‘Why Nations Fail’ Is Not Quite as Good as They Say
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April 4 (Bloomberg) -- “Why Nations Fail” by DaronAcemoglu and James Robinson is getting lavish praise. Mostly,the book deserves it.
A kind of antidote to Jared Diamond’s megaselling “Guns,Germs, and Steel,” it asks why some countries are rich andothers poor. The answer isn’t geography, as Diamond argued --ingeniously though implausibly. It isn’t culture either, asothers say. According to Acemoglu and Robinson, it’s politics.Get the politics right, and you’ll prosper.