Ian Bremmer, a political risk consultant, has come up with one of those snappy, graph-based theories (think the ‘tipping point’ and the ‘long tail’) which claim to ‘transform’ our understanding of the world, but actually reveal little. Bremmer’s theory is concerned with how nations develop. How can closed, authoritarian regimes be made to embrace democratisation, engagement with other countries and prosperity? To answer this, Bremmer has invented a graph — the J curve — which illustrates the course of a country’s journey. The graph’s two variables are stability (the vertical axis) and openness (horizontal). According to Bremmer, the line that any country must follow describes the shape of a ‘J’ (or, to be strictly accurate, a ‘J’ that has been rotated about 45 degrees in a clockwise direction). A country that is very closed, in other words, can be fairly stable (the left tip of the ‘J’), but not nearly so stable as a country that is very open (the top right-hand side of the ‘J’). The difficulty is getting from one to the other — going from being closed to being open. That, says Bremmer, necessarily entails a period of dangerous instability (the bottom of the ‘J’).

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