achieve it, you’re done. Acemoglu and Robinson understand that liberty is more like riding a bicycle: you have to keep pedaling and adjusting or you’ll fall over.

Another strength is the global perspective. By drawing on examples from every continent and every era, the authors avoid the trap of assuming that Western liberal democracy is the only path to liberty or the inevitable endpoint of history.

However, the book isn’t without limitations. Some readers have noted that it can be quite dense and academic in places. While Acemoglu and Robinson write more accessibly than many economists, they’re still dealing with complex historical and theoretical material. If you’re not used to reading academic work, some sections might feel like a slog.

Another potential criticism is that the framework, while insightful, can sometimes feel more descriptive than prescriptive. It’s great at explaining why liberty is rare and difficult to maintain, but it offers fewer concrete solutions for how societies can enter or stay in the narrow corridor. To be fair, maybe that’s appropriate—perhaps there aren’t universal solutions, only context-specific strategies.

Comparing The Narrow Corridor to Other Works

If you’ve read Acemoglu and Robinson’s previous book, “Why Nations Fail,” you’ll recognize some similar themes. Both books emphasize the importance of institutions and the interaction between political and economic factors. However, “The Narrow Corridor” goes deeper into the specific dynamics of liberty and focuses more explicitly on the relationship between state and society.

The book also reminds me of Francis Fukuyama’s recent work, particularly “Political Order and Political Decay.” Fukuyama similarly emphasizes the importance of balancing state capacity with accountability. However, Acemoglu and Robinson place more emphasis on societal mobilization and less on technocratic state-building.

For readers interested in these themes, I’d also recommend Yuval Noah Harari’s “Sapiens” for its perspective on human cooperation and social organization, and Steven Pinker’s “The Better Angels of Our Nature” for its analysis of violence and state formation. Each brings a different lens to similar questions about how humans organize themselves and create conditions for flourishing.

Questions Worth Pondering

As I finished “The Narrow Corridor,” I found myself wrestling with several questions that I’m still thinking about:

First, can societies that have never been in the narrow corridor successfully enter it? Or do historical legacies of either despotism or statelessness create path dependencies that are nearly impossible to overcome? The authors suggest that entering the corridor is possible but difficult—I’m curious about what specific conditions make it more or less likely.

Second, how do we maintain the narrow corridor in an age of global challenges like climate change, pandemics, and international terrorism? These problems seem to require unprecedented levels of state coordination and power. Can we grant states the authority they need to address these challenges without sliding toward despotism?

Third, what role does technology play in the narrow corridor? Social media and digital surveillance create new tools for both state control and societal mobilization. Does the internet make the corridor wider or narrower?

Why This Book Matters for Our Moment

I started this review by admitting skepticism about whether we needed another book on liberty and democracy. Having finished it, I’m convinced that “The Narrow Corridor” offers something genuinely valuable for our current moment.

We’re living through a time when democracy seems fragile in many places, including countries that seemed solidly in the narrow corridor. Populist leaders are gaining power by promising simple solutions to complex problems. Social media is fragmenting society into hostile camps. Faith in institutions is declining.

The narrow corridor framework helps make sense of these developments without falling into either complacency or despair. It reminds us that liberty has always been fragile and always required work to maintain. Our current challenges aren’t unprecedented—they’re part of the ongoing negotiation between state and society that has always characterized the narrow corridor.

At the same time, the book offers a warning. Societies can exit the narrow corridor, either sliding toward despotism or collapsing into chaos. It’s happened many times before, and it could happen again. The corridor is narrow precisely because it’s easy to fall off on either side.

But here’s the hopeful part: the book also shows that the corridor can be entered and maintained through human effort and cooperation. Liberty isn’t a gift from enlightened leaders or an accident of geography. It’s something that people create and sustain through their collective action.

Final Thoughts from Books4soul

“The Narrow Corridor” is the kind of book that changes how you see the world. After reading it, I find myself analyzing political events through the lens of state-society balance. I’m more aware of how my own civic participation (or lack thereof) affects the collective project of maintaining liberty.

Is it an easy read? Not always. Is it worth the effort? Absolutely. Acemoglu and Robinson have given us a framework for understanding one of humanity’s most important challenges: how to create and maintain conditions where people can live free from violence, domination, and fear.

I’d love to hear your thoughts if you’ve read the book. Do you find the narrow corridor metaphor helpful? Can you think of examples from your own country or community where you’ve seen the balance between state and society shift? What do you think are the biggest threats to liberty in our current moment?

Drop your thoughts in the comments below. These conversations are how we collectively make sense of complex ideas and maybe even figure out how to keep our own societies in the narrow corridor. After all, that’s exactly the kind of societal engagement the book argues is essential for liberty.