Listen to the Our Long Walk podcast here first. New episodes are available on other platforms a day later. Paid members get early access, plus exclusive in-depth posts that explore each episode further. Your subscription supports the podcast and ensures we can keep delivering insightful content.
How do historical insights inform modern governance? Can traditional institutions be as effective as modern bureaucracies in driving development? What can Africa’s diverse historical pathways teach us about building effective policies today?
In this episode, Jonathan Schoots and I sit down with James Robinson, an economist and political scientist from the University of Chicago, to discuss how economic history can shape the decisions that policymakers make today. We recorded the episode before the happy news arrived on Monday that James had been awarded the Nobel Prize in Economics, together with Daron Acemoglu and Simon Johnson. Earlier this week, I wrote about how James had a direct influence on my journey in economic history:
In today’s podcast, we discuss examples from Africa, Asia and beyond, exploring how countries like Botswana and South Korea have leveraged traditional mechanisms and informal institutions to achieve development success. James offers a critical perspective on the limits of Western models like the Weberian bureaucracy, proposing that understanding diverse historical pathways is key to building effective, context-specific policies.
James, known for his influential books Why Nations Fail and The Narrow Corridor, has spent his career examining the roots of prosperity and conflict. With a background at both Harvard and Chicago, he brings a wealth of experience and a fresh perspective on the role of history in contemporary policy.
That is why he is also featured in a new documentary produced by LEAP, which discusses how economic history can contribute to policymaking today. I’ll write more about this at a later stage, but for now, a massive thanks to everyone involved in putting this together; the brilliant Philip du Plessis from Blindspot Films deserves a special mention.
In today’s interview, Jonathan and I refer to several of James’s research papers and books. We begin the discussion with Botswana. James writes about that here. He then refers to his work on Sierra Leone, which was published here. We discuss political centralisation in pre-colonial Africa. The paper is here.
I make a (bad) joke about anti-social norms in Britain. The paper that discusses anti-social norms in Colombia is available here. We discuss his work on Africa’s latent assets, based on this paper. James refers to an essay by George Orwell, which can be found here. He also refers to a debate between him, Deidre McCloskey and Joel Mokyr. It is scheduled for the 22nd of October in Chicago.
Although we don’t refer much to Why Nation’s Fail, we do speak a lot about Acemoglu and Robinsons’ second book, The Narrow Corridor, particularly about the importance of black economic empowerment in explaining the success of South Africa’s transition to democracy. An upcoming post will discuss that at length.
Finally, we discuss ubuntu and James’s theory on wealth in people, which he proposed at a talk earlier this year at Stellenbosch. Watch it here. This is the same talk we used to generate the Suno song ‘Wealth in People’ for this episode. I requested a combination of the following musical elements: Baroque, classical music, Kwagh-hir, Ihyembe, Tiple and Cumbia. The full playlist of AI-generated songs used for our podcasts is available here.
Please remember to subscribe to the Our Long Walk podcast wherever you listen to your podcasts. Also, if you can, please like it, write a review or, better yet, share it with a friend! Previous episodes include interviews with Princeton University historian Bronwen Everill (Episode 1) and Georgetown University comparative politics expert Ken Opalo (Episode 2).
‘What can economists learn from ubuntu?’ was first published on Our Long Walk. Thank you for your support. The image was created with Midjourney v6.
Share this post