Power and Progress: Key Ideas in Coordination, Cooperation, and Control : The Evolution of Economic and Political Power

Abstract

The ultimate conclusion of my book, Coordination, Cooperation, and Control, is that when the same people hold both economic and political power, the result is stagnation. When the people who hold economic power do not also hold political power, the result is progress. The first four chapters of the book examine the concept of power and define different types of power to explain why progress requires economic power to be separated from political power. The next four chapters chronicle the historical evolution of power relationships to explain why, for most of human history, economic and political power were held by the same people, preventing economic progress. The development of commerce allowed people to gain economic power without having political power, and the mobility of capital created institutional competition that enabled the Industrial Revolution. That separation of economic from political power remains threatened, however, by the potential for those with political power to confiscate economic resources, and by cooperation between the economic and political elite through cronyism and corruption. The book closes with five chapters that examine the threats to progress and factors that can mitigate those threats.