Niall Ferguson Quote

Two square yards of public land. Their arbitrary act of expropriation cost Mohamed Bouazizi his livelihood and his life. But his self-immolation sparked a revolution – though how glorious a revolution remains to be seen. It will depend on how far new constitutional arrangements in countries like Tunisia and Egypt achieve the shift from an extractive to an inclusive state, from the arbitrary power of rent-seeking elites to the rule of law for all.

Niall Ferguson

Two square yards of public land. Their arbitrary act of expropriation cost Mohamed Bouazizi his livelihood and his life. But his self-immolation sparked a revolution – though how glorious a revolution remains to be seen. It will depend on how far new constitutional arrangements in countries like Tunisia and Egypt achieve the shift from an extractive to an inclusive state, from the arbitrary power of rent-seeking elites to the rule of law for all.

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About Niall Ferguson

Niall Campbell Ferguson FRSE (; born 18 April 1964) is a Scottish–American historian who is the Milbank Family Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution and a senior fellow at the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs at Harvard University. Previously, he was a professor at Harvard University, the London School of Economics, New York University, a visiting professor at the New College of the Humanities, and a senior research fellow at Jesus College, Oxford.
Ferguson writes and lectures on international history, economic history, financial history and the history of the British Empire and American imperialism. He holds positive views concerning the British Empire. In 2004, he was one of Time magazine's 100 most influential people in the world. Ferguson has written and presented numerous television documentary series, including The Ascent of Money, which won an International Emmy Award for Best Documentary in 2009.
Ferguson has been a contributing editor for Bloomberg Television and a columnist for Newsweek. He began writing a semi-monthly column for Bloomberg Opinion in June 2020.