Chris Blattman

Chris Blattman

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“Why nations fail” for toddlers

UntitledI have been reading slightly more picture books than political economy lately, and so the nature of my book reviews is evolving. As you will see, I’m apparently unable to stop looking through a social science lens.

The North Americans among you you will know Margaret Wise Brown’s, Goodnight Moon. Slightly less well know her Runaway Bunny, which begins as follows:

Once there was a little bunny who wanted to run away. So he said to his mother, “I am running away.” “If you run away,” said his mother, “I will run after you. For you are my little bunny.”

“If you run after me,” said the little bunny, “I will become a fish in a trout stream and I will swim away from you.”

“If you become a fish in a trout stream,” said his mother,
“I will become a fisherman and I will fish for you.”

This continues for a while. Eventually…

“If you are a gardener and find me,” said the little bunny, “I will be a bird and fly away from you.”

“If you become a bird and fly away from me,” said his mother, “I will be a tree that you come home to.”

…”Shucks,” said the bunny, “I might as well
stay where I am and be your little bunny.”

And so he did. “Have a carrot,” said the mother bunny.

One way to read this is a book about a mother’s love. Some say Wise Brown was making an allegory to God. This week I used Runaway Bunny in my state-building lecture.

States for most of history have been unrelenting, coercive, and all-consuming. If you think of states as merely benign or civilizing, you will fail to understand the shape of society. You can try to run away, but you will come home. Here’s a carrot for your trouble.

If you do not agree with me, or have your doubts, your reading assignment is Jim Scott’s anarchist history of Southeast Asia. Or the runner up, Eugen Weber on turning peasants into Frenchman. From Scott’s book:

At a time when the state seems pervasive and inescapable, it is easy to forget that for much of history, living within or outside the state… was a choice…

Much, if not most, of the population of the early states was unfree; they were subjects under duress.

…it was very common for state subjects to run away. Living with the state meant, virtually by definition, taxes, conscription, corvee labor, and, for most, a condition of servitude

When these burdens because overwhelming, subjects moved with alacrity to the periphery or to another state.

…Note that this account of the periphery is sharply at odds with the official story most civilizations tell about themselves.

According to that tale, a backward, naïve, and perhaps barbaric people are gradually incorporated into an advanced, superior, and more prosperous society and culture.

From the most intellectually badass mommy blog around: Goodnight bunnies everywhere.

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