The Narrow Corridor, the Cage of Norms and the Red Queen Effect

Thomas Hobbes, was born in the year of the Spanish Armada and lived through the English Civil War. When Charles I lost his head, he lived in exile in France and only returned after the monarchy was restored under Charles II. (I had written a bit about this period here). To understand his political philosophy, it is important to note the tumultuous times he lived through.

Hobbes, in one of his most celebrated quotes, explained the state of nature as being one in which “Man’s life was solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short”. To counter this, Hobbes proposed the establishment of a sovereign and all-powerful ruler, whom he referred to as the Leviathan. The Leviathan, in Hobbes’ theory, symbolizes the supreme political authority that possesses absolute power and is responsible for maintaining peace and order within society.

For a seventeenth century thinker living in exile and seeing his country being torn apart by the civil war, despotism had a natural pull. But its also a fact that an all-powerful state can also end up making a citizen’s life solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short.

Acemoglu and Robison, in ‘The Narrow Corridor’ uses Hobbes’ Leviathan as an entry point to explain the role of the state and the society in maintaining liberty. According to them, societies gain liberty through a messy progress of struggle between an all-powerful state and the existing social norms.

A country like Congo or Somalia has no perceivable State. Such regions are under the spell of the Absent Leviathan. Countries like China and North Korea have an extremely powerful State apparatus and can be categorized as the Despotic Leviathan. Between these two lie a narrow corridor wherein lies the modern liberal state in the form of the Shackled Leviathan.

In the absence of the state, societies grouped themselves through a ‘Cage of Norms’. These were often restrictive – the caste system, skewed gender relations, apartheid, slavery, kinship based societies are all manifestations of this. Through a constant struggle between the State exerting/relinquishing its power and the Cage of Norms resisting/surrendering to the State, emerged liberal societies in the form of the Shackled Leviathan.

The task of maintaining the narrow corridor is a delicate and complex one. On one hand, there is the risk of an authoritarian state that suppresses individual liberties and concentrates power in the hands of a few. On the other hand, there is the risk of the state crumbling leading to lawlessness, insecurity, and lack of basic public services and a strengthening of the Cage of Norms. This constant struggle to maintain the status quo is what is known as the Red Queen Effect. In ‘Through the Looking Glass’ Alice ends up running with the Red Queen only to realize that despite her best efforts, all the tress and surrounding objects remain stationary.

Alice looked round her in great surprise. ‘Why, I do believe we’ve been under this tree the whole time! Everything’s just as it was!’

‘Of course it is,’ said the Queen, ‘what would you have it?’

‘Well, in our country,’ said Alice, still panting a little, ‘you’d generally get to somewhere else — if you ran very fast for a long time, as we’ve been doing.’

‘A slow sort of country!’ said the Queen. ‘Now, here, you see, it takes all the running you can do, to keep in the same place.

The Red Queen effect refers to a situation where you have to keep on running just to maintain your position, like the state and society running fast to maintain the balance between them. All liberal societies today have emerged through centuries struggle for supremacy between the State and the Society and the Red Queen Effect has kept them stable and bound to the corridor.

When you think about the issues of our world today – authoritarian leaders, increasing digital surveillance, the corroding role of institutions, the crises of the media, the culture wars, religious fundamentalism, the promulgation and repealing of laws, regulating AI etc – it’s all about shackling the Leviathan and keeping it within the corridor!