Synopses & Reviews
Inequality is the defining issue of our time. But it is not just a problem of the rich world. Inequality between rich and poor countries, and rich and poor people the world over, is much greater than within countries like America and Britain. It is the global 1% that now owns fully half the worldandrsquo;s wealthandmdash;the true measure of our age of inequality. Addressing that demands that we look outside economics and beyond our national borders.
In The Political Origins of Inequality, Simon Reid-Henry takes a global perspective to explain how the crisis of welfare state capitalism in the rich world is linked to the wider ongoing condition of global poverty. Rich and poor the world over, he argues, engage in a wider political economy that has been structured over time in such a way as to reproduce a range of institutionalized forms of unfairness that are progressively distorting economies and democratic politics in countries around the world. This limits the ability of the poor to do what they are always counseled to do, to pull themselves up by their own bootstraps. But it also undermines the position of the rich among us, creating a world where we are told to value security over freedom and special treatment over universal opportunity.
Inequality, Reid-Henry argues, is a function of the political choices we make, and, drawing on the historical experience of different countries, he shows how it is within our power to address it. At a moment when the future of international development is being set, we need to understand more than ever both why tackling global inequality is necessary and why it is the only way to meet a great many other challenges confronting humanity today, from climate change and food insecurity to economic instability and migration. The problem is not that the world is falling apart. To the contrary, worlds we once thought were separate are colliding. It is our capacity to act in concert that is falling apart. As Reid-Henry shows, it is this that needs restoring most of all.
Review
"Fukuyama has succeeded in proving, with a formidable display of erudition, that anyone who wants to reform American democracy had better start by reading his latest book." —Michael Ignatieff, the Atlantic
Review
“Straightforward and sensible . . . Fukuyama is nothing if not ambitious.” —Sheri Berman, The New York Times Book Review
“It is not often that a 600-page work of political science ends with a cliffhanger. But the first volume of Francis Fukuyamas epic two-part account of what makes political societies work, published three years ago, left the big question unanswered . . . Political Order and Political Decay is his answer . . . Fukuyamas wealth of insights [are] worthy of the greatest writers about democracy.” —David Runciman, Financial Times
“Political Order and Political Decay is a courageous book by an author at the peak of his analytical and literary powers. This project started as an attempt to rewrite and update Samuel Huntingtons classic Political Order in Changing Societies, published in 1968. Yet Fukuyama has what Huntington sorely lacked, namely the ability to communicate complex ideas through engaging prose. Hes both a perceptive political analyst and a wonderful storyteller. Clearly, something has indeed gone haywire in our world: Serious political science is not supposed to be so enjoyable.” —Gerard de Groot, The Washington Post
“[A] monumental study [that] rest[s] on an astonishing body of learning.” —The Economist
“Fukuyama has been both a policy maker and adviser . . . His latest opus [seeks] to clarify the fundamental problems of political order.” —David Polansky, Wall Street Journal
“Fukuyamas brilliant work on political orders [is] cogent, clear, and often intellectually thrilling account of the development of the state . . . There is simply no way to do full justice in a review.” —Zach Dorfman, The Los Angeles Review of Books
“Fukuyama has succeeded in proving, with a formidable display of erudition, that anyone who wants to reform American democracy had better start by reading his latest book.” —Michael Ignatieff, The Atlantic
“Learned and lucid, Political Order and Political Decay is jam-packed with insights about political development.” —Glenn C. Altschuler, San Francisco Chronicle
“This bold political scientist limns the transformation of societies politically galvanized by eighteenth-century revolutions and financially enriched by nineteenth-century industry . . . Strikingly ambitious and provocative.” —Booklist (starred review)
“[Fukuyamas] superb synthesis of political science and history will be useful to experts as well as students and laypeople.” —Publishers Weekly (starred review)
“Th[is] deeply engaged political scientist offers a compelling historical overview . . . Systematic, thorough and even hopeful fodder for reform-minded political observers.” —Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
Review
andldquo;The Political Origins of Inequality makes the bold claim that popular thinking on global development is profoundly and fundamentally flawed because many of the economists who have written many of the best sellers have often been shortsighted. This is an important book about big issues, dismissive of facile solutions, it should change the terms of the debate on why the gaps between us are so wide and what we could do about them.andrdquo;
Synopsis
The second volume of the bestselling landmark work on the history of the modern stateWriting in The Wall Street Journal, David Gress called Francis Fukuyamas Origins of Political Order “magisterial in its learning and admirably immodest in its ambition.” In The New York Times Book Review, Michael Lind described the book as “a major achievement by one of the leading public intellectuals of our time.” And in The Washington Post, Gerard DeGrott exclaimed “this is a book that will be remembered. Bring on volume two.”
Volume two is finally here, completing the most important work of political thought in at least a generation. Taking up the essential question of how societies develop strong, impersonal, and accountable political institutions, Fukuyama follows the story from the French Revolution to the so-called Arab Spring and the deep dysfunctions of contemporary American politics. He examines the effects of corruption on governance, and why some societies have been successful at rooting it out. He explores the different legacies of colonialism in Latin America, Africa, and Asia, and offers a clear-eyed account of why some regions have thrived and developed more quickly than others. And he boldly reckons with the future of democracy in the face of a rising global middle class and entrenched political paralysis in the West.
A sweeping, masterful account of the struggle to create a well-functioning modern state, Political Order and Political Decay is destined to be a classic.
Synopsis
The world's best-selling economist's brief, incisive essays on subjects ranging from austerity to inequality, Steve Jobs to climate change, documenting the global financial crisis in real time through the eyes of one of its keenest observers.
About the Author
THOMAS PIKETTY is professor of economics at the Paris School of Economics and the École des hautes études en sciences sociale, and Centennial Professor at the London School of Economics's International Inequalities Institute. He is the author of numerous articles and a dozen books. He has done major historical and theoretical work on the interplay between economic development and the distribution of income and wealth. His most recent book is Capital in the Twenty-First Century.
SETH ACKERMAN is a historian of 20th-century Europe. He is an editor at Jacobin, where his translations have previously been published.
Table of Contents
Introduction. Occupy Yourselves! The Global 1%
1. The Political Forms of Inequality
2. A Great Debate?
3. The Poverty of Elsewhere
4. The Way of Wealth
5. A New Equality
6. andldquo;The Soft Power of Humanityandrdquo;
Notes