I often speculate on why countries are successful or not, and lately there has been some interesting research and writing on this topic.
Niall Ferguson; Civilization: The West and the Rest “Ferguson compared and contrasted how the West’s “killer apps” allowed the West to triumph over “the Rest” citing examples.”
Jared Diamond; Guns, Germs, and Steel “The book attempts to explain why Eurasian and North African civilizations have survived and conquered others, while arguing against the idea that Eurasian hegemony is due to any form of Eurasian intellectual, moral, or inherent genetic superiority. ”
Daron Acemoglu; Why Nations Fail: The Origins of Power, Prosperity, and Poverty “The book applies insights from institutional economics, development economics and economic history to understand why nations develop differently, with some succeeding in the accumulation of power and prosperity and others failing, via a wide range of historical case studies. ”
Joel Mokyr; A Culture of Growth “argues that political fragmentation (the presence of a large number of European states) made it possible for heterodox ideas to thrive, as entrepreneurs, innovators, ideologues, and heretics could easily flee to a neighbouring state in the event that the one state would try to suppress their ideas and activities. This is what set Europe apart from the technologically advanced, large unitary empires such as China and India.”
Why Nations Succeed Columbia University hosted a seminar in 2014 to examine the question “What are the social, economic and legal building blocks for success?”
Related to the topic of WHY is the question of what successful nations look like, by defining their values and then comparing across countries. Some really interesting research and writing centers around comparative metrics of national culture. Especially see the many web sites discussing Hofstede’s Cultural Dimensions Theory.
The Enlightenment
I’m here to assert that values and culture matter, and to point at a common heritage shared by many countries that we rank as “successful”. This shared cultural heritage is the intellectual and philosophical movement called The Enlightenment.
The Enlightenment’s ideas “centered on the sovereignty of reason and the evidence of the senses as the primary sources of knowledge and advanced ideals such as liberty, progress, toleration, fraternity, constitutional government and separation of church and state.”
The Enlightenment occurred chronologically between the Renaissance and the Industrial Revolution. It was a reaction to the first, and laid the foundations for the latter.
A quick and dirty metric of ‘geographic locale’ for The Enlightenment might go as follows: the Wikipedia article lists 13 “major figures” – 4 were British, 4 were French, there were 2 Germans, and one each from Italy, Netherlands and Switzerland; which puts the heart of the Enlightenment in NW Europe.
To repeat, Enlightenment values are: rationality and empiricism, separation of church and state, liberty, progress, toleration, fraternity, and constitutional government.
Now I suggest something you might think is mean-spirited, but it’s important and valuable – look at my list of shithole countries, which is Afghanistan, plus seven countries in Sub-Saharan Africa. Can you associate any of these countries with any one of the 8 Enlightenment values I just listed? Further, if I were to create a list which is the opposite of the shithole list (this would be countries that appear in the top 20 for both GDP per capita and ease of doing business), I bet most of the countries on that list will be rich in Enlightenment values.
The Enlightenment is a core cultural heritage shared by most nations in NW Europe. The degree to which those countries ‘drank the koolaid’ probably played a big role in their success. Germany, France and the UK were at the center, and they’ve done well. It’s also clear that The Enlightenment is a key piece of cultural heritage for Canada, Australia and the US as well; and we’re all doing OK too.
So what explains the relative success of the Asian Tigers? Good question. I don’t know.
One of my earlier posts is titled ‘Culture Matters‘, so this one gets the #2 modifier.
The Bottom Line
Culture matters. The Enlightenment seems forgotten, but it is an important part of our heritage and it is key to our success.