
08/14/2025
The Narrow Corridor: States, Societies, and the Fate of Liberty by Daron Acemoğlu & James A. Robinson
Why is it that some countries enjoy liberty while others remain trapped in oppression and instability?
This question has been turning in my mind for years as I watch my country wrestle with its own contradictions. We have periods of hope followed by long stretches of stagnation. We have democratic rituals but not always democratic substance. In seeking answers, I turned to The Narrow Corridor: States, Societies, and the Fate of Liberty by Daron Acemoğlu and James A. Robinson. It is a book that does not simply offer easy explanations. It is a book that forces you to think.
Acemoğlu and Robinson start from a simple but unsettling observation: liberty is rare. It is not the natural condition of human societies. It does not survive on good intentions alone. The authors argue that liberty only emerges and survives when there is a delicate balance between a strong state and a strong society. This is what they call “the narrow corridor.” Too weak a state, and there is lawlessness and chaos. Too strong a state, and there is tyranny. Liberty lives in that narrow space where the state is powerful enough to enforce laws and provide security, but society is powerful enough to hold the state in check.
This is not a static condition. The authors use the image of the “Red Queen” from Alice in Wonderland — running constantly just to stay in the same place. In a free society, both the state and society must keep moving, keep strengthening, keep challenging each other. If one side stops running, the balance collapses. Liberty is not won once and for all; it must be renewed every day.
The book is filled with examples that speak directly to those of us searching for a better path in Africa. They write about ancient Athens, where citizen participation and civic institutions kept tyranny at bay. They write about the early United States, where federal power grew alongside civil society. They show how India, despite enormous diversity and poverty, managed to stay in the corridor through a culture of political participation and democratic resistance. But they also show the other side — places where liberty fell out of the corridor. In China, a strong state without societal counterweight created centuries of authoritarian stability. In much of the Middle East, weak states unable to impose order gave way to factionalism and collapse.
When I read their discussion of “despotic Leviathans” and “absent Leviathans,” I could not help but think of Nigeria. We live with the paradox of having a state that is simultaneously too strong in some ways and too weak in others. It can unleash the full power of coercion when it comes to silencing dissent, yet it is powerless in delivering security, education, or economic opportunity. Our society can be vibrant in protest but often retreats after the moment passes. We are not in the narrow corridor. We are swaying outside it, sometimes leaning toward chaos, sometimes toward repression.
The lesson the authors hammer home is that there is no shortcut into the corridor. It is not a gift from great leaders or foreign powers. It is the slow, often frustrating work of building both a capable state and an active society. It means strengthening institutions rather than personalities. It means cultivating civic habits, independent courts, honest police, and a political culture where citizens expect to be heard and can organize to make themselves heard.
One of the most powerful sections of the book describes how liberty is maintained only when ordinary people believe they have the right — and the duty — to resist encroachments on their freedoms. This is where my own frustration with Nigeria deepens. Too often we act as if the state is something distant, something to be feared or avoided, rather than something we can shape. In that vacuum, liberty cannot breathe.
Reading The Narrow Corridor made me see our condition with sharper clarity. It also made me realise that liberty is not a Western luxury. It is a human necessity. Without it, progress cannot be sustained. Without it, development becomes a fleeting illusion.
If you care about the fate of Nigeria, if you want to understand why some countries move forward and others remain stuck, if you want to see how history and political science can illuminate the choices before us, then read this book. It will not flatter you. It will challenge you. It will force you to think about the kind of country we want and the kind of society we are willing to be.
The corridor is narrow, but it is not closed. The question is whether we are willing to walk it.
Book: https://amzn.to/4oIZW7x