The Narrow Corridor-How Nations Struggle for Liberty by Daron Acemoglu and James A Robinson

 

 

 

It can be safely assumed that human beings and agglomerations of humans that we call societies, aspire for peace, prosperity and liberty. It follows therefore, that an interesting subject for study and debate is the whole issue of how these aspirations can be fulfilled and whether societies have managed to fulfil these aspirations in history, and if not, why not.

The 1640s were very violent and troubled times in Britain and political philosopher Thomas Hobbes responded in 1651 with the book, Leviathan, in which he recommended that people should ’submit their Wills’ to a strong centralized state - the Leviathan - to ensure peace, and presumably, prosperity.

Unfortunately, strong states have a penchant for dominance - despotism is part of a state’s DNA - and liberty, all too often, is quietly abandoned by the powers that be, as neither necessary nor sufficient for social welfare. This very frequently leads to the emergence of a Despotic Leviathan.

The authors argue that between an Absent Leviathan and a Despotic Leviathan there is a very narrow ‘corridor’ in which a strong and effective state can coexist with a capable, well-organized society that can take collective action to keep the state ‘shackled’ and control its naturally despotic tendencies without curtailing its effectiveness in other areas of endeavor.

Theorizing about the nature of great states is interesting, but what is fascinating about this book is the wealth of real world examples that the authors have collated and put forth for our edification.

Athens, around 594 BCE, built a Shackled Leviathan through the efforts of Solon, who was appointed Archon - a kind of executive President - for a year. The authors quote Plutarch as saying,”The rich found him(Solon) acceptable because of his wealth and the poor because of his integrity.” Solon instituted reforms that created a balance of power between the rich and the poor and empowered the common man without crippling the executive capability of the state. Apart from his perspicacity, a significant point in this example is Solon’s integrity - a rare quality in modern day leaders and perhaps the reason for the predominance of Despotic Leviathans rather than Shackled Leviathans in today’s world.

The Chinese state from ancient to modern times offers an example of a Despotic Leviathan, while Western Europe has several examples of  Shackled Leviathans. The role of history is significant here. The fall of the Western Roman Empire at the hands - or swords - of Germanic tribes brought together the centralized hierarchical administrative structures of the Roman Empire and the Catholic Church with their traditions of consensual decision making via assemblies characteristic of the Germanic tribes. The confluence of these two rather divergent societal characteristics enabled the emergence of Shackled Leviathans - effective states constrained by strongly mobilized, well-organized societies. ’Path Dependence’, as the academics call it, makes history important,  though the authors argue that agency - charismatic leaders, cohesive civil society groups et al - is very significant too.

An interesting ,though far too brief, analysis of the Indian situation is worth mentioning here. A fragmented society divided by caste and so at war - or at least in conflict - with itself cannot come together to shackle a strong state. Furthermore, Colonial powers created state institutions, but not any means whereby society could monitor and control them. And post Independence these institutions continued without any significant alteration in ethos.  Thus India, the logic goes, is unlikely to evolve into a Shackled Leviathan. This analysis can be the starting point for a detailed examination of the state in India, the path dependence leading to the Despotic Leviathan and the conditions needed to get to the corridor of the Shackled Levaithan. This is an exercise waiting to be done.

Sub Saharan Africa yields several examples of the Absent Leviathan and Russia and Georgia yield outstanding examples of the Despotic one.

A detailed analysis of the evolution of the American Leviathan is remarkably educative. The limitations of the Constitution, the compromises with the slave owning constituencies of the South, the Bill of Rights and its limitations and much more make for fascinating reading.

The problem and its history have been brilliantly analyzed by the authors .The solutions are, however, hard to pin down. There is no single route to reach the ideal Shackled Leviathan; history matters a great deal; the emergence of charismatic leaders is important…

There is no clear prescription for curing the despotic tendencies of a strong centralized state. Societal mobilization of the non-elite is required, but how can that be achieved in a fragmented, hierarchical society?

We have to look elsewhere for answers.

The knowledge that this book imparts and the questions it raises are worth the effort required to read it.

The book is highly educative and strongly recommended.

Happy reading.

The Lessons of History ---Will and Ariel Durant

Will and Ariel Durant were famous and prolific historians who have written heavy tomes, and many of them, on various dimensions of human history.

The book under consideration here, however, is by contrast a slim volume that they call an essay and is a much easier read. Though a quick and easy read it is, nonetheless, a disturbing one.

To begin with, they sympathize with the assertion that ‘most history is guessing and the rest is prejudice’ and confess that in matters historical we ‘must operate with partial knowledge and be provisionally content with probabilities;…and all formulas should be suspect’.

With this caveat, they proceed to outline the lessons that history has taught them.

Geology and geography have perforce, a major impact on history but technology tends to reduce their significance. Biology and its laws however, continue to apply and exert overwhelming influence on human history.

The process of evolution involves competition for survival and selection of those fittest to do so. This process has hard coded acquisitiveness, greed and pugnacity in the Homo Sapien Sapien and these characteristics have not been diluted over the millennia that (wo)man has walked on earth, and remain the principal drivers of human behaviour and history.

Societies and the states that govern them, are aggregations of human beings and are founded not on human ideals but human nature which has changed very little over the centuries and remains overwhelmingly greedy and aggressive. When we combine this with the fact that nature distributes abilities very unequally, we have history characterized by inequalities in the accumulation of wealth and power and conflicts both in the small and the large. Since inequalities are inevitable as is the resentment they generate, history witnesses cycles of growing inequality and partial redistribution ‘violent or peaceable’.

The core propensities of human beings ensure that social equilibria are fragile and conflicts are an inalienable part of history. While individuals may be constrained by laws, conventions and cultural conditioning states are less constrained and wars are thus a principal characteristic of human history.

Modes of governance do change but despotism in various avatars has been most common. Democracy is very new and very fragile and prone to often morphing into dictatorship.

The one thing democracy could do to validate itself is, the authors feel,is to bring about a degree of equality in access to education and to opportunities for individual growth, both material and cultural.

The harsh conclusion is that ‘we repeatedly enlarge our instrumentalities without improving our purposes.’

Life may not be as nasty, brutish and short as in times past but is still driven by greed and aggression, under a thin veneer of culture, and characterized by inequality and conflict.

A thought -provoking essay well worth the time and effort needed to read it.

Happy reading.

The March Of Folly by Barbara Tuchman

 

Those of us who haven’t studied history in detail, will find this book fascinating and remarkably educative though a trifle hard to work through. Reading four hundred pages of serious prose in smallish print is never an easy task; it is however, well worth the effort in this case.

The author argues that the march of folly is characteristic of the actions of governments throughout history and that ‘holders of high office act contrary to the demands of reason and enlightened self- interest’ all too often. In essence, a dispiriting lesson of history appears to be that governments tend to commit acts of serious folly in their choice of policies and their implementation.

Plato has argued, in essence, that for good governance Kings should become Philosophers or else Philosophers should become Kings. Since neither of these has ever happened -the exceptions serve only to prove the rule -- folly has usually characterized the actions of great states.

To illustrate her thesis the author spells out, in great detail, four examples of mind bogglingly perverse and wooden headed state actions. The examples are chosen from Western history alone and include the incident of the Trojan Horse, the actions of the Renaissance Popes and the consequences thereof, the loss of Britain’s American Empire and the disaster that was America’s involvement in Vietnam.

To evoke curiosity if not interest in the book -- the prime purpose of this blog -- the folly that was America’s misadventure in Vietnam is briefly outlined.

When the Second World War ended, French pride was in tatters given France’s collapse in the face of Guderian’s panzers. To restore French self- esteem, President Charles de Gaulle felt it necessary to regain control of French colonies in Indo-China. To push the US president to help France in this context, Charles de Gaulle highlighted the danger to Europe and the ‘free world’ of Soviet expansionism and also underlined the importance of France as a shield against Stalin and his cohorts. Fear of Soviet ambitions in Europe and elsewhere overcame Roosevelt’s personal opposition to colonialism, and US involvement in Indo China began.

A week after the Japanese surrender in August 1945 Ho Chi Minh leading the Viet Minh, declared Independence and a conflict that was to last three decades and cause humongous losses to human life and property, began.

At the start, French troops with US assistance, arrived in Vietnam and began a brutal attempt at suppression of the Vietnamese independence movement. They did not succeed, however, and the debacle at Dien Bien Phu spelt the end  of the French attempt to regain control of their erstwhile colony. Vietnam was ’partitioned’-a “provisional demarcation not constituting a political or territorial boundary” by the Powers that be on the basis of a Geneva Accord in 1954.

The US political establishment, pushed by the Anti Communist hysteria of the far right, had convinced itself that it was in US’s National Interest to resist the Red Peril everywhere in the world , even in far away Vietnam and surrounding areas.

As a consequence, from ‘assisting’ and ‘advising’ in the war against Communism and Uncle Ho, the US segued over time, into taking over the war from the French. They set up a client in South Vietnam -- a corrupt, ineffective and unpopular regime - and flooded the area with advisors, black ops and massive air support. The creeping escalation of US involvement can be seen from the fact that by end 1962 there were 11000 US troops in Vietnam and less than a year later 17000. All of these were, of course, for ‘training’ and ‘logistics support’. Despite repeated advice from noted experts the US, commitment to its very undeserving client did not waver; nor did the conviction that it was in the US’s ‘national security interest’ to continue a distant and hugely expensive war.

Once Lyndon Johnson became President in late 1963, matters escalated. The US establishment seriously underestimated the Vietnamese determination to fight for Independence and to resist the horrific bombing that Operation Rolling Thunder unleashed on North Vietnam. The assumption that the ‘slopes’ could be bombed into submission proved wrong and all the Napalm and the defoliants and the regular ordinance could not end the conflict. US troops were sent in greater number by mid 1965 onwards. By mid 1967, 463000 US troops were in Vietnam and 70000 more were asked for.

The war dragged on and since the draft excluded those pursuing higher education, it was largely the poor and the ill-educated that ended up in Vietnam -- those who could make their way into ‘higher education’ did so and the others went to war!

As the costs mounted and public pressure to end the war increased, the American establishment’s determination to not loose a war and thereby loose face, weakened. Negotiations to try and end the conflict, to try and salvage ‘peace with honor’ began in 1968 and by 1972 most American combat troops had left Vietnam. In 1975 the South was overwhelmed and the war came to an end.

The numbers(American of course), howsoever accurate, were--45000   dead and 300000 wounded and approximately $20 billion spent every year for ten years. Since American involvement, in various forms, lasted 30 years, the real cost in both men and material was probably much higher.

Aspects of American folly in Vietnam can be summarized as under:

The invention of endangered national security interests, assumption of the omnipotence of American power and American arms, refusal to accept the hard facts on the ground and sage advice of experienced diplomats and soldiers and a gross underestimation of the North Vietnamese commitment to their goals.

The folly of the British ruling classes in their dealings with their American colonies, the folly of the Renaissance Popes and the folly of a succession of American Presidents and their cohorts for three decades after WWII all underline the disastrous possibilities inherent in the concentration and exercise of political power. Power not only corrupts, but also leads to ‘a failure to think’ and the sense of responsibility that must accompany power fades as the accumulation and use of power increases.

A few interesting quotes that may evoke a sense of déjà vu amongst some, are a good way to end this post.

About Phillip II of Spain a historian remarked ‘No experience of failure of his policies could shake his belief in its essential excellence.’

‘Louis XIV was considered a master monarch because people tend to accept a successfully dramatized self-estimation. His capacity for tolerating differences atrophied and he acquired the Disease of Divine Mission. All the King heard was praise.’

‘The trappings and impact of power deceive us, endowing the possessors with a quality larger than life. The reality is that they are like ordinary men, often acting unwisely, foolishly, perversely as people often do.’

To reiterate, the book is not easy to read but very well worth the effort.

Happy reading.

 

A Kashmir Holiday

Kashmir is mindbogglingly, breathtakingly and heartbreakingly beautiful. The adjectives are chosen after due consideration. The mind finds it difficult to absorb and describe the beauty, hence mindboggling; the beauty -- especially of the high valleys, clear frothing blue-grey river waters  and the looming snow dusted mountains -- is like a punch in the solar plexus hence breathtaking and all this is experienced in the shadow of the gun and a faint but all- pervading miasma of bitterness, suspicion  and potential violence, hence heartbreaking.

But life flows on despite the machine guns, the spot checks, the traffic jams to make way for armed forces convoys and the undercurrent of fear that is inevitable in such an environment. Children walk to school chattering, horsing around and checking their cellphones as children do everywhere on earth; the apple crop is ready to be harvested and the walnut crop is drying by the roadside, to be sacked and loaded onto tempos for transportation to the markets. I was told the growers get one rupee per walnut! Compare this with walnut prices in Delhi and one realizes the gap between retail price and returns to the agriculturist who has surplus to sell.

Srinagar has the Dal Lake amongst many other attractions and a cynical outsider could be pardoned for assuming that the houseboat experience on the Dal would be an unpromising, touristy experience with smelly stagnant water, unprepossessing facilities and aggressive vendors peddling cheap junk — and one would be quite wrong!!

The Srinagar lakes are in a bowl with mountains looming over them and the impact of it all was quieting.

The best veg food we had in our seven days in Kashmir was on board a houseboat; the water in which we were moored was not smelly at all and the shikara ride was quite a joyful experience. Vendors did approach but did not persist when we showed no interest and were uniformly polite and not pushy at all.

 The morning came to consciousness (my apologies to the poet) slowly and softly with the odd shikara going about some early business on an otherwise empty water surface.

And slowly the stirrings of commerce were felt with the smell of wildflowers brought up to the side of our houseboat as we sipped tea and soaked in the silence. The price mentioned for a bunch of flowers was high but we paid it quite gladly – we were happy to give back, in our small way, for the experience that was simply there for the taking.

After a day on the Dal we drove to the valley of the Lidder. In other words, to Pahalgam and points beyond -- Aru Valley, Betab Valley and Chandanwadi (where the Amarnath Yatra starts).

The Lidder flows down from glacial heights in two streams that meet in Pahalgam -- the Aru valley lies on one arm and Chandanwadi and Betab Valley on the other.

Our hotel was located downstream from Pahalgam -- a sparkling new little gem of a place with a superb view down the valley from front facing windows. Construction of another hotel on an adjoining terrace blocked off the valley view from the side. Very modern heavy-duty trucks were ferrying building material down the hillside and obviously several terraces had been sold for construction -- the fruit trees on them were dying and the fruit withering on the branches.

The cynic in me saw the onset and determined progress of the Naini-Tal, Bhim Tal syndrome: the shades of green -- thick stands of tall pine and other trees -- flowing down the valley of the Lidder will very soon be replaced by a cascade of colorful concrete flowing alongside the Lidder. It would perhaps be wise to get a view of nature at its beautiful best in the region before it is butchered on the altar of tourism promotion.

The Aru valley is a short drive from Pahalgam and absolutely mind blowing. The road ends there and a gently sloping valley reaches up to the foot of soaring mountains, the tops of some of which were lightly dusted with snow. It is a place to just sit around, look and absorb nature at its spectacular best while ignoring the tourist trash on the ground --the ubiquitous empty plastic packs of snack foods that herald the onset of development and the success of marketing strategies of Multinational food processing companies.

A piece of friendly advice -- do not buy ‘pashmina’ stoles from itinerant vendors here or anywhere else. Buy them and other great stuff -- dry fruits, pherans, shawls etc  from  known shops in Srinagar to be assured  of quality and reasonable  prices.

A feature of tourism in Kashmir is the penchant that tourists have of getting themselves photographed with pigeons sitting(sic) on themselves. The photographer carries a plastic basket with pigeons in them and approaches you singing ‘Masakkali, Masakkli..’!!And it obviously does give him  some revenue!

Not wanting to be memorialized in this fashion we requested one such entrepreneur for permission -- and the privilege -- of photographing him with his birds for the rate he was offering to photograph us.

The Betaab Valley is named after the film Betaab that was reportedly shot there. Essentiially it’s a big park alongside the gently flowing, blue-white Lidder -- no rocks here so no rough and tumble of frothing waters as can be seen at Chandanwadi.

The Lidder at Betaab Valley

The valley is a popular picnic ground and busloads of school children were making merry as were tourists with cameras and packets of chips. But despite the crowds, just sitting by the river and watching it flow created a space of silence around one for a short while.

And then there was Chandanwadi -- the starting point for the Amarnath yatra . Here too was the Lidder, but in a narrower, sprightlier more bubbly avatar, bouncing over rocks on a narrow streambed rushing downhill while tourists took selfies and ponies trudged up the track.

Yes, tourism in Kashmir includes a lot of sturdy ponies and a great deal of horseshit, which can be a trifle disconcerting for those of us unused to animal excrement liberally decorating roads/paths in several places.

From the Chandanwadi Parking lot

The start of the path

The horses and the trash by the path

From the Pahalgam region it was back to Srinagar for some shopping and a trip to Doodhpathri, a magnificent expanse of green meadows, a

white-water river, towering mountains all around and yes, loads of tourists, locals picnicking and, of course, horses.

The drive to Doodhpathri, once one is out of the urban clusters and into the wilderness, is an experience in itself -- nature wild, green and overwhelmingly beautiful! Words do fail one; one is pushed to using all the seemingly trite words and hackneyed phrases which are simply grossly inadequate to describe what one experiences.

A practical observation: everybody we interacted with -- drivers, vendors, hotel and restaurant staff, salespersons in shops, shikara  boatmen….. were polite, considerate and pleasant; a very agreeable change from the aggression one has to deal with all too often elsewhere.

One cannot ‘do’ Kashmir in a hurry. One has to spend time just being there: walking around, checking out the treks if one is sprightly enough, shopping…and absorbing it all slowly. And one has to do it before it is all swallowed up in colorful concrete and plastic wrappers.

While Kashmir is definitely expensive, the products it is justly famous for -- walnuts, shawls, stoles and not to forget, walnut brownies from a particular shop in Srinagar -- can be bought at a fraction of the price one pays for them in Delhi and the quality is way way superior.

Do visit Kashmir -- it is well worth the expense and effort.

Mindboggling, breathtaking, heartbreaking, quite, quite overwhelming.

Some Perspectives

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Two poems from a volume titled Nanda Devi

 

More than thirty years ago, my father, Satish Datt Pandey, published a slim volume of poetry in Hindi titled Nanda Devi. Today, listening to Lata Mangeshkar's 'Ae mere watan ke logon' brought to mind two of my favourite poems from Nanda Devi. The context in both cases is similar -- the 1962 war in case of the song and the 1971 war in case of the poems.

Happy reading!

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Incarnations-A History of India in 50 Lives By Sunil Khilnani

 

One would normally not blog about a book when only halfway through it. Rules, however, are meant to be broken and exceptions are important.       

So here is a post on Incarnations -- A History of India in Fifty Lives by historian Sunil Khilnani.

Khilnani attempts to sketch a picture of 2500 years of Indian history through the lives of fifty significant figures in the history of the subcontinent. Fifty lives from the Buddha to Dhirubhai Ambani via Adi Shankara, Rajaraja Chola, Basava, Iqbal, Jinnah, Subbulakshmi and a host of others give the reader a fascinating, colourful and immensely educative picture of the flow of life and its accompaniments in this part of the world.

It can be argued that less than ten pages, on average, for each such significant life is hardly enough -- libraries have been written about the Buddha and many a tome on the others, but Khilnani’s experiment in history telling is different, intriguing and enormously successful. He is focused not just on the past but, very effectively, on the way that the past has created the present. He makes the connections so clearly and incisively that the book could conceivably have been named The Men and Women Who Made India What It Is -- A Guide to Understanding Who We Are and Why.

One studies the past not just as an interesting curiosity, but as the principal determinant of the present; and the best introduction to India’s past that I have read is Incarnations. Full disclosure demands here that I clarify that I have not studied history as an academic discipline in college. So, for a layperson interested in India’s past, present and future, this book is a must read. It has to be read and   absorbed slowly and is an ideal fixture for one’s bedside table — one life a day to cover 2500 years of Indian history. Also, in these times of short attention spans, this would make a great gift for one’s children -- a serious education in easily digestible bites for the Twitter and Insta generation.

Happy reading.

Why Europe Grew Rich And Asia Did Not – Global Economic Divergence 1600-1850 --------- Prasannan Parthasarathi

 

The focus of the book under consideration is categorically elaborated in the title. The attempt is to understand why Asia got left behind in the economic race and Europe got ahead -- and hugely so. The debate on this ‘divergence’ is not new, but the arguments advanced by Prof. Parthasarathi in this fascinating book are both intriguing and stimulating.

The history that the debate attempts to understand is well known. In summary, from the late 18^th century onwards a series of technological innovations occurred in Britain that transformed certain sectors of the British economy. Productivity increased hugely, and the British economy became the global center of manufacturing by the mid-19^th century. Western Europe followed the British lead and Europe grew rich, while Asia in general and India in particular, did not.

Explanations for this ’divergence’ are manifold. The focus of all explanations is a stark difference between Europe and Asia. Some find the cultural/religious difference significant -- the Protestant ethic and related social orientation towards mastering nature by scientific exploration, hard work and frugal living. Others argue that European institutions were conducive to technical innovation and economic growth -- free(ish)markets, individual property rights and such economically dynamic structures were the major differentiators between a dynamic Europe and a static Asia. Other explanations are also on offer.

The author however, offers an entirely different perspective.

He argues that the economic, political, social and ecological context in any given period of time determines the possibilities open for a society to choose from. Choices are not determined, but certainly constrained by circumstance. In the 18^th century, the context, so defined, differed across geographies and led to different paths being chosen -- and rationally so -- by different ‘agents’.

This general argument needs elaboration and validation.

Trade between Europe and Asia via the Red Sea and The Persian Gulf had existed for centuries, before an all sea route via the Cape of Good Hope was discovered by the Portuguese and Vasco Da Gama reached Kerela in 1498. About a century later the Dutch and the English (the French took a little longer) also came by sea in search of profit. From an initial fixation on pepper and other spices the ‘Company of Merchants of London trading into the East Indies' (the East India Company, in short) found another hugely profitable commodity for trade -- Indian cotton cloth -- coloured, checked and even coarse white. Cotton was more comfortable to wear than the commonly used wool and linen, was available in a wide variety of colours and patterns, and held colour much better too! Soon a huge and growing demand for Indian cottons was created in Britain and elsewhere. The fancy, coloured stuff was for the English consumer and the coarse for buying slaves with on the West African coast; and also to clothe the slaves so bought, in the Americas—and that includes the Caribbean sugar plantations. The quality of Indian cottons and the volumes that sea transport made possible, created and helped meet a huge and growing demand for Indian cloth. Cotton was king. And kings have enemies!

The boom in Indian cotton called forth two distinct responses. The powerful wool and linen industry pushed very hard for protection, which was given to them; and when duties proved inadequate to stem the tide, they asked for a complete ban on imports for domestic consumption and that too was given to them!   Alongside this, a cotton textile industry took birth! The huge market for cotton coupled with the protection granted by a mercantilist state made the cotton sector very attractive indeed and tech innovation followed the possibility of profit. Innovations in spinning made it possible to produce more cotton yarn much cheaper than the Indian hand spinner could and the British Industrial Revolution, led by cotton textiles, was on its way. Tech breakthroughs in weaving followed in time, but the importer of finished cotton cloth became, in the 19^th century, an importer of raw cotton instead and an exporter to the world of cotton textiles!

Two other sectors were part of the revolution -- coal and iron and steel. The principal driver in this context was ecological change -- extensive deforestation resulting in declining availability and rising prices of wood and charcoal. When wood became unavailable at reasonable prices, coal, available in plenty, boomed. For coal mines to function at depth, water had to be pumped out and for that a source of power was needed. Animal, human and water power were inadequate for the purpose and the steam engine came into being. Once a coal fired source of power was available various possibilities for its application in areas other than coal mines were quickly realized and implemented. Add to this the innovation in smelting iron using coal instead of wood charcoal and we have cheaper iron and steel too. Things are ready for takeoff. The steam powered Iron Horse, iron rails for it to gallop on with wagons and coaches in tow, and of course, steam power for manufacturing on much larger scales than was possible earlier.

The context -- competition from Indian cotton textiles, deforestation and its impact on fuel use and the actions of a proactive state willing and able to look after domestic economic interests -- created the possibilities for the English economy. The responses of the society to this context created a path that led to what was a revolution in manufacturing and transport: the Industrial Revolution of the 19^th century.

The Indian context in the 18^th and 19^th centuries was very different. Fuel use patterns did not begin to change away from wood to coal till the late 19^th century; the colonial state subordinated Indian economic interests to British interests and despite rather sophisticated financial and trade structures in place, there was no movement in directions that could have taken India towards a coal-steel-mechanized cotton textile industry based development paradigm.

It was not culture or institutions or any other huge difference between the India and the England of the times that stood in the way, it was context and the compulsions thereof.

One may find some of Prof Parthasarthi’s arguments, (especially those relating to the potential for technological change in India) a trifle hard to accept, but his core argument -- the significance of context in determining the path of change adopted by a society -- is powerful and thought provoking.

Happy reading.