Liberty depends on a delicate balance between state and society

Liberty is a fragile thing. For thousands of years, civilisations have risen, flourished and fallen, and most of them have been rigid, brutal and despotic. Freedom for the masses is a historical rarity. It arises only as the product of a fine balance between competing interests. That balance is the subject of this book.

According to the authors, both of whom are American economists, the first of those countervailing forces is the state, or what Hobbes called the Leviathan. The second is society. For liberty to exist, the state and society must achieve equilibrium. If one dominates the other, the result is a slide away from liberty towards despotism.

Conversely, the lucky society that strikes a balance between state and society can slip into what the authors term ‘the corridor’, the theoretical space in which liberty flourishes. Society is then free to develop and innovate, with all the economic benefits that brings. The state holds a monopoly on force, gathers taxes, dispenses services and so on. But society creates institutions such as the courts and parliament, to keep the state and elites in check. Hobbes’s Leviathan exists, but has become shackled.

The creation of the US constitution and the social mobilisation that followed are expertly set out by the authors, even if the story is a little familiar. More striking are the descriptions of lesser known societies — for example the rise of the Zulu nation under King Shaka. There are also analyses of Polynesian society, the history of the Congo, Argentina’s failure as a viable state and why Costa Rica succeeded in shackling its Leviathan, while neighbouring Guatemala did not.

Hawaii’s history is a cruel example of how states can crush society. Throughout the 18th and 19th centuries, successive kings forced their subjects to harvest the sandalwood forests for sale to passing merchants.