Narrator: In 2011, protestors in Syria rose up against the despotic regime of Bashar al-Assad. Inspired by the Arab Spring, they hoped that toppling a tyrant would usher in an era of freedom. But what they got was not liberty. It was a collapsed state, a power vacuum, and a descent into a brutal civil war. As one activist lamented, “We thought we’d get a present, and what we got was all the evil in the world.” This tragic outcome poses a profound and troubling question: If the absence of a powerful state doesn’t guarantee freedom, and a powerful state often becomes a tyrant, how can liberty ever exist?

In their book, The Narrow Corridor, economists Daron Acemoglu and James A. Robinson offer a powerful framework for understanding this dilemma. They argue that liberty is not a gift from leaders or a natural outcome of anarchy. Instead, it is a rare and fragile achievement, emerging only within a "narrow corridor" where a delicate and often violent balance of power is maintained.

Narrator: The book begins by framing the fundamental challenge of human society, a problem that stretches back to our earliest stories. On one hand, there is the danger of the Absent Leviathan, a society without a state capable of enforcing laws and protecting its people. This is the world of the Syrian civil war, or as political philosopher Thomas Hobbes described it, a state of nature where life is “solitary, poore, nasty, brutish, and short.” Without a state, society is plagued by violence, fear, and chaos, making true liberty impossible.

On the other hand, there is the danger of the Despotic Leviathan, a state that is all-powerful and unaccountable. This is the "Gilgamesh problem," named after the 4,000-year-old epic. Gilgamesh, the king of Uruk, was a great builder who made his city magnificent, but he was also a tyrant who trampled on the rights of his people. The gods sent a wild man, Enkidu, to check his power, but instead of restraining the king, Enkidu became his ally in tyranny. This ancient story illustrates a timeless truth: a state with the power to protect can just as easily use that power to oppress. Modern examples, from Mao's China, where state policies led to a famine that killed 45 million people, to the bureaucratic efficiency of the Nazis, show how a powerful state, unchecked by society, becomes the greatest threat to liberty.

Narrator: Acemoglu and Robinson argue that the only path to liberty lies in a "narrow corridor" between the chaos of an Absent Leviathan and the oppression of a Despotic one. This corridor is created when both the state and society are strong and exist in a state of constant tension. The state must be powerful enough to enforce laws, resolve conflicts, and provide public services. But society must be equally powerful, mobilized, and assertive enough to control and shackle that state. This ideal is the Shackled Leviathan.

Getting into and staying in this corridor requires what the authors call the Red Queen effect, borrowing from Lewis Carroll's Through the Looking-Glass. Just as Alice and the Red Queen had to run as fast as they could just to stay in the same place, the state and society must be locked in a perpetual race. As the state develops new capacities, society must develop new ways to control it. For instance, the history of ancient Athens shows this dynamic in action. The reforms of Solon in 594 BCE empowered ordinary citizens and constrained the elites. Later, Cleisthenes further democratized the state. This wasn't a smooth process; it was a constant struggle, a race between a growing state and an increasingly vigilant society that, over time, built the world's first democracy.

Narrator: While a mobilized society is needed to shackle the state, the book makes it clear that not all strong societies are good for liberty. Some are trapped in a cage of norms—a rigid set of customs, traditions, and social hierarchies that stifle individual freedom and prevent the collective action needed to control a state.

India provides a powerful example of this. Unlike China, India has a long history of popular participation and is a democracy. Yet, liberty has struggled to take root in many areas because of the deeply entrenched caste system. This system fragments society, creating deep divisions and hierarchies that make it nearly impossible for people to unite and challenge state power effectively. As a result, India has what the authors call a Paper Leviathan. On paper, it has all the institutions of a modern state, but in reality, it lacks the capacity to deliver basic services and is often unaccountable, because the fragmented society is unable to effectively monitor it. The cage of norms has left society immobilized and the state both weak and unshackled.

Narrator: The book explores why Western Europe, in particular, was one of the first regions to find its way into the corridor. The authors attribute this to a unique historical accident they call the European scissors. After the fall of the Roman Empire, two distinct traditions were fused together.

One blade of the scissors was the legacy of the Roman Empire itself: its top-down traditions of a centralized state, a codified legal system, and a bureaucratic administration. The other blade was the bottom-up, participatory traditions of the Germanic tribes, like the Franks and Anglo-Saxons, who conquered the former Roman territories. These tribes had strong norms of popular assemblies, where free men participated in decision-making and kings had to consult their people. The story of the Frankish king Clovis illustrates this tension perfectly. When he demanded an extra piece of loot, a warrior, citing the tribe's egalitarian norms, smashed it with his axe. Clovis couldn't retaliate immediately, showing the limits on his power. It was the centuries-long struggle to merge these two traditions—Roman statecraft and Germanic participation—that created the initial conditions for the Red Queen race and pushed Europe into the narrow corridor.

Narrator: Applying this framework to the United States, the authors argue that the American Leviathan was born from a Faustian bargain. At its founding, the Federalists wanted to build a strong, centralized state capable of national defense and economic coordination. However, they had to compromise with two powerful forces: a society deeply suspicious of centralized power, and Southern slaveholding elites who feared a strong federal government would threaten the institution of slavery.

The resulting U.S. Constitution created a Shackled Leviathan, but an unbalanced one. The federal government became a global superpower in areas like military might and foreign policy. Yet, its capacity in many domestic areas remained weak and fragmented. This legacy helps explain modern problems, such as the events in Ferguson, Missouri. Ferguson had a dysfunctional and predatory local government that exploited its Black citizens, operating with impunity. This happened despite the existence of a powerful national state, because the American Leviathan was intentionally designed with limited capacity to intervene in such local matters. The U.S. remains in the corridor, but its founding compromises have created a lopsided state, one that is simultaneously a global sea monster and, in some places, a surprisingly absent protector of its own citizens' liberty.

Narrator: The single most important takeaway from The Narrow Corridor is that liberty is not a destination to be reached, but a constant, precarious struggle. It is not a state of rest, but a state of perpetual motion. The book powerfully refutes the idea that we must choose between a strong state and a free society. Instead, it shows that we need both, locked in a dynamic and competitive dance. True liberty is found not in the victory of one side over the other, but in the enduring tension of the race itself.

This leaves us with a challenging question for our own time. As we face new threats—from rising inequality and digital surveillance to global pandemics—the state will inevitably need to expand its capacity. The book forces us to ask: Is our society running fast enough? Are we building the coalitions and developing the vigilance needed to keep this growing Leviathan shackled, or are we at risk of stumbling out of the corridor and losing the very liberty we take for granted?