book review on why nations fail

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Nonfiction Books » Economics Books

Why nations fail, by daron acemoglu and james robinson, recommendations from our site.

“In terms of understanding this top inequality, I mentioned the possibility that it might be about politics. How should we think about politics? What are the levers of politics? For that we need a conceptual framework and that’s what this book tries to provide. It’s co-authored with my long-term collaborator and friend Jim Robinson – and it’s not about US or UK or Canadian inequality. It runs through several thousand years of history, and tries to explain how societies work and why, often, they fail to generate prosperity for their citizens. It’s a very political story.” Read more...

The best books on Inequality

Daron Acemoglu , Economist

“The key to this book is really all in an early example in the text, where they cite the small town of Nogales on the Arizona-Mexico border. The border basically goes through the middle of the town: you can drive a cigarette paper through the differences between the people on the two sides of the border. They’re from similar families, they’re related, they have shared history and so on, but one of them is in North America, and the other is in Mexico. There are visible and quite stark contrasts in the standards of living and prosperity of people who live either side of the border. The question they ask is, how did this happen? This leads them to an issue which crops up in Ian Morris’s book as well, and I think is an absolutely essential factor to look at when we try to understand relative speeds and levels of economic development, which is the role of inclusive institutions.” Read more...

The best books on Emerging Markets

George Magnus , Economist

“ Why Nations Fail is by two of my favourite economists, two very close friends and co-authors of mine, Daron Acemoglu and James Robinson. They’re tackling a subject that I’ve worked on with them, and they do a great job of bringing it to life and making it vivid. Why Nations Fail is one of those books that stretches your mind and gives you all these examples and connections between them, so that you come away from it saying, “Wow. I didn’t know that.” It’s really, really interesting.” Read more...

The best books on Why Economic History Matters

Simon Johnson , Economist

Other books by Daron Acemoglu and James Robinson

The narrow corridor: states, societies, and the fate of liberty by daron acemoglu and james robinson, economic origins of dictatorship and democracy by daron acemoglu & daron acemoglu and james robinson, our most recommended books, the big short: inside the doomsday machine by michael lewis, a monetary history of the united states, 1867-1960 by anna schwartz & milton friedman, the wealth and poverty of nations by david s landes, this time is different by carmen reinhart & kenneth rogoff, the worldly philosophers by robert l heilbroner, the passions and the interests by albert hirschman.

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‘Why Nations Fail’

August 16, 2012 issue

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In response to:

What Makes Countries Rich or Poor? from the June 7, 2012 issue

To the Editors :

Jared Diamond provides an engaging review of our book Why Nations Fail [ NYR , June 7]. Though Diamond accepts the importance of institutions and their political roots—the main focus of our book—and asserts that “perhaps they provide 50 percent of the explanation for national differences in prosperity,” his review is mostly concerned with defending an alternative perspective, which we have called the geography hypothesis. There is no surprise in this as Diamond is the most erudite and original proponent of this hypothesis, and our book dismisses it.

Diamond adds to his original thesis about the timing of the Neolithic Revolution shaping the patterns of intercontinental inequality claims that have more recently been articulated by economist Jeffrey Sachs on how tropical areas are condemned to poverty because of their greater disease burden and their poor soil quality, and how topography and natural resources are crucial determinants of prosperity. He also criticizes our book for not sufficiently grounding institutional dynamics within the geographic context—not explaining which types of natural resources are a curse and not linking institutional variation to geographic factors. Finally, he is critical of our discussion of the Neolithic Revolution. However, in each of these cases, Diamond does not do justice to our argument.

First, contrary to Diamond’s claim, there is nothing that contradicts tropical medicine and agricultural science in claiming that these are not major factors shaping differences in national prosperity. That these geographic factors cannot by themselves account for prosperity is illustrated by an empirical pattern we discuss—the “reversal of fortune.” Among the countries colonized by Europeans, those that were more prosperous before colonization ended up as relatively less prosperous today. This is prima facie evidence that, at least in the sample that makes up almost half of the countries in the world, geographic factors cannot account—while institutional ones can—for differences in prosperity as these factors haven’t changed, while fortunes have. Academic research also shows that once the effect of institutions is properly controlled for, there is no evidence that geographic factors have a significant impact on prosperity today.

Similarly, major improvements in health technology starting in the 1940s have made significant headway against diseases and have led to unparalleled increases in life expectancy in many parts of the world. But they have not led to faster growth in these areas over the last sixty years in contrast to what would have been expected if the disease burden were a crucial determinant of prosperity.

Second, though Diamond criticizes us for not explaining “which resources especially lend themselves to the curse,” it is not characteristics of a natural resource but the institutions that determine whether it is a curse or a blessing—diamonds are a curse for Sierra Leone and Angola, and a blessing for Botswana.

Third, Diamond claims that our revisionist take on the Neolithic Revolution, based on the idea that sedentary life and social complexity came before farming, suffers from a “complete absence of evidence” when in fact it is now the conventional wisdom amongst archaeologists. He also claims that the Fertile Crescent was the “only area in which local agriculture could have arisen” because of the presence of various species of wheat, even though agriculture originated in many places, for example in China, based not on wheat but rice. More importantly, however, our point was that once one examines the distribution of domesticable plants and animals more broadly, Diamond’s theory predicts that the Neolithic Revolution would happen first in Eurasia, but cannot account for differences in prosperity today, which are huge within Eurasia and not explained by the timing of the Neolithic Revolution (as recent research by Ola Olsson and Christopher Paik shows).

Fourth, Diamond suggests that, by eschewing geographic determinism, our theory is as if institutions appeared “randomly.” This is not a fair characterization. Though at times the process of institutional development has been influenced by geography or disease ecology (as our own academic research joint with Simon Johnson has documented), these are not the major factors shaping institutional variation today. But this does not mean that institutional dynamics are simply random; our book explains how institutional variation today is largely a systematic outcome of historical processes, and how these processes can be studied, revealing, for example, why Europe, the United States, and Australia are richer than the Middle East, Africa, and Latin America.

Daron Acemoglu James A. Robinson Cambridge, Massachusetts

Jared Diamond replies :

My review praised Daron Acemoglu and James Robinson for writing a wonderful book about the role of institutions in shaping why countries are rich or poor. The book’s limitations, repeated now in their letter, are that they dismiss the roles of all other factors, especially geographic factors. That’s because of their oversimplified view of geography’s effects; their criticizing the straw man that geography explains everything (it doesn’t, and it’s not an alternative perspective but an additional perspective); and their failure to explain the origins of good institutions themselves.

The first point of their four-point letter is that tropical medicine and agricultural science aren’t major factors shaping national differences in prosperity. But the reasons why those are indeed major factors are obvious and well known. Tropical diseases cause a skilled worker, who completes professional training by age thirty, to look forward to, on the average, just ten years of economic productivity in Zambia before dying at an average life span of around forty, but to be economically productive for thirty-five years until retiring at age sixty-five in the US, Europe, and Japan (average life span around eighty). Even while they are still alive, workers in the tropics are often sick and unable to work. Women in the tropics face big obstacles in entering the workforce, because of having to care for their sick babies, or being pregnant with or nursing babies to replace previous babies likely to die or already dead. That’s why economists other than Acemoglu and Robinson do find a significant effect of geographic factors on prosperity today, after properly controlling for the effect of institutions.

Second, Acemoglu and Robinson deny that characteristics of a natural resource determine whether it’s a curse or a blessing. But characteristics of diamonds and oil notoriously promote corruption and civil wars more than do characteristics of iron and timber.

Third, geography has had a big effect on modern prosperity through permitting local ancient origins of agriculture, in turn permitting sedentary life and social complexity. While sedentary life and social complexity did develop before farming in a few exceptional cases, Acemoglu and Robinson’s assertion that as a generalization it is conventional wisdom among archaeologists will be news to archaeologists. Acemoglu and Robinson misquote me in saying that I claim the Fertile Crescent to have been the only area where local agriculture could have arisen. Of course not: instead, I cited agricultural historians who showed that the Fertile Crescent was the only such area in western Eurasia; my book Guns, Germs, and Steel discussed at length how local agriculture also arose in at least eight areas outside western Eurasia. Acemoglu and Robinson are correct that the timing of the Neolithic Revolution doesn’t account for prosperity differences within Eurasia today; it “merely” accounts for about half of prosperity differences today around the world as a whole.

Finally, as readers may quickly confirm for themselves, it is indeed a fair characterization of Acemoglu and Robinson’s book to say that their theory is as if institutions appeared at random. Although their letter describes institutional variation today as a systematic outcome of historical processes, much of their book is actually devoted to relating story after story purportedly explaining how institutional variation developed unsystematically and at random, as a result of particular events happening in particular places at critical junctures.

To summarize, I agree with Acemoglu and Robinson that institutions are important. If they had said that, they would have written a completely wonderful book in which I would have found nothing to criticize. Unfortunately, they overstated their case and dismissed the roles of factors other than institutions. I continue to recommend their book as a sparkling account of the role of institutions. I hope that their next book will be an equally sparkling one, about the roles of those other factors.

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Inclusive vs Extractive

Normally, I’m fairly positive about the books I review, but here’s one I really took issue with.

Why have some countries prospered and created great living conditions for their citizens, while others have not? This is a topic I care a lot about, so I was eager to pick up a book recently on exactly this topic.

Why Nations Fail is easy to read, with lots of interesting historical stories about different countries. It makes an argument that is appealingly simple: countries with “inclusive” (rather than “extractive”) political and economic institutions are the ones that succeed and survive over the long term.

Ultimately, though, the book is a major disappointment. I found the authors’ analysis vague and simplistic. Beyond their “inclusive vs. extractive” view of political and economic institutions, they largely dismiss all other factors—history and logic notwithstanding. Important terms aren’t really defined, and they never explain how a country can move to have more “inclusive” institutions.

For example, the book goes back in history to talk about economic growth during Roman times. The problem with this is that before 800AD, the economy everywhere was based on sustenance farming. So the fact that various Roman government structures were more or less inclusive did not affect growth.

The authors demonstrate an oddly simplistic world view when they attribute the decline of Venice to a reduction in the inclusiveness of its institutions. The fact is, Venice declined because competition came along. The change in the inclusiveness of its institutions was more a response to that than the source of the problem. Even if Venice had managed to preserve the inclusiveness of their institutions, it would not have made up for their loss of the spice trade. When a book tries to use one theory to explain everything, you get illogical examples like this.

Another surprise was the authors’ view of the decline of the Mayan civilization. They suggest that infighting—which showed a lack of inclusiveness—explains the decline. But that overlooks the primary reason: the weather and water availability reduced the productivity of their agricultural system, which undermined Mayan leaders’ claims to be able to bring good weather.

The authors believe that political “inclusiveness” must come first, before growth is achievable. Yet, most examples of economic growth in the last 50 years—the Asian miracles of Hong Kong, Korea, Taiwan, and Singapore—took place when their political tended more toward exclusiveness.

When faced with so many examples where this is not the case, they suggest that growth is not sustainable where “inclusiveness” does not exist. However, even under the best conditions, growth doesn’t sustain itself. I don’t think even these authors would suggest that the Great Depression, Japan’s current malaise, or the global financial crisis of the last few years came about because of a decline in inclusiveness.

The authors ridicule “modernization theory,” which observes that sometimes a strong leader can make the right choices to help a country grow, and then there is a good chance the country will evolve to have more “inclusive” politics. Korea and Taiwan are examples of where this has occurred.

The book also overlooks the incredible period of growth and innovation in China between 800 and 1400. During this 600-year period, China had the most dynamic economy in the world and drove a huge amount of innovation, such as advanced iron smelting and ship building. As several well-regarded authors have pointed out, this had nothing to do with how “inclusive” China was, and everything to do with geography, timing, and competition among empires.

The authors have a problem with Modern China because the transition from Mao Zedong to Deng Xiaoping didn’t involve a change to make political institutions more inclusive. Yet, China, by most measures, has been a miracle of sustained economic growth. I think almost everyone agrees that China needs to change its politics to be more inclusive. But there are hundreds of millions of Chinese whose lifestyle has been radically improved in recent years, who would probably disagree that their growth was “extractive.” I am far more optimistic than the authors that continued gradual change, without instability, will continue to move China in the right direction.

The incredible economic transition in China over the last three-plus decades occurred because the leadership embraced capitalistic economics, including private property, markets, and investing in infrastructure and education.

This points to the most obvious theory about growth, which is that it is strongly correlated with embracing capitalistic economics—independent of the political system. When a country focuses on getting infrastructure built and education improved, and it uses market pricing to determine how resources should be allocated, then it moves towards growth. This test has a lot more clarity than the one proposed by the authors, and seems to me fits the facts of what has happened over time far better.

The authors end with a huge attack on foreign aid, saying that most of the time, less than 10% gets to the intended recipients. They cite Afghanistan as an example, which is misleading since Afghanistan is a war zone and aid was ramped up very quickly with war-related goals. There is little doubt this is the least effective foreign aid, but it is hardly a fair example.

As an endnote, I should mention that the book refers to me in a positive light, comparing how I made money to how Carlos Slim made his fortune in Mexico. Although I appreciate the nice thoughts, I think the book is quite unfair to Slim. Almost certainly, the competition laws in Mexico need strengthening, but I am sure that Mexico is much better off with Slim’s contribution in running businesses well than it would be without him.

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WHY NATIONS FAIL

The origins of power, prosperity, and poverty.

by Daron Acemoglu and James Robinson ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 20, 2012

For economics and political-science students, surely, but also for the general reader who will appreciate how gracefully the...

Following up on their earlier collaboration ( Economic Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy , 2005), two scholars examine why some nations thrive and others don’t.

Neither geography, nor culture, nor mistaken policies explain the vast differences in prosperity among nations. The reasons for world inequality, write Acemoglu (Economics/MIT) and Robinson (Government/Harvard Univ.), are rooted in politics, in whether nations have developed inclusive political institutions and a sufficiently centralized state to lay the groundwork for economic institutions critical for growth. In turn, these economic institutions give citizens liberty to pursue work that suits their talents, a fairly enforced set of rules and incentives to pursue education and technological innovation. When these conditions are not met, write the authors, when the political and economic institutions are “extractive,” failure surely follows. It matters not if the Tsars or the Bolsheviks governed Russia, if the Qing dynasty or Mao ruled China, if Ferdinand and Isabella or General Franco reigned in Spain—all absolutism is the same, erecting historically predictable barriers to prosperity. The critical distinction between, say, North and South Korea, lies in the vastly different institutional legacies on either side, one open and responsive to the needs and aspirations of society, the other closed with power narrowly distributed for the benefit of a few. In their wide-ranging discussion, Acemoglu and Robinson address big-picture concepts like “critical junctures” in history—the Black Death, the discovery of the Americas, the Glorious Revolution—which disrupt the existing political and economic balance and can abruptly change the trajectory of nations for better or worse. They also offer a series of small but telling stories in support of their thesis: how the wealth of Bill Gates differs from the riches of Carlos Slim, why Queen Elizabeth I rejected a patent for a knitting machine, how the inmates took over the asylum in colonies like Jamestown and New South Wales and why the Ottoman Empire suppressed the printing press.

Pub Date: March 20, 2012

ISBN: 978-0-307-71921-8

Page Count: 544

Publisher: Crown

Review Posted Online: Jan. 23, 2012

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2012

CURRENT EVENTS & SOCIAL ISSUES | BUSINESS | PUBLIC POLICY | GENERAL BUSINESS | GENERAL CURRENT EVENTS & SOCIAL ISSUES

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by Daron Acemoglu & Simon Johnson

by Daron Acemoglu & James A. Robinson

A PEOPLE'S HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES

by Howard Zinn ‧ RELEASE DATE: Jan. 1, 1979

For Howard Zinn, long-time civil rights and anti-war activist, history and ideology have a lot in common. Since he thinks that everything is in someone's interest, the historian—Zinn posits—has to figure out whose interests he or she is defining/defending/reconstructing (hence one of his previous books, The Politics of History ). Zinn has no doubts about where he stands in this "people's history": "it is a history disrespectful of governments and respectful of people's movements of resistance." So what we get here, instead of the usual survey of wars, presidents, and institutions, is a survey of the usual rebellions, strikes, and protest movements. Zinn starts out by depicting the arrival of Columbus in North America from the standpoint of the Indians (which amounts to their standpoint as constructed from the observations of the Europeans); and, after easily establishing the cultural disharmony that ensued, he goes on to the importation of slaves into the colonies. Add the laborers and indentured servants that followed, plus women and later immigrants, and you have Zinn's amorphous constituency. To hear Zinn tell it, all anyone did in America at any time was to oppress or be oppressed; and so he obscures as much as his hated mainstream historical foes do—only in Zinn's case there is that absurd presumption that virtually everything that came to pass was the work of ruling-class planning: this amounts to one great indictment for conspiracy. Despite surface similarities, this is not a social history, since we get no sense of the fabric of life. Instead of negating the one-sided histories he detests, Zinn has merely reversed the image; the distortion remains.

Pub Date: Jan. 1, 1979

ISBN: 0061965588

Page Count: 772

Publisher: Harper & Row

Review Posted Online: May 26, 2012

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 1979

GENERAL HISTORY | GENERAL CURRENT EVENTS & SOCIAL ISSUES | CURRENT EVENTS & SOCIAL ISSUES | UNITED STATES | POLITICS | HISTORY

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by Howard Zinn ; adapted by Rebecca Stefoff with by Ed Morales

by Howard Zinn with Ray Suarez

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WHEN BREATH BECOMES AIR

by Paul Kalanithi ‧ RELEASE DATE: Jan. 19, 2016

A moving meditation on mortality by a gifted writer whose dual perspectives of physician and patient provide a singular...

A neurosurgeon with a passion for literature tragically finds his perfect subject after his diagnosis of terminal lung cancer.

Writing isn’t brain surgery, but it’s rare when someone adept at the latter is also so accomplished at the former. Searching for meaning and purpose in his life, Kalanithi pursued a doctorate in literature and had felt certain that he wouldn’t enter the field of medicine, in which his father and other members of his family excelled. “But I couldn’t let go of the question,” he writes, after realizing that his goals “didn’t quite fit in an English department.” “Where did biology, morality, literature and philosophy intersect?” So he decided to set aside his doctoral dissertation and belatedly prepare for medical school, which “would allow me a chance to find answers that are not in books, to find a different sort of sublime, to forge relationships with the suffering, and to keep following the question of what makes human life meaningful, even in the face of death and decay.” The author’s empathy undoubtedly made him an exceptional doctor, and the precision of his prose—as well as the moral purpose underscoring it—suggests that he could have written a good book on any subject he chose. Part of what makes this book so essential is the fact that it was written under a death sentence following the diagnosis that upended his life, just as he was preparing to end his residency and attract offers at the top of his profession. Kalanithi learned he might have 10 years to live or perhaps five. Should he return to neurosurgery (he could and did), or should he write (he also did)? Should he and his wife have a baby? They did, eight months before he died, which was less than two years after the original diagnosis. “The fact of death is unsettling,” he understates. “Yet there is no other way to live.”

Pub Date: Jan. 19, 2016

ISBN: 978-0-8129-8840-6

Page Count: 248

Publisher: Random House

Review Posted Online: Sept. 29, 2015

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2015

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Book Reviews

Book review: why nations fail.

• Efe Erciyaz
• Marianne Hii
• Katrina Zhang
• Economic Development
• Institutions
• Political Economy

1. Introduction

In Why Nations Fail , Acemoglu and Robinson argue that economic development and the prosperity or poverty of nations can be traced back solely to “institutions, institutions, institutions” (Acemoglu & Robinson 2012: 368). It is not geography, culture, or the ignorance of policymakers that explains the vast income disparities across nations, but it is the fact that some countries were able to introduce and maintain inclusive economic and political institutions, while others still operated under extractive systems benefitting only narrow groups of elites. The argument of the book is meticulously well-researched and supported by historical evidence spanning a vast range of epochs and continents. Furthermore, Acemoglu and Robinson could hardly have chosen a more appropriate time than 2012 to publish their book. At the time of publishing, the Middle East was still reeling from the revolutionary Arab Spring that many hoped would mark the turn of the Arab world to greater political and economic inclusiveness, Acemoglu’s country of origin Turkey was sliding evermore into the authoritarian, extractive wrath of Recep Tayyip Erdogan, and with the Great Financial Crisis of 2008 having exposed an ever-growing income gap between rich and poor states.

Whilst credit must be given to Acemoglu and Robinson for re-injecting the importance of institutions into the discourse on economic development, we will argue that there are two major shortcomings of the book. First, the authors continuously operate through a constrained lens of institutions within a single country and subsequently do not sufficiently consider the interplay of institutions across borders. For instance, the book leaves unaddressed to what extent we can attribute the past economic development of colonising countries to the extractive institutions imposed on their colonies rather than to their inclusive institutions domestically. A greater focus on this international aspect of institutional arrangements would have been of great interest given the current pertinence of tied aid and structural adjustment programs through which harsh institutional reforms are often imposed on developing nations. Second, Acemoglu and Robinson’s argument that only institutions matter for development is overly simplistic and dismisses other explanations such as culture, geography, or policy mistakes unfairly out of hand.

2. Part I: Summary

Why Nations Fail opens with the thought-provoking natural experiment between Nogales, Arizona and Nogales, Mexico (Acemoglu & Robinson: 7-9). Despite the two regions either side of the US-Mexico border sharing almost identical cultures, climate and natural resources, Nogales, Arizona has three times the GDP per capita of its Mexican counterpart. It follows, according to the authors, that institutions must lie behind this vast difference in economic development. Anecdotal evidence such as the above is used throughout the book by Acemoglu and Robinson to demonstrate their thesis that only inclusive political and economic institutions make sustainable development possible. The authors define institutions vaguely as rules and norms directing the actions and incentives of agents operating within the state and partition between the economic sphere and the political sphere (Acemoglu & Robinson: 42). Ultimately, the bridge between a country’s institutions and development outcomes is spanned by incentive structures. Inclusive economic and political institutions—those that are pluralistic, accountable, and share economic and political power and opportunity widely in society—support sustained economic development through generating incentives for investment, risk-taking, and innovation. For instance, only when there is secure private property are citizens and enterprises confident in their ability to generate profits commensurate to their efforts and risk-taking and hence become willing to engage in innovation (Acemoglu & Robinson: 75). Conversely, their extractive counterparts that concentrate power in the hands of a narrow elites and primarily facilitate rent extraction stifle development as elites frequently use their concentrated power to put down Schumpeterian ‘creative destruction’ and as elite infighting over extraction frequently flares up (Acemoglu & Robinson: 132). To be exact, Acemoglu and Robinson do not claim that development is impossible in extractive institutional frameworks but only that due to lacking innovation incentives and frequent elite infighting, this development is ultimately short-lived (Acemoglu & Robinson: 124).

Furthermore, Acemoglu and Robinson further develop two self-perpetuating cycles according to which economic and political institutions develop over time. In vicious cycles, extractive political institutions feed on extractive economic institutions, which subsequently further increases economic extraction (Acemoglu & Robinson: 365). Conversely in virtuous cycles, more inclusive political institutions tend to create more inclusive economic arrangements, which through increased economic prosperity for the masses enhances their political power and hence supports political inclusion (Acemoglu & Robinson: 332-334). Nonetheless, despite these cycles, Acemoglu and Robinson do not posit historical determinism in the realm of institutions, as institutional drift—minor differences in institutions across countries—in combination with so-called critical junctures—major historical events such as the Black Plague—can lead a country to make the difficult switch from extractive to inclusive institutions or vice versa (Acemoglu & Robinson: 432). 

The core argument of Why Nations Fail is clear, well-researched, and intuitively appealing. Institutions do matter for economic development and the impressive array of historical examples provided by the author give strong backing to their hypothesis. At the same time, however, the book’s clarity is also its main weakness: its thesis that only institutions determine development, and not alternative factors such as geography, culture, or policymaking, misses the multi-faceted nature of economic development. Even so, Acemoglu and Robinson can be forgiven to an extent: Why Nations Fail was targeted at the general reader interested in economics and politics, and for this specific audience the brashness of the book’s argument was crucial in highlighting the importance of institutions. Hence, whilst for a more academic audience the lack of nuance in the book is troubling, the clarity and boldness of the authors’ institutional thesis, as well as its systematic analysis only within the boundaries of the nation-state, might have been necessary to jumpstart public discourse on institutions in development.

3. Part II: International interplay between inclusive and extractive institutions

The first shortcoming is the lack of focus on how extractive and inclusive institutions interact across international borders. Firstly, there is insufficient appreciation that inclusive domestic institutions can be supported by extractive ones abroad. Whilst Acemoglu and Robinson do extensively discuss the prominent role of extractive colonial institutions in obstructing the colonies’ development, they do not really consider the other side of this bilateral relationship pertaining to colonising countries, where they instead focus more on the importance of domestic inclusive institutions for economic development. Acemoglu and Robinson detail extensively the developing inclusive political and economic institutions in England during the Industrial Revolution, such as strong property rights and the ability to lobby Parliament (Acemoglu & Robinson: 103-104). They pinpoint the relationship between the English Crown and merchants profiting from colonisation in the 17th century as a crucial reason why inclusive political institutions later emerged (Acemoglu & Robinson: 105-106). Indeed, Acemoglu and Robinson emphasise the importance of initially small institutional differences during a critical juncture like the expansion of the Atlantic trade leading to diverging paths for different countries.

However, whilst the authors argue colonising countries benefitted post-critical junctures whilst colonised countries were left incapable of taking advantage of technological innovations (Acemoglu & Robinson: 114), they do not extensively explore the implications of this. It is intuitive that colonists enjoyed economic benefits from colonies, as exemplified by James Watt being partly motivated by economic opportunities from demand in English overseas colonies and domestic markets (Acemoglu & Robinson: 104). However, they do not further expand on this mention of overseas colonies in explaining England’s inclusive institutions. They also do not explicate possible causal mechanisms wherein extractive institutions abroad could support the growth of inclusive institutions domestically, in England, such as through revenue streams funding institutional transition or co-optation of domestic elites. The developmental narrative of England, whilst accounting for international affairs, such as military conflicts with the Spanish and colonisation abroad, therefore lacks an explicit explanation on a potential supportive role of extractive institutions. The authors do engage in such analysis regarding South Africa, where white elites created a dual economy to benefit from cheap labour costs and reduced competition (Acemoglu & Robinson: 259-260). It would be rewarding to see similar analysis with England and its colonies, given the attention the authors pay to them.

Besides this, readers are not equipped with a complete toolkit allowing them to fully understand implications of modern international policy such as tied aid and structural adjustment programmes on developing countries. Extending their exploration of the interaction of institutions across borders would provide such a toolkit. Acemoglu and Robinson do discuss the impact of aid, particularly the failure of foreign aid to Afghanistan in promoting development (Acemoglu & Robinson: 451). They note that development aid has often been wasted due to corruption, various costs, and appropriation by dictators overseeing extractive institutions (Acemoglu & Robinson: 452). Moreover, they discuss the ineffectiveness of conditional aid by arguing it does not provide strong incentives to meet the aid’s conditions or overhaul extractive institutions in these countries (Acemoglu & Robinson: 453-454). Here, the implication is that conditional aid would assist development if conditions were strictly followed and that it fails because it is ineffective in incentivizing compliance. However, Acemoglu and Robinson do not explicitly consider a potential parallel relationship with colonialism, wherein conditions of tied aid benefit the aiding country, potentially at the expense of the country receiving aid. For instance, companies from rich countries still receive around two-thirds of aid contracts that are officially untied (Provost 2011).

Furthermore, readers are then not fully equipped to understand the role of international pressure on developing countries more generally. Acemoglu and Robinson could have further considered the presence of foreign pressure even today in either their support or disapproval of extractive regimes. Indeed, the authors detail why Egypt today remains a state of extractive institutions, noting that international financial institutions promoted economic reforms in the 1990s such as privatising state-owned assets. They highlight that privatisation built private monopolies, supplementing the riches of wealthy, politically connected businessmen even further (Acemoglu & Robinson: 396). However, they do not explicitly specify how conditional aid and foreign pressure can inhibit development to the benefit of developed nations. For instance, when Egypt allied with the West, it received conditional US aid which required Egypt to implement economic liberalization, subsequently decreasing Egypt’s state revenue whilst shifting the economy away from industry and agriculture (Kandil 2012: 208). Indeed, Egypt’s alliance with the US required it to open up the economy to foreign investment (Kandil: 204). Significantly, Western business contacts of Egyptian business elites mitigated democratising pressure on Egypt’s regime (Kandil: 209). It would have been relevant for Acemoglu and Robinson to explore how, though inclusive economic and political institutions encourage domestic development in Western countries, Western connections can support further extraction in developing nations. Even prior to the 1990s, American investors helped construct and ultimately benefit from Sadat’s open-door policy, Intifah , with the aim of facilitating business (Kandil: 204-205). Acemoglu and Robinson note that when the private sector developed, markets were extractive and controlled by businessmen politically allied with Sadat (Acemoglu & Robinson: 395). Nevertheless, they do not explicitly discuss any American allies that supported the growth of this extractive regime. As such, they do not address explicitly and completely the question of to what extent international relations can directly shape another country’s institutions today.

4. Part III: Unfair dismissal of other causal theories?

While the thesis of the book is single-minded in recommending that institutions are the chief important factor for development outcomes, readers picking up Why Nations Fail may approach the book having some familiarity with other theories of development. The authors none but anticipate this. Thus, next to emphasising the importance of institutions, Acemoglu and Robinson, in Chapter 2 of the book labelled ‘Theories That Don’t Work’, also make a negative argument—using carefully hand-picked examples—against three alternative explanations of economic development: geography, culture, and ignorance. Their institutional thesis is hence stronger than the summary above in fact sets forth.

Looking at the three alternative theories the authors refute: observers of trends in development might note that rich countries cluster away from tropical climates, so could it be that tropical countries, due to a certain lethargy they induce in their inhabitants, disincentivise work that drives development? Or, finding that predominantly Protestant countries tend to be rich while Islamic countries often suffer instability and poverty, could religion and culture determine developmental outcomes? Otherwise, since richer countries clearly possess better technology and knowledge, could it be the ignorance of policymakers in poor countries that hinders development in these cases?

Even as the authors do their best (and correctly) dispel these conjectures, this does not mean that factors of geography, culture, or ignorance do not matter in economic development. To this, the authors intermittently admit throughout the book. A particular geography or a certain culture can make the probability of inclusive institutions less or more likely.

Firstly, geographic factors remain salient. In the extensive discussion of different colonies in the book, one comparison is stark. Natural resource wealth, in the form of gold and silver or diamonds, respectively, is abundant in South America and Africa—where extractive colonies were set up—while absent in North America and Australasia—where inclusive settler colonies were set up. The authors describe the rationale of the differences in colony structure in Chapter 1; extractive colonies could not be set up when the British landed in North America, as they were in the South, exactly because colonists needed other ways to support themselves given the hapless barrenness of the land. Natural resource wealth, due to the set-up costs needed for their extraction, calls for capture by local or foreign elites. Conversely, geographies which give rise to economic opportunity for large swathes of the population promise a better likelihood of inclusive institutions being set up; so, the long coastlines connecting Hong Kong or Singapore to other ports speak for themselves. Geographic arguments are implicitly supported in the book.

Second, on culture, the authors suggest in Chapter 14 that the tribal culture of Bechuanaland, where civil rights are not based on heredity alone, helped its chieftains make inclusive decisions leading to the economic success of the country—today known as Botswana. Tribal leaders took advantage of two critical junctures: the first with the institutional drift of the Bechuanaland tribes towards inclusive political processes and the second with the construction of subsoil mineral rights which channelled the country’s diamond revenues into investment for public services. In this case, elements of an inclusive culture allowed for the emergence of institutional drift towards robust institutions, allowing the opportune ramping of Botswana onto the path of becoming the African economic miracle it is today.

Lastly, it is clear that ignorance of the outcomes of economic policy derail development. During the Great Leap Forward in China, an example the authors consider, the backyard steel mills which were a nascent China’s attempts at industrialization led the country into a three-year famine in the Chinese countryside. Clearly, disastrous economic policy exacerbates the damage due to a country’s institutional flaws.

The authors are right that it is not necessarily the Protestant ethic, as proposed by German sociologist Max Weber, that led England and the Netherlands to the first economic success in early-modern Europe (they claim that France, a predominantly Catholic country, was quickly able to catch on (Acemoglu & Robinson: 60)) or that religion is the reason Islamic countries are poor today (it was rather the history of Ottoman rule that adversely affected the way poorer Middle-Eastern countries developed (Acemoglu & Robinson: 61)). Progress remains contingent based on a country’s broader political and economic institutions—none of these factors are deterministic.

Perhaps a point of disappointment in the book is that a detailed account is missing of how factors of geography, culture, or policy-making expertise interact with changing institutions as the machinery of development. For example, how might the global social media culture, at the heart of the Arab Spring’s unfolding, give birth to periods of institutional drift? Given that globalization has internationalised policy-making and new technologies can now mitigate starkly different geographies, speaking to the reality of a convergence of economic and political processes between areas as different as San Francisco and Bangalore, it now becomes more important to consider regional differences for the biodiversity of ideas flowing into bodies concerned with policymaking. As the authors show that when periods of institutional drift are lost as opportunities for change, the cogs of economic policy cannot work to turn out inclusive institutions. Where entrenched elite or foreign interests subject a region to extraction and prevent local institutions from building on its region-specific elements of geography, culture, and expertise, inclusive institutions remain only on the horizon. However, when critical junctures emerge, good economic policy must be informed by an intersection of knowledge from geography to anthropology. The authors remind us that discriminatory theories will hinder development by a denial of peoples’ potential, yet it is implied by the book that interdisciplinary knowledge to address specific regional circumstances will be integral for its success.

5. Conclusion

To summarise, Why Nations Fail is a compelling and well-written read on the crucial role of institutions in economic development. Acemoglu and Robinson carefully construct a framework around extractive/inclusive institutions, critical junctures, and institutional drift to explain the development paths taken by nations and support it with exceptionally well-researched historiography. Nonetheless, the book is also incomplete in two important dimensions: it lacks an appropriate focus on the international dimension of institutions and too rashly dismisses alternative explanations outside the institutional thesis, instead of considering complementarity between different approaches. These shortcomings would have been more than acceptable if the thesis of Acemoglu and Robinson had not been the absolute claim that only institutions matter for development. However, with the stark claim the authors make, these shortcomings act as a thorn in the side for the reader. Nonetheless, with these limitations in mind, we still wholeheartedly recommend the book for anyone interested in learning about the role of institutions in economic development.

Acknowledgements

We would like to thank our classmates and our instructor Liam K. Bright for their thoughts and encouraging feedback in the reading group sessions leading to this book review.

Acemoglu, D. and J.A. Robinson . 2012. Why Nations Fail: The origins of power, prosperity, and poverty. London: Profile. URL: https://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/londonschoolecons/detail.action?docID=1743163

Kandil, H. 2012. Why did the Egyptian middle class march to Tahrir Square? Mediterranean Politics (Frank Cass & Co.), 17: 197-215. DOI: 10.1080/13629395.2012.694044

Provost, C. 2011, September. Aid still benefits companies from donor countries. The Guardian. URL: https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2011/sep/07/aid-benefits-donor-countries-companies

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Why Nations Fail: The Origins of Power, Prosperity, and Poverty (Book Review)

Date published:.

The rich world’s troubles and inequalities have been making headlines for some time now. Yet a more important story for human welfare is the persistence of yawning gaps between the world’s haves and have-nots. Adjusted for purchasing power, the average American income is 50 times that of a typical Afghan and 100 times that of a Zimbabwean. Despite two centuries of economic growth, over a billion people remain in dire poverty.

This conundrum demands ambitious answers. In the late 1990s Jared Diamond and David Landes tackled head-on the most vexing questions: why did Europe discover modern economic growth and why is its spread so limited? Now, Daron Acemoglu, an economist at MIT, and James Robinson, professor of government at Harvard, follow in their footsteps with “Why Nations Fail”. They spurn the cultural and geographic stories of their forebears in favour of an approach rooted solely in institutional economics, which studies the impact of political environments on economic outcomes. Neither culture nor geography can explain gaps between neighbouring American and Mexican cities, they argue, to say nothing of disparities between North and South Korea.

They offer instead a striking diagnosis: some governments get it wrong on purpose. Amid weak and accommodating institutions, there is little to discourage a leader from looting. Such environments channel society’s output towards a parasitic elite, discouraging investment and innovation. Extractive institutions are the historical norm. Inclusive institutions protect individual rights and encourage investment and effort. Where inclusive governments emerge, great wealth follows.

Britain, wellspring of the industrial revolution, is the chief proof of this theory. Small medieval differences in the absolutism of English and Spanish monarchs were amplified by historical chance. When European exploration began, Britain’s more constrained crown left trade in the hands of privateers, whereas Spain favoured state control of ocean commerce. The New World’s riches solidified Spanish tyranny but nurtured a merchant elite in Britain. Its members helped to tilt the scales against monarchy in the Glorious Revolution of 1688 and counterbalanced the landed aristocracy, securing pluralism and sowing the seeds of economic growth. Within a system robust enough to tolerate creative destruction, British ingenuity (not so different from French or Chinese inventiveness) was free to flourish.

This fortunate accident was not easily replicated. In Central and South America European explorers found dense populations ripe for plundering. They built suitably exploitative states. Britain’s North American colonies, by contrast, made poor ground for extractive institutions; indigenous populations were too dispersed to enslave. Colonial governors used market incentives to motivate early settlers in Virginia and Massachusetts. Political reforms made the grant of economic rights credible. Where pluralism took root, American industry and wealth bloomed. Where it lapsed, in southern slaveholding colonies, a long period of economic backwardness resulted. A century after the American civil war the segregated South remained poor.

Extractive rules are self-reinforcing. In the Spanish New World, plunder further empowered the elite. Revolution and independence rarely provide escape from this tyranny. New leadership is tempted to retain the benefits of the old system. Inclusive economies, by contrast, encourage innovation and new blood. This destabilises existing industries, keeping economic and political power dispersed.

Failure is the rule. Here, Venice provides a cautionary tale. Upward mobility drove the city-state’s wealth and power. Its innovative commenda , a partnership in which capital-poor sailors and rich Venetians shared the profits from voyages, allowed those of modest background to rise through the ranks. This fluidity threatened established wealth, however. From the late 13th century the ducal council began restricting political and economic rights, banning the commenda and nationalising trade. By 1500, with a stagnant economy and falling population, Venice’s descent from great power was well under way.

Moves towards greater inclusivity are disappointingly rare. The French revolution provides an example, but also demonstrates the authors’ unfortunate habit of ignoring historical detail. Revolution put paid to absolutism and led, after a long and messy struggle, to the creation of an enduring republic. Institutions, in the form of a fledgling merchant class, provided momentum for reform, making the difference between the successful French revolution and failed uprisings elsewhere. But the authors give short shrift to the presence and meaning of Enlightenment ideals. It is difficult to believe this did not matter for the French transition, yet the intellectual climate is left out of the story. History is contingent, the authors apologise, but history is what they hope to explain.

The story of Botswana is also unsatisfying. There, a co-operative effort by tribal leaders secured the protection of the British government against the marauding imperialism of Cecil Rhodes. Despite its considerable diamond wealth, which might have spawned a corrupt and abusive elite, Botswana became a rare success in Africa, assisted by the benevolence of its leaders and by having a tiny population. At times the authors come dangerously close to attributing success to successfulness.

The intuition behind the theory is nonetheless compelling, which makes the scarcity of policy prescriptions frustrating. The book is sceptical of the Chinese model. China’s growth may be rooted in the removal of highly oppressive Maoist institutions, but its communist government remains fundamentally extractive. It may engineer growth by mobilising people and resources from low-productivity activities, like subsistence agriculture, toward industry. But without political reform and the possibility of creative destruction, growth will grind to a halt.

Rich countries determined to nudge along the process of institutional development should recognise their limitations, the authors reckon. The point is well taken. It is hard to ignore the role of European expansion in the creation of the underdeveloped world’s extractive institutions which, in self-perpetuating fashion, continue to constrain reform and development. Evidence nonetheless hints that contagious ideals, propitious leadership and external pressure matter. The promise of European Union membership encouraged institutional reform in central and eastern Europe. America eventually eradicated extractive southern institutions and placed the South on a path toward economic convergence. There is no quick fix for institutional weakness, only the possibility that steady encouragement and chance will bring about progress.

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The Journal for Student Geographers

A review of ‘Why Nations Fail’

By Fintan Hogan, King Edward VI Camp Hill School for Boys

Acemoglu, Daron., and James A. Robinson. Why Nations Fail : The Origins of Power, Prosperity, and Poverty. London: Profile, 2012.

Hogan, F. (2020) A review of ‘Why Nations Fail’.  Routes  1(2): 251–255.

This piece reviews the 2012 book Why Nations Fail , co-authored by Daron Acemoglu and James A. Robinson (Acemoglu & Robinson, 2012). Their work focuses on the role of institutions in fostering development; specifically economic institutions like secure property rights and political institutions like free and fair elections – structures that commonly develop hand-in-hand. However, throughout the book, the authors write as we would expect geographers to do; frequently contextualising their argument with broader quantitative and qualitative data. Despite an apparent focus on the economic and the political, the social aspects of geography validate their argument throughout.

1. Introduction

Political accountability means the powerful can no longer rob the weak. That’s the basic premise of Why Nations Fail , with a consistent focus on the political and economic rights afforded to people over the last few millennia. The book may more accurately be called ‘Why Nations Succeed’ , since the authors draw policy prescriptions from some of the most advanced economies of each era. Reviewing a book which explicitly rejects geography as an explanation for development may appear counter-intuitive for Routes , but on reflection, the premise put forward by Acemoglu and Robinson is crucial to any understanding of development dynamics seen through a geographical lens. Daron Acemoglu is a Professor of Economics at MIT and James Robinson teaches Economics at the University of Chicago – it makes sense then, that they would see economic institutions as uniquely pivotal throughout. While Chapter 2, entitled ‘Theories That Don’t Work’, rejects ‘The Geography Hypothesis’ (p48), one should not be so quick to believe that the discipline has little to learn from their conclusions. On the contrary, geographers are concerned with the flow of information, expansion of trade and progression of inequality, all of which play pivotal roles in the authors’ premise.

Daron Acemoglu and James A Robinson offer a concise summary of their premise in the very final line of the book: ‘…durable political reform, will depend, as we have seen in many different instances, on the history of economic and political institutions, on many small differences that matter and on the very contingent path of history’ (p462). To use their own terminology, the argument held throughout the book is that development is only sustained through ‘inclusive economic and political institutions’, supported through a ‘virtuous’ positive feedback cycle – illustrated through charting the Neolithic, Industrial and Technological Revolutions. Through this, they reject ‘extractive political and economic institutions’ which facilitate growth for a short amount of time (catch-up) and profit very few people, stalling ‘creative destruction’ and generating ‘vicious’ cycles. As such, low taxes and strong central government are seen as important characteristics of a nation’s success. An example of how this may develop in practice could be citizen assemblies or unions providing some political accountability – through this, the economic security of workers grows, and development follows. In advancing their argument, the authors use a wealth of historical sources in what becomes a compelling and universal argument.

2. A more nuanced view of geography

In fact, what the authors reject in Chapter 2 is physical geography ; the site and situation which people find themselves in. This theory has been termed environmental, or geographical, determinism and has been repopularised by academics like Jared Diamond of Guns, Germs and Steel fame (Diamond, 1999). Prisoners of Geography is another popular text in this vein, emphasising the importance of the physical environment on modern-day geopolitics (Marshall, 2015). These readings are sometimes termed ‘man-land geography’ too, emphasising the interaction between the natural environment and those who rely on it. To a certain extent, Acemoglu & Robinson are correct in their reasoning that broadly similar climates and reliefs can yield vastly different results, and they use colonial and post-colonial Congo to illustrate localised disparities (p58). 

Despite this, they appear to neglect the fact that modern technology still overwhelmingly benefits from a positive location. Geographers from as early as GCSE learn of hydropower and its benefits to Ethiopia, alongside containerisation and how it fails to help landlocked Malawi or mountainous Nepal. Despite this, their argument broadly holds true – on the whole, regions with similar soils, coasts and rainfall can have hugely divergent development pathways. They argue that small changes in institutions are widened into cavernous gaps following ‘critical junctures’ – for example, the decentralised workforce of England led to the Peasants Revolt following the Black Death; this improved working conditions, unlike in much of Eastern Europe (p96). Now you may ask, doesn’t this sound a lot like history? Indeed it does, and this is what continually struck me while reading. The use of the phrase ‘contingent path of history’ to wrap up the entire book shows this clearly and demonstrates how their argument rests on singular people and events, rather than trends or patterns, as indeed does the term ‘critical junctures’.

3. Geography underpins the argument

Well what does Geography offer to this reading? Unquestionably a huge amount. The concept Acemoglu and Robinson revere in particular is participation – using the example of the Glorious Revolution (1688), the authors argue that a broad coalition of interests acts as an effective set of checks and balances within the group, supporting the introduction of equality and representation. What geography shows here is how these groups of people emerge, regardless of individual figures, in a collection of diverse interests. Understanding wealth and its distribution is shared with Economics, but underpinning a geographical perspective is the idea of social capital, inclusivity and community – the authors themselves seem to recognise this with the divergence in the distribution of serfdom across Europe by 1800 (p108). While all European peasants in the early Middle Ages were subjugated to feudalism, by the 19 th century the western European poor had strong social cohesion, fuelled by urbanisation, while those in eastern Europe still remained scattered, facing coerced farm labour. Demography and culture are as important as any purely economic factor – geography highlights the importance of place to this institutional drift.

One needs to look no further than the A Level Changing Places topic to understand how, as geographers, we can understand a community, looking beyond their economic or political standing, in a way which ‘the contingent path of history’ often relies on. It is easy to argue that historical events drive development, because every occurrence can be seen as a direct cause. However, the authors’ historical accounts are frequently contextualised by pieces of relevant data, demonstrating the importance of a wider societal understanding which underpins everything that the book has to offer. Understanding development through a geographical perspective offers the sort of coherent wider picture which the authors rely on throughout.

4. Conclusion

In short, geography is crucial to understanding the conditions which allow for the emergence of institutional reform, rather than attributing change just to single political figures or fateful events. In the modern world, this exposes itself through free trade and the exchange of services, individuals and ideas. The very first example in the book used Nogales, USA and Nogales, Mexico (a city divided by a fence) to highlight extreme inequality (p7). In the 21 st century, we attribute this to policy attitudes towards loans, welfare, property rights and globalisation. While the authors here employ the catch-all term of ‘institutions’, what the readers of this journal will be able to ascertain is far deeper. As geography students and researchers, we can perceive far more from history than what just individuals or economics can tell us. Without this wider view, historians would fail to really understand the preconditions for development (Rostow, 1959), using circular logic to suggest that developed economies must have experienced ‘good development’ and underdeveloped ones ‘bad’. Incorporating the authors’ ideas into academic studies is likely to give students another insight into development factors, and their global exploration contextualises some key areas of GCSE and A Level content. Geography moves beyond a narrow idea of development, complimenting and supporting the entire premise of the text. I would encourage you to perhaps pick up a copy of this 500-page tome – it’s worth a read.

5. References

Acemoglu, D & Robinson, J.A. (2012) Why Nations Fail: The Origins of Power, Prosperity and Poverty , New York: Crown

Diamon, J (1999) Guns, germs and steel: The fates of human societies , New York: WW. Norton & Co.

Marshall, T (2015) Prisoners of Geography: Ten Maps That Tell You Everything You Need to Know About Global Politics , London: Elliott & Thompson

Rostow, W (1959) The Stages of Economic Growth , The Economic History Review, New Series, Vol 12, No. 1, pp1-16

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Why Nations Fail Summary

1-Sentence-Summary: Why Nations Fail dives into the reasons why economic inequality is so common in the world today and identifies that poor decisions of those in political power are the main reason for unfairness rather than culture, geography, climate, or any other factor.

Favorite quote from the author:

Table of Contents

Video Summary

Why nations fail review, audio summary, who would i recommend the why nations fail summary to.

Why do some nations prosper while others struggle and are plagued with poverty and greed? Some people say it has everything to do with a nation’s location, culture, or lack of knowledge. But surely this can’t be the whole picture. 

Just look at Botswana. It currently has one of the fastest increasing economies in the world. Meanwhile, close by Congo and Sierra Leone are stuck in a cycle of violence and poverty. 

Why Nations Fail by Daron Acemoglu and James A. Robinson centers around the question of why some nations remain poverty-stricken while others live in abundance. In this eye-opening book, the authors explain that the difference is actually the result of economic and political institutions put in place during critical junctures in history. 

Here are just 3 of the many eye-opening lessons I got from this book

• The best way to explain the difference in living standards between countries is by looking at their institutional differences. 
• A single event at a critical juncture can mean a world of difference for a country’s success. 
• It can be really hard to break out of the cycle of poverty, but it is possible. 

Let’s get right to it and see what we can discover about inequality!

If you want to save this summary for later, download the free PDF and read it whenever you want.

Lesson 1: If you want to explain why two countries can have such different living standards,  just look at the institutions they have put in place.

Forget age-old theories that some countries struggle economically because of their location. There are far too many countries next to each other that have different living standards to prove this as false. 

The economic landscape determines the difference between these countries. These are the regulations directing the economy within a country’s borders. This includes things such as public services, property laws, and access to financing . 

A country can have either inclusive or extractive economic institutions. Inclusive economic institutions pave the way for economic success because they encourage citizens to participate in economic activities. They are strong in economic freedom. 

Examples of this include South Korea and the USA, where the economy benefits from private property laws, developed banking sectors, and strong public education.  This system encourages people to work hard and be creative because they know their efforts will bring wealth . 

An extractive economic institution receives income from one group in society for the benefit of another group. An example of this is colonial Latin America, which had a system built on the exploitation of indigenous people to benefit colonizers. Another example is North Korea, where the Kim family created a repressive regime that didn’t allow private property and secured all power for the select elite only.

Lesson 2: One event can mean a country takes an entirely different institutional path, changing the course of its future.

In the mid-fourteenth century, the Black Death took almost half of Europe’s population. This was an event influential enough to overturn the sociopolitical balance of a nation or continent. 

Before the Black Death, most of the economic and political systems in Europe were extremely extractive. A country’s monarch owned land, and he gave his land to lords who promised to give military capabilities in return. Peasants would then take care of the land. They worked hard to make a living but paid most of what they earned in taxes and had almost no freedoms. 

But when the Black Death hit, there were suddenly huge shortages in labor. The peasants in Western Europe seized this opportunity to demand lower taxes and more rights.  Eastern European peasants were not so lucky. They were less organized, and landowners managed to take advantage of this and started hiking taxes higher and making the system even more extractive.  

This is why the authors call the Black Death a critical juncture in history. For Western Europe, it spelled the end of extractive feudalism. But in the east, it grew worse. Institutional drift is the result of this difference that led to divergent paths. It’s where two similar regions grow in different directions. 

We saw a similar institutional drift when global trade expanded, and the British colonized the Americas . Sometimes it takes centuries, but a small number of critical junctures can mean institutional drift that creates drastically different economic landscapes between once-similar areas.

Lesson 3: Stopping the cycle of poverty can be extremely hard, but it isn’t impossible.

We know that events in history can change the course of a country’s future. But what can countries do to fix the extractive institutions they have in place? 

First, the authors explain that history doesn’t necessarily doom the future of these countries. We know that inclusive and extractive institutions can grow from critical junctures. The cycle can be broken. 

The US South’s exclusive institutions against Blacks are slowly becoming more economically and politically inclusive. There is still a lot to be done, but the civil rights movement meant that good changes were finally coming for Blacks in America. 

So what can we do? The first thing to do is make sure we encourage inclusive institutions so these countries can grow their own prosperity. Did you know foreign aid does very little to change extractive institutions in Africa and central Asia? 

If we want to promote positive , long-lasting change, we need to direct foreign aid in a more meaningful way. The groups that are excluded from institutions need to have ways to defy the oppressing institutions.  

For example, in Brazil, a grassroots movement of empowered people rather than politicians overthrew the country’s military dictatorship in 1985. Social movements led by these people paved the way for a coalition that resisted any future dictatorships. 

Ever since Brazil broke that cycle, it has seen a huge rise in prosperity. In fact, between the years 2000 and 2012, it was one of the world’s fastest-growing economies. This serves as proof that shattering the chains of poverty is never too late.

Why Nations Fail will change the way you see the world. I never realized that such simple differences in institutions could mean such drastic differences in standards of living. I think this is an extremely important book that everyone can learn something from.

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Last Updated on December 5, 2022

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Why Nations Fail

Daron acemoglu and james a. robinson, ask litcharts ai: the answer to your questions.

Welcome to the LitCharts study guide on Daron Acemoglu and James A. Robinson's Why Nations Fail . Created by the original team behind SparkNotes, LitCharts are the world's best literature guides.

Why Nations Fail: Introduction

Why nations fail: plot summary, why nations fail: detailed summary & analysis, why nations fail: themes, why nations fail: quotes, why nations fail: characters, why nations fail: terms, why nations fail: symbols, why nations fail: theme wheel, brief biography of daron acemoglu and james a. robinson.

Historical Context of Why Nations Fail

Other books related to why nations fail.

• Full Title: Why Nations Fail: The Origins of Power, Prosperity, and Poverty
• When Written: 1997–2012
• Where Written: Cambridge, Massachusetts
• When Published: March 2012
• Literary Period: Contemporary
• Genre: Development Economics, Political Economy, Economic History, Comparative Politics
• Setting: Various societies around the world from roughly 10,000 BC to 2011
• Antagonist: Extractive political and economic institutions
• Point of View: First Person

Extra Credit for Why Nations Fail

Reviews and Rebuttals. Why Nations Fail received a wide range of reviews in the academic and popular media—including many from the scholars whose research Acemoglu and Robinson criticize in the book. Jared Diamond argued that Acemoglu and Robinson were partially right, but he thought they were wrong to dismiss geography’s role in inequality. Jeffrey Sachs and Bill Gates were extremely critical of the book.

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Why Nations Fail: The Origins of Power, Prosperity, and Poverty Audio CD – Audiobook, March 20, 2012

• Language English
• Publisher Random House Audio
• Publication date March 20, 2012
• Dimensions 5.07 x 1.62 x 5.85 inches
• ISBN-10 0307987450
• ISBN-13 978-0307987457
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• Publisher ‏ : ‎ Random House Audio; Unabridged edition (March 20, 2012)
• Language ‏ : ‎ English
• ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0307987450
• ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0307987457
• Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 14 ounces
• Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 5.07 x 1.62 x 5.85 inches
• #4,099 in Development & Growth Economics (Books)
• #8,276 in Economic Conditions (Books)
• #8,901 in Economic History (Books)

About the author

James a. robinson.

James A. Robinson, a political scientist and an economist, is one of 8 current University Professors at University of Chicago. Focused on Latin America and Africa, he is currently conducting research in Bolivia, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Sierra Leone, Haiti and in Colombia where he has taught for many years during the summer at the University of the Andes in Bogotá.

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Customers find the content extremely good and the political aspect fairly straight forward. They also say the writing style is clear, simple, and illuminating. However, some readers find the argument too simplistic and the book not well written. Opinions differ on the plot, with some finding it compelling and others saying it has many sophisms.

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Customers find the book has much food for thought, with great examples from history. They say it does an excellent job explaining the successes and failures of farming. Readers also say the book is non-quantitative and subjective, and fun to read. They mention the political aspect is fairly straight forward.

"...its biggest strides in England because of her uniquely inclusive political and economic institutions ...." Read more

"...The politic aspect is fairly straight forward , are you in a dictatorship (or other controlling, top down government) or in a democracy..." Read more

"...its official position but, in spite of all its shortcomings, argues the point so well so as to be entirely convincing (at least to me)...." Read more

"...of the ups and downs of this progress, but the book does an excellent job of explaining the successes and failures of various states in all..." Read more

Customers have mixed opinions about the writing style. Some find the thesis clear and simple, the book is well organized, and easy to read. They also say that the authors do a good job showing how so many nations wind up being run by a dictator. Others however, say that their argument is too simplistic, redundant, and written like a college essay. They mention that the book has a lack of self-criticism, and is very long and detailed.

"...Once established, these institutional differences are remarkably persistent due to virtuous and vicious cycles...." Read more

"...have been leveled in other reviews against this book: it is simplistic and perhaps overly ambitious, the history is bad, it explains away competing..." Read more

"...It is also helpful to see and understand how the impacts of colonialism, which was not inclusive but very extractive, still effects those countries..." Read more

"...I found this book to be very readable and the arguments in support of their thesis very easy to follow...." Read more

Customers are mixed about the plot. Some find the premise compelling, detailed, and comprehensible. They also say the book reads like a thriller and requires full attention. However, others say the thesis is oversimplified, cherry-picked stories to support the thesis, and has a limited amount of ideas.

"...To the content of the book - it was fascinating , anyone with interest in economics, history, or politics, this book is a must read...." Read more

"...in other reviews against this book: it is simplistic and perhaps overly ambitious , the history is bad, it explains away competing explanations...." Read more

" Detailed yet comprehensible account of what leads to sustainable development in any nation...." Read more

"Very good book. In terms of ideas, it`s clear and makes a compelling point . The historical comparisons are very enlightening...." Read more

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August 26th, 2012

Book review: why nations fail: the origins of power, prosperity, and poverty.

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Estimated reading time: 5 minutes

The scholarly work of Daron Acemoglu and James Robinson is already widely known among economic historians, economists and political scientists. In Why Nations Fail Acemoglu and Robinson seek to convey to a much broader audience the results of many years’ path-breaking research on the historical role of institutions – defined as “the rules influencing how the economy works, and the incentives that motivate people” – and their impact (p .73). The result is a highly readable work of enormous geographical and chronological range that addresses one of the most pressing issues of the contemporary world. With much of its content consisting of good, old-fashioned historical narrative – something I did not quite expect – this book will without doubt appeal to a broad readership.

The basic case that the authors seek to make in the book is a simple one, namely that nations with extractive political and economic institutions are likely to be poor, whereas those with inclusive institutions are likely to be rich. Politics is paramount: the existence of centralised and pluralistic political institutions is the key to the sustained existence of inclusive economic institutions. While a degree of economic growth may be possible under extractive institutions, such growth is not sustainable, as shown by the cases of, for example, the later Roman Empire or the Soviet Union. Once a nation has started to move towards inclusive institutions a positive feedback loop may help to keep them in place, but extractive institutions are also sustained by path dependence, with those in power fearful of the “creative destruction” generated by change, producing a vicious circle. The argument put forward is not, however, one of institutional determinism. Small institutional differences, and what the authors refer to as “institutional drift” over time can interact with “critical junctures” and historical contingency to produce a change in path. By analysing such institutional evolution in its historical setting, Acemoglu and Robinson argue that we can better understand why some countries are rich and others poor, how that pattern may have changed over time, and even how the problem of global inequality might be addressed in the future.

Striking historical examples are used to demonstrate the key importance of institutions, and to reject the explanatory power of geography and culture. The two Koreas, united until the late 1940s, and sharing a common geography and culture, have since diverged dramatically in institutional and wealth terms. Exploitative Spanish imperialists in search of plunder put Latin America on a path of extractive and unproductive institutions, while the same institutions failed to work in North America, allowing the appearance of democracy and institutions more conducive to growth. Case proved? Well, up to a point. It is certainly hard to dispute the claim that “institutions matter”, and the authors themselves have played a major role in demonstrating the significance of colonial institutions, for example, in shaping the economic development of colonised countries, and in the primacy of political institutions in shaping economic ones. Few academic readers will take issue with the basic message of this important book. What many readers will be less comfortable with, perhaps, is the oversimplification inevitably associated with almost any monocausal explanation, and the wholesale rejection of other competing explanations of historical development. To be fair, the authors in the conclusion acknowledge the limitations of their approach, but their exaggerated depiction of the determinism associated with geographical or cultural explanations, for example, prevents them from acknowledging the subtle historical interplay between geographical factors, culture (however that might be defined) and institutions, whether extractive or inclusive. For example, the authors’ own account shows that a major reason why the extractive institutions of the Spanish could not be copied in North America was the very absence of riches (gold and silver) that could be plundered. Acemoglu and Robinson have also in the past been criticised for “compressing” history, and their theory raises major questions about what time periods matter in institutional terms. The extractive Mayan Empire, for example, continued to generate wealth over more than six centuries.

Acemoglu and Robinson are careful to emphasize the importance of historical contingency in their interpretation; institutional dynamics respond to critical junctures and new opportunities. In that context one of the things that comes out of their account is the recurrent importance of chance and luck, and also the importance of individual actors, somewhat reminiscent of the ‘great men’ interpretations of history so popular in the 19 th and early 20 th centuries. Botswana, for example, was profoundly fortunate to have as its leader Seretse Khama, who sustained the move towards more inclusive institutions, unlike Robert Mugabe in Zimbabwe or Mobutu in the Congo. Their historical account is thus populated with a rich cast of heroes and villains of all shades. Not surprisingly for those familiar with their work, imperialism is one of the main culprits, but far from the only one. These, and other somewhat black and white depictions, will do much to sell Why Nations Fail , but they will also contribute to the book’s arousing strong views, particularly in its absence of nuancing. There is therefore much to commend about this book, and much to take issue with, but even its critics will concede that it is based on serious scholarship, will do much to stimulate debate, and is a very good read.

———————————————————————-

Janet Hunter is Saji Professor of Economic History at LSE. She teaches comparative and global economic history, and has published extensively on the economic development of modern Japan, with special reference to the development of the female labour market, the history of communications, and the evolution of Anglo-Japanese economic relations. She is currently working on the economic impact of disasters in 20 th century Japan. Read more reviews by Janet.

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This Was the Best Opening Ceremony Paris Could Give Us?

The city seemed exhausted, not exuberant.

Produced by ElevenLabs and News Over Audio (NOA) using AI narration.

Well, that was a nice idea in theory. Paris held the first-ever Olympics opening ceremony to take place outside a stadium—and on one of the loveliest settings in the world, the Seine. Athletes paraded not by foot but by boat, waving flags from sleek cruising pontoons, as pageantry unfolded on bridges and riverbanks. The aquatic format promised to do more than just showcase the architectural beauty of Paris or convey the magic of strolling across the Pont Neuf with fresh bread in hand. It promised to offer the world—our ever more jaded, content-drowned world—something new to look at.

Unfortunately, that new thing was a mess. Some will blame the rain, which soaked the festivities for hours, adding an air of tragedy as athletes waved flags from within their ponchos. But even on a sunnier day, the ceremony would have served as an example of how not to stage a spectacle for live TV. The energy was low, the pacing bizarre, and the execution patchy. Paris tried to project itself as a modern, inclusive hub of excitement—but it mostly just seemed exhausted.

Olympics opening ceremonies are inevitably ridiculous affairs, usually in a fun way. The host nation must welcome the global community while cobbling all of the signifiers of its own identity into some sort of romping medley that also, ideally, expands that country’s image in helpful ways. London offered the Queen and James Bond, and also a tribute to the National Health Service. Rio hosted a rumbling dance party as well as a briefing on Brazil’s Indigenous history. Most important, both of those cities gave us good TV.

Beforehand, the Paris event’s artistic director, Thomas Jolly, announced his intentions to play with Gallic clichés. Key words— liberté , synchronicité , and so on—announced thematic chapters, but a narrative hardly cohered. Congratulations if you had the following on your bingo card: mimes, Louis Vuitton, parkour, Les Mis é rables , the cancan, lasers shooting out of the Eiffel Tower , allusions to ménages à trois. But credit where it’s due—I really did not foresee the Minions stealing the Mona Lisa and bringing it aboard a Jules Verne–style submarine. On reflection, that was the most educational part of the show: learning that a Frenchman co-directed Despicable Me .

One problem with this French fever dream is that much of it was prerecorded. Every few minutes, the telecast would cut to slick cinematography of a masked, hooded individual—that’s what the NBC broadcasters kept calling her, “the Individual”—sneaking the Olympic torch around. She went to the Louvre, where the paintings came to life. She went to a movie screening, where a Lumière-brothers film ... came to life. These segments hit with all the force of a cruise-ship commercial, while distracting from the novelty of having a ceremony on water in the first place.

The live components of the show weren’t much more vibrant. A bridge was converted into a runway on which fashion models and drag queens strutted with the gusto and precision of a forced march. Platforms over the river itself featured extreme-sports performers doing tricks that the TV cameras seemed suspiciously afraid of showing in close-up. Lady Gaga put on a feather-laden cabaret performance that was perfectly fine, save for the fact that “perfectly fine” shouldn’t be anywhere near the name Lady Gaga. (As it turns out, that performance was prerecorded too.)

One of the only showstopping moments made clear that the weird vibes of the ceremony could largely be blamed on the detail work. At one point, the camera cut to a woman dressed as Marie Antoinette and holding her own babbling, chopped-off head. The heavy-metal band Gojira broke into riffage, and flames fired. This was righteous. But then, not much happened. Viewers were left to grow bored with static, wide shots of the performance. Eventually, a fake boat wheeled into view, looking quite a bit like a prop from a high-school play.

The best bits took place firmly on land. The pop star Aya Nakamura danced with the French Republican Guard in a flashy meeting of old and new cultural regimes. Once the sun set, “the Individual” emerged in real life to ride a cool-looking mechanical horse down the Seine. (It must be said that this journey was interminable.) The Olympic cauldron was cool too: It resembled a hot-air balloon, and it rose into the air when lit. To finish things off, Celine Dion made her seemingly unlikely return to singing, heaving with emotion from a deck of the Eiffel.

Perhaps it is no coincidence that carefully composed, largely stable images were the highlights of a show that tried to reinvent the Olympic ceremony in fluid directions. My favorite moment was when the pianist Alexandre Kantorow played Maurice Ravel’s Jeux d’Eau from a bridge as rain puddled on his instrument. He looked sad and soaked but also unbothered, lost in music. He made me remember the word I’d been trying to think of, for one of those ineffable French feelings: malaise .

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Review: Olympics opening ceremony shined with best of Paris and France, but failed as TV

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France took the opening ceremony of the Olympics out of the customary arena and onto the River Seine — and into the rain — Friday in what was undeniably a bold, unprecedented and, given the security nightmare, crazy take on the event . An Olympics whose motto is “Games Wide Open” ironically came with fences, checkpoints and police and soldiers numbering in the many tens of thousands. But they remained practically invisible through the broadcast, once again from NBC and also streaming on Peacock.

Almost nothing was revealed about the program ahead of time, past a few facts and figures — 300,000 spectators expected, a 3.7-mile route running west downriver from the Pont d’Austerlitz to the Eiffel Tower and Trocadéro, some 90 boats carrying 10,000 athletes, 12 thematic “scenes.” With little to go on, it was tempting to imagine what those scenes might encompass. Bearded existentialists drinking apricot cocktails? A nude descending a staircase? Jean-Pierre Léaud making one last appearance as Antoine Doinel? Striking railway workers? The band Telephone reunited? I was hoping to see at least one performer dressed as Jacques Tati’s M. Hulot, though I would have made it 100. Would there be mimes?

2024 Paris Olympics

Paris shines through summer storm in spectacular Olympic opening ceremony

Pouring rain can’t derail a bold a Paris Olympic opening ceremony that featured athletes on the Seine and performances from Lady Gaga and Celine Dion.

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The answer to all those questions was no. Working with a team that included a historian, novelist, screenwriter and playwright, to say nothing of the choreographers and costumers, director Thomas Jolly — known for a 24-hour marathon staging of Shakespeare’s three “Henry VI” plays plus “Richard III” — cooked up something at once stranger and more appropriate: daffy, sexy, occasionally alarming — I would not have expected the decapitated Marie Antoinettes — and, one would say, quintessentially French. Even the rain, which, having arrived, stayed to enjoy itself, had a sort of Parisian quality, adding drama and romance. Though, of course, that part wasn’t scripted.

Taking the Games into the city center and putting the ceremony onto the river was a smart idea to begin with. You don’t go to Paris to stay indoors unless it’s to look at art or eat things cooked in butter; and if you’ve seen the inside of one over-lit stadium, you’ve seen them all. The Seine put the athletes, riding on their larger and smaller bateaux mouches, within spitting distance of Notre Dame, the Louvre, the Tuileries, Place Concorde, the Grand Palais and the Eiffel Tower.

There had been a few performers mentioned beforehand, including French Malian superstar Aya Nakamura; the “eco-metal” band Gojira, which, with its frequent collaborator the Franco-Swiss opera singer Marina Viotti, represented the Revolution; and the never publicly confirmed Celine Dion — who, in the event, did close the show, with a powerful rendition of Edith Piaf’s “L’Hymne à l’amour,” sung from high upon the Eiffel Tower. Lady Gaga, whose presence in the city had been noted, opened it — if you don’t count the winged accordion player on what I assume was the Austerlitz bridge — with a glamorous cabaret production of Zizi Jeanmaire’s ‘60s hit “Mon truc en plumes” set on gilded steps leading down to the river. That translates as “my thing with feathers,” and there were feathers, indeed — big pink fans, pink being the hue associated with that leg of the color-coded program.

Jolly mixed filmed pieces into the live performance. Most provocatively there was a gender-bending love story told through book titles that wound toward a suggested threesome — the show contained a decent amount of queer content. There was a dance in the scaffolding around Notre Dame. More crucial to the narrative, such as it was, were segments surrounding a masked and hooded torch bearer who would also be glimpsed in person along (and zip-lining above) the route. This bit included trips through the Metro, the catacombs — undoubtedly this was the first and surely the last opening ceremony to feature human skulls — and alligator-inhabited sewers, as well as the Louis Vuitton atelier (where they made the trunks that held the torch on its travels) and the Louvre, where figures left their paintings, later to emerge as giant heads in the river.

Olympics 2024: Celine Dion closes dazzling opening ceremony atop the Eiffel Tower

Read analysis of the Paris Olympics opening ceremony from our television writers, who weighed in on the spectacle held on the Seine.

Behind the clock in the Musée d’Orsay, we got a clip from the Lumière brothers’ seminal film of a train arriving in a station and a puppet animation that nodded to Georges Méliès‘ “A Trip to the Moon,” “The Little Prince” and “The Planet of the Apes,” which, of course, featured that statue the French made us. I did find this part particularly delightful.

This operatic mix of mediums, spread out across the city, could only make complete sense as television — anyone present would have only seen what was in front of them. And yet, as television, it mostly failed — further fragmenting a fragmented event, which alternated between the parade and the show over some four hours, with commentary and cutaways and, after the first hour, commercials. It spoke only of the banality of TV and to remind you that this is not an ad-free world. (The insertion of a “Despicable Me” short, from NBC’s parent company, Universal, had corporate cross-promotion written all over it.)

The commentary, by Mike Tirico, Kelly Clarkson and Peyton Manning, had the effect of people talking during a play, or that jarring feeling when you’re in a foreign country and you suddenly hear American voices. They were perhaps working at a disadvantage, given the secrecy that had surrounded the production and a less-than-native understanding of French culture and history. But apart from the sort of sports statistics that no viewer will keep in their head longer than it takes to say them, they spoke largely of how they felt and how they imagined the athletes must feel. It turned the parade of athletes into the Macy’s parade.

I say “mostly” failed. Often enough the grandeur, audacity and nuttiness of the event shone through the screen — mezzo-soprano Axelle Saint-Cirel singing “La Marseillaise” from the top of the Grand Palais, a silver chevalier on a robot horse skimming along the river to carry the Olympic flag to the Trocadéro, where the athletes had finally debarked, and where speeches from International Olympic Committee President Thomas Bach and Games President Tony Estanguet made one feel there might be something more to the Olympic spirit than winning medals.

And there was the genuinely moving finale, with Dion coming across like Liberty Leading the People in Delacroix’s famous painting and the Eiffel Tower putting on its laser show. White-clad athletes from many years passed the torch and became a crowd as they jogged together to the Louvre and back to the Tuileries, where a giant gold hot air balloon — the French invented it — was tethered. It became the Olympic cauldron, and then rose into the air, where I assume it will stay until the closing ceremony comes to tell us its story.

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Where Kamala Harris Stands on the Issues: Abortion, Immigration and More

She wants to protect the right to abortion nationally. Here’s what else to know about her positions.

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• Published July 21, 2024 Updated July 26, 2024

Follow the latest news about the 2024 election, and the Trump and Harris campaigns.

With Vice President Kamala Harris poised to replace President Biden on the Democratic ticket, her stances on key issues will be scrutinized by both parties and the nation’s voters.

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22 details you might've missed during the Paris 2024 opening ceremony

• The 2024 Paris Games kicked off with an impressive opening ceremony.
• There were several allusions to famous French works of art, including "Les Misérables."
• The bells of Notre-Dame were rung for the first time since the destructive fire in 2019.

The 2024 Olympics are being held in Paris this year, kicking off with Friday's opening ceremony.

The final budget for this year's Games is set to come in under $10 billion , which is only 25% more than the city's initial number. And nothing shows off the production value of the Summer Games quite like the opening ceremony.

From incredible performances to a parade of boats, here's what you may have missed during the opening ceremony.

The ceremony opened with a reference to the French Revolution.

The first section of the ceremony after the opening performance was titled "Ça ira."

The phrase, which was also the title of a popular song during the French Revolution , roughly translates to, "It will be OK."

The parade of nations took place right on the River Seine.

Instead of walking into the arena, athletes from each country paraded down the Seine on boats of all shapes and sizes. Some countries shared vessels, and others appeared on smaller boats.

The Seine has been a major character in these Olympics so far. Even though swimming in the river has been illegal for the public for about 100 years, Olympians from several water sports are meant to compete in it throughout the 2024 Paris Games.

Paris put over $1 billion into cleaning the river for the events, but there are still concerns about E. coli levels. It's unclear which (if any) events will actually be able to happen in the river.

Lady Gaga paid tribute to an iconic French performance style.

Lady Gaga — surrounded by dancers holding pink feathers — was the first entertainer to perform at the opening ceremony.

She sang "Mon Truc en Plumes," a cabaret song made famous by French ballerina Zizi Jeanmaire.

Jeanmaire debuted the song wearing a black outfit while dancing with men holding pink feathers, making Lady Gaga's performance a fitting tribute.

Simone Biles wasn't at the opening ceremony, but her family was.

American gymnast Biles was not at the opening ceremony. Her events start on Sunday, and it's common for athletes competing in the opening weekend to skip the long ceremony day.

But Snoop Dogg interviewed her family, who were watching the parade of nations from the banks of the Seine.

Louis Vuitton cases will be featured throughout the Games.

Part of the performance honored the legendary French fashion house Louis Vuitton with a routine centered on extra-large cases on luggage carts.

Later in the Games, the medals will be handed out in (much smaller) Louis Vuitton cases.

Each one of this year's Olympic medals contains a sliver of the Eiffel Tower.

The Monnaie de Paris made the medals for this year's Olympics, and each one contains a sliver of the Eiffel Tower .

Michael Phelps and Martin Fourcade made a somewhat strange cameo.

US swimmer Phelps holds the record for the most Olympic medals in history, and Fourcade is the most successful French Olympian.

Although it's not surprising that they were present at the opening ceremony, it was a little odd that they were just briefly shown standing next to the water in the midst of a dance performance.

The bells of Notre Dame rang for the first time since 2019.

Paris' famous Notre-Dame experienced a devastating fire in 2019 . During the opening ceremony, the iconic cathedral's bells rang for the first time since then.

Earlier in the ceremony, dancers dressed in construction gear performed around the scaffolded cathedral to highlight the reconstruction. The repairs are set to be completed by the end of the year.

Performers recreated an iconic scene from "Les Misérables."

The "Liberté" section of the opening ceremony opened with a hommage to the musical "Les Misérables."

Dancers performed around a barricade in the center of a stage as the masked torchbearer made their way through the theater.

Marie Antoinette, complete with a severed head, opened up a heavy-metal performance.

A performer dressed like Marie Antoinette (after her head was severed) sang the opening lines of a heavy-metal musical performance during the ceremony.

The ceremony almost got a little NSFW.

Part of the performance played into Paris' romantic reputation by featuring diverse couples and unique performances.

Scenes set in a library were intercut with the live performances of dancers suspended in the air above the bridge . The dancers gracefully (and safely) fell from suspended heights during the routine as it began raining heavily.

Affectionate moments and kisses were shown between various couples, including a trio that entered a bedroom together (possibly representing a polyamorous relationship).

All 58 of Ethiopia’s Olympic medals are for track and field.

As the Ethiopia delegates and athletes sailed down the Seine, the US hosts on the NBC broadcast highlighted the team's unique Olympic record.

All 58 of the country's medals have been won for track and field events.

The Statue of Liberty made an appearance.

During an animated segment of the show, the torchbearer flew in a hot air balloon past a number of recognizable figures, including the titular character from the famous French novella "The Little Prince" and the Statue of Liberty.

The French famously gifted Lady Liberty to the US in the late 1800s, and a smaller version of the statue sits in Paris.

Statues of women appeared on the Seine during the “Equalité” section.

During the section of the ceremony celebrating equality, statues of significant women in French history rose from the Seine in an hommage to the gender disparity of statues in Paris.

The women featured were Olympe de Gouges, Alice Milliat, Gisèle Halimi, Simone de Beauvoir, Paulette Nardal, Jeanne Barret, Louise Michel, Christine de Pizan, Alice Guy and Simone Veil.

After the ceremony, the statues will be gifted to Paris.

Coco Gauff is the first tennis player to carry the flag for the US.

This year, basketball player LeBron James and tennis player Gauff were the two US Olympians carrying the flag during the parade of nations.

Gauff is the first tennis player to be named a flag bearer for the US.

French rapper Rim'K mentioned Snoop Dogg during his performance.

When French rapper Rim'K performed, he mentioned Snoop Dogg .

The American musician, who was working as a commentator at the ceremony, could be seen smiling and dancing throughout the performance.

America has the largest number of athletes in the 2024 Olympics.

America's boat for the parade of nations held 594 athletes, making it the largest team at this Olympic Games.

France is No. 2 with 579 competitors.

A message calling for peace appeared after “Imagine” was performed.

John Lennon's "Imagine" has been performed at a number of Olympics opening ceremonies. This year, pianist Sofiane Pamart and singer Juliette Armanet took on the quasi-tradition.

After a passionate dance performance meant to represent different turmoils, the musicians performed the peaceful song while floating down the Seine on a flaming stage.

After "Imagine" ended, a message appeared on the screen: "We stand and call for peace."

The torchbearers weren't all French.

Toward the end of the opening ceremony, famed athletes from the host nation typically carry the torch to the cauldron.

The final procession started with French soccer player Zinedine Zidane. But in a twist of events, he passed the torch to Spanish tennis star Rafael Nadal, who holds the record for the most French Open titles (14).

The tennis player then boarded a speedboat with Romanian gymnast Nadia Comănect, US tennis player Serena Williams, and US track and field star Carl Lewis.

After a short ride on the Seine, the torch was returned to the hands of famous French athletes who lit the cauldron together in the Tuileries Garde n.

Cèlion Dion performed in a rare appearance.

French Canadian singer Dion performed at the end of the ceremony, a rarity since she has been diagnosed with stiff-person syndrome .

She performed "Hymne à l'amour," a song made famous by French singer Édith Piaf, on the Eiffel Tower.

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