Think of most premodern polities starting somewhere near the bottom left, without powerful states or societies. The arrows that emanate from this bottom left trace the divergent development paths of state, society, and their relations over time. One typical path shown in the figure, approximating our discussion of the Tiv or Lebanon, begins where society is more powerful than the state and can stymie the emergence of powerful centralized state institutions. This results in a situation where the Leviathan is largely absent because initially the state and elites are too weak relative to society’s norms against political hierarchy. The fear of the slippery slope implies that, when possible, society will try to cripple the power of elites and undercut political hierarchy, so the power of state-like entities declines further, and the Absent Leviathan gets established even more firmly. The greater power of society relative to the state also explains why the cage of norms is so potent in this case—with no institutional ways of resolving and regulating conflicts, norms take on all sorts of functions, but in the process also create their own social inequities and various forms of stifling restrictions on individuals.
On the other side, starting with greater initial levels of state and elite power than societal power, we see an arrow approximating our initial discussion of the Chinese case where the configuration favors the emergence of the Despotic Leviathan. Here the arrows travel toward yet higher levels of state power. In the meantime, the power of society gets eroded as society finds itself no match for the state. This tendency is exacerbated as the Despotic Leviathan works to emasculate society so that it remains unshackled. In consequence, over time the Despotic Leviathan becomes overwhelmingly powerful relative to a meek society, and a change in the balance of power ultimately leading the Leviathan to be shackled becomes less likely.
But the figure also shows that we can have capable states matched by capable societies. This happens in the narrow corridor in the middle, where we see the emergence of the Shackled Leviathan. It is precisely in this corridor that the Red Queen effect is operative, and the struggle of state and society contributes to the strengthening of both and can, somewhat miraculously, help maintain the balance between the two.
In fact, the Red Queen—the race between state and society—does more than render both of them more capable. It also reconfigures the nature of institutions and makes the Leviathan more accountable and responsive to citizens. In the process, it transforms people’s lives too, not just because it removes the dominance of states and elites over them, but also because it relaxes and even breaks down the cage of norms, advancing individual liberty and enabling more effective popular participation in politics. Consequently, it is only in this corridor that true liberty, unencumbered by political, economic, and social dominances, emerges and evolves. Outside the corridor, liberty is curbed either by the absence of the Leviathan or by its despotism.
Yet it is important to recognize the precarious nature of the Red Queen effect. In all of that reaction and counterreaction, one party may pull ahead of the other, yanking both out of the corridor. The Red Queen effect also requires that the competition between state and society, between elites and non-elites, isn’t completely zero-sum, with each side trying to destroy and dispossess the other. So in all of that competition, some room for compromise, an understanding that there will be a counterreaction after every reaction, is critical. We’ll see in Chapter 13 that a process of polarization can sometimes turn the Red Queen effect into a zero-sum affair, making the process much more likely to spin out of control.
Another noteworthy feature of this figure is that at the bottom left corner, where both state and society are very weak, there is no corridor. This represents an important aspect of our discussion of the Tiv. Recall that the Tiv did not have norms and institutions capable of controlling political hierarchy once it emerged, and this was the reason why they were so keen to stamp out any whiff of political hierarchy; the choice wasn’t between a Shackled and Absent Leviathan, but between despotism and no state at all. This is a general feature that applies to many cases where both state and society are weak, and highlights that moving into the corridor is feasible only after both parties in the struggle have built some rudimentary capabilities and after some basic institutional prerequisites for a balance of power are in place.
The Proof of the Pudding
A theory is most useful when it offers new ways of thinking about the world. Let’s consider a few insights that follow from the theory we have just presented. We started in Chapter 1 with the question of where the world is heading. An idyllic version of Western democracy with no rivals? Anarchy? Or a digital dictatorship? From the vantage point of our theory, each one of these looks like one of the paths described in Figure 1. But what our theory clarifies is that there should be no presumption that all countries will follow the same path. We should expect not convergence but diversity. What’s more, it’s not as if countries can seamlessly transition from one path to the other. There is a lot of “path dependence.” Once you are in the orbit of the Despotic Leviathan, the state and elites controlling state institutions become stronger and society and the norms meant to keep the state in check become even weaker. Take China. Many policy makers and commentators have continued to predict that as it grows richer and more integrated into the global economic order, China will become more like a Western democracy. But the path of the Despotic Leviathan in Figure 1 doesn’t converge toward the corridor as time goes by. We’ll see in Chapter 7 that there is a lot of history shaping the dominance of the Chinese state over society and these relationships are reproduced by the specific actions that leaders and elites take in order to impair society so that it cannot challenge and constrain the state. This history makes a transition into the corridor much harder.
Nonetheless, that history matters doesn’t mean that history is destiny. This brings out a second important implication of our theory. There is a lot of agency—meaning that actions by leaders, elites, and political entrepreneurs can facilitate collective action and form new coalitions to reshape the society’s trajectory. That’s why path dependence coexists with occasional transitions from one type of path to another. This coexistence is particularly true for societies in the corridor because the balance between state and society is fragile and can easily break if society ceases to be vigilant or the state lets its capabilities atrophy.
A third, related implication is about the nature of liberty. In contrast to a vision emphasizing the virtues and relentless rise of Western institutions or constitutional designs, in our theory liberty emerges from a messy process, one that cannot be easily designed. Liberty cannot be engineered and its fate cannot be ensured by a clever system of checks and balances. It takes society’s mobilization, vigilance, and assertiveness to make it work. We need all that running!
Recall from the Preface that the strategy of restraining Gilgamesh with checks and balances, via his doppelgänger Enkidu, didn’t work in Uruk. It’s no different in most other settings, including in the U.S., even if the checks and balances introduced by the Constitution are often emphasized as the mainstay of American liberty. In 1787 James Madison and his collaborators descended on Philadelphia and seized the agenda of the constitutional assembly with the Virginia Plan, which became the basis for the Constitution. But the institutional architecture of the new country turned out to be different from the Virginia Plan because society (or some portion of it) didn’t fully trust the Federalists and wanted to have greater protections for their liberty. As we saw, Madison had to concede the Bill of Rights. It was society’s involvement and assertiveness that secured the protection of rights in the founding of the U.S. Republic.