The Fourth Revolution: The Global Race to Reinvent the State

The Fourth Revolution: The Global Race to Reinvent the State

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World Bank

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By John Micklethwait and Adrian Wooldridge

Penguin Press, New York, 2014

Reviewed by Martin Sieff

This enjoyable, readable, frantic and remarkably superficial book is very like the cloud patterns over Syria during the great drought of the past decade: They often promised rain but never delivered.

John Micklethwait, the long-time editor in chief of The Economist and Adrian Wooldridge, are idealistic liberals who have been mugged by reality. They used to share the comforting view that democracy and free markets were the inevitable wave of the future. They genuinely believed that “free choice in politics can only flourish alongside free choice in economics.” However, they soberly admit, “”over the past decade (these assumptions) have been tested and found wanting.”

How is it that China’s economic and industrial power and the standard of living of its people continue to rise whereas that of the United States and many smaller and less economically advanced democracies have fallen seriously behind?

Citing Dani Rodrik, the authors acknowledge that modern nation states “cannot simultaneously pursue democracy, national self-determination and economic globalization. They acknowledge that Western democracies may be “increasingly sacrificing democracy and national determination in the name of globalization. They even openly acknowledge “the problem of the inequality that capitalism creates.”