The vast majority of workers had no such representation; in countries where benefits like pensions were tied to regular jobs, they entered the informal sector. Such individuals had few legally defined...
The rule of law limits power by granting citizens certain basic rights—that is, in certain domains such as speech, association, property, and religious belief the state may not restrict individual cho...
The repeated demand for justice, incorporated into the names of many Islamist parties, reflects not so much a demand for social equality as a demand for equal treatment under the law.
The remedy is to define larger and more integrative national identities that take account of the de facto diversity of existing liberal democratic societies.
The principle of effective government is meritocracy; the principle of democracy is popular participation. These two principles can be made to work together, but there is always an underlying tension...
The left continued to be defined by its passion for equality, but that agenda shifted from its earlier emphasis on the conditions of the working class to the often psychological demands of an ever-wid...
The increases in productivity brought about by Ford’s innovation were startling and revolutionized not just the automobile industry but virtually every industry serving a mass market. Introduction of...
The greatest pleasure … is to vanquish your enemies and chase them before you, to rob them of their wealth and see those dear to them bathed in tears, to ride their horses and clasp to your bosom thei...
The great concentration of wealth in the hands of the owners of chaebol has also had the consequence feared by the KMT in Taiwan: the entry into politics of a wealthy industrialist. This happened for...
Some people today argue that religion is primarily a source of violence, conflict, and social discord.25 Historically, however, religion has played the opposite role: it is a source of social cohesion...
Shared mental models—most particularly those that take the form of religion—are critical in facilitating large-scale collective action.
Religion was instead seen as a form of idolatry or false consciousness; recognition was due rather to the expressive inner self that might at times even want to transgress religious rules.
On the other hand, there are a number of cases where economic growth did not produce better governance, but where, to the contrary, it was good governance that was responsible for growth. Consider Sou...
Natural sociability can be overridden by the development of new institutions that provide incentives for other types of behavior (for example, favoring a qualified stranger over a genetic relative), b...
National identity is frequently formed in deliberate opposition to other groups and therefore serves to perpetuate conflict even as it strengthens internal social cohesion. National cohesion may expre...
Many of the failures attributed to democracy are in fact failures of state administrations that are unable to deliver on the promises made by newly elected democratic politicians to voters who want no...
Interstate wars in Latin America have been so infrequent and politically unimportant that many major surveys of Latin American history barely cover them. Compared to Europe and ancient China, or indee...
In the succeeding two centuries, however, some countries evolved in a very different direction. Prussia, Denmark, the Netherlands, Britain, and other European countries followed France in the developm...
In the hands of good leaders, such a system can actually perform better than a democratic system that is subject to rule of law and formal democratic procedures like multiparty elections. It can make...
In both Europe and the United States, that debate is currently polarized between a right that seeks to cut off immigration altogether and would like to send current immigrants back to their countries...