Why do so many nations ultimately earn an "F"? The study "Why Nations Fail" tries to make sense of the phenomenon.

• Author: Thomson, James W.
• Position: Worldview

WHY DO NATIONS fail? War, famine, pestilence, and cultural decay are the traditional explanations. Modern writers such as Jared Diamond have added environmental hazards to this dismal list. It is not difficult to find examples: Hernan Cortes and his army of pest-ridden Spaniards annihilated the Aztecs, who lacked immunity from the host of deadly germs carried by the conquistadors. Famine has devastated many societies, including the one that took place recently in the Sudan. The black plague decimated millions of innocents from Asia to Europe in the 14th century. As for moral decay, the Roman emperors have provided interesting source material for numerous authors.

The study, "Why Nations Fail" (WNF)--by James Robinson, professor of government at Harvard University, and Daron Acemoglu, professor of economics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology--contends that nations likely will prosper or decline principally as a consequence of their political and economic institutions. Is this a deterministic theory of politics setting the stage for economic development, reminiscent of Marxist-style theorizing? Not really, for these two academics contend that the path to economic success is not necessarily simple or straightforward--and that some once-backward nations, such as China, may prosper (at least for a while) with very few political changes.

The topics discussed in WNF fall into a category that usually is described as "developmental economics," although the authors also have provided a sizable dollop of background material--providing a fascinating historical narrative of the stages of economic development from the Neolithic period of hunter-gatherers up through the present day. This study was intended to offer a clear alternative to the deterministic environmental concepts that were popularized by Jared Diamond in his 1997 Pulitzer Prize-winning Guns, Germs and Steel, which remains popular on many college campuses. Even Microsoft magnate Bill Gates is among the admirers of Diamond's book. Although trained as a scientist specializing in physiology and the evolutionary biology of birds--Diamond has been described as a polymath in some circles--he switched to economics and became an advocate of the importance of environmental factors, especially geography, in determining economic success.

Diamond notes that power, prosperity, and poverty vary much more today than in the past For instance, Norway, the world's richest nation, enjoys a per capita income of $84,290. The world's poorest country, Burundi, has a per capita income of about $170...