Why Nations Fail: The Origins of Power, Prosperity, and Poverty

History was repeating itself, but in a very distorted form. It was a famine in Wollo province in 1973 to which Haile Selassie was apparently indifferent that did so much finally to solidify opposition to his regime. Selassie had at least been only indifferent. Mengistu instead saw famine as a political tool to undermine the strength of his opponents. History was not only farcical and tragic, but also cruel to the citizens of Ethiopia and much of sub-Saharan Africa.
    The essence of the iron law of oligarchy, this particular facet of the vicious circle, is that new leaders overthrowing old ones with promises of radical change bring nothing but more of the same. At some level, the iron law of oligarchy is harder to understand than otherforms of the vicious circle. There is a clear logic to the persistence of the extractive institutions in the U.S. South and in Guatemala. The same groups continued to dominate the economy and the politics for centuries. Even when challenged, as the U.S. southern planters were after the Civil War, their power remained intact and they were able to keep and re-create a similar set of extractive institutions from which they would again benefit. But how can we understand those who come to power in the name of radical change re-creating the same system? The answer to this question reveals, once again, that the vicious circle is stronger than it first appears.
    Not all radical changes are doomed to failure. The Glorious Revolution was a radical change, and it led to what perhaps turned out to be the most important political revolution of the past two millennia. The French Revolution was even more radical, with its chaos and excessive violence and the ascent of Napoleon Bonaparte, but it did not re-create the
ancien régime
.
    Three factors greatly facilitated the emergence of more inclusive political institutions following the Glorious Revolution and the French Revolution. The first was new merchants and businessmen wishing to unleash the power of creative destruction from which they themselves would benefit; these new men were among the key members of the revolutionary coalitions and did not wish to see the development of yet another set of extractive institutions that would again prey on them.
    The second was the nature of the broad coalition that had formed in both cases. For example, the Glorious Revolution wasn’t a coup by a narrow group or a specific narrow interest, but a movement backed by merchants, industrialists, the gentry, and diverse political groupings. The same was largely true for the French Revolution.
    The third factor relates to the history of English and French political institutions. They created a background against which new, more inclusive regimes could develop. In both countries there was a tradition of parliaments and power sharing going back to the Magna Carta in England and to the Assembly of Notables in France. Moreover, both revolutions happened in the midst of a process that had already weakened the grasp of the absolutist, or aspiring absolutist, regimes.In neither case would these political institutions make it easy for a new set of rulers or a narrow group to take control of the state and usurp existing economic wealth and build unchecked and durable political power. In the aftermath of the French Revolution, a narrow group under the leadership of Robespierre and Saint-Just did take control, with disastrous consequences, but this was temporary and did not derail the path toward more inclusive institutions. All this contrasts with the situation of societies with long histories of extreme extractive economic and political institutions, and no checks on the power of rulers. In these societies, there would be no new strong merchants or businessmen supporting and bankrolling the resistance against the existing regime in part to secure more inclusive economic institutions; no broad coalitions introducing constraints against the power of each of their members; no political institutions inhibiting new rulers intent on usurping and exploiting power.
    In consequence, in Sierra Leone, Ethiopia, and the Congo, the vicious circle would be far harder to resist, and moves toward inclusive institutions far more unlikely to get under way. There were also no traditional or historical institutions that could check the power of those who would take control of the state. Such institutions had existed in some parts of Africa, and some, as in Botswana, even survived the colonial