Review and Summary of the Article:
Acemoglu’s core claim in this interview is that liberal democracy can survive today’s overlapping crises only if societies deliberately reshape their institutions, technology, and political coalitions so that they again deliver broad‑based opportunity and voice, rather than inequality, exclusion, and loss of control. Survival is not automatic or “baked in” to history; it depends on conscious, collective choices.
Below are the main strands of his argument and how, in his view, liberal democracy could endure.
1. Diagnosis: A Pervasive, Multi‑Level Crisis
Acemoglu starts from the view that the world is in a “pervasive crisis” marked by:
- Widening economic inequality and stagnant prospects for many citizens.
- Breakdown of public trust in institutions and elites.
- Technological disruption, especially AI, that threatens jobs and political stability.
- Geopolitical stress (U.S.–China rivalry, wars) that tempts governments toward securitization and illiberalism.
He stresses that liberal democracies themselves created many of these problems by allowing markets, technologies, and powerful interests to evolve without adequate democratic steering.
2. No Automatic “End of History”: Democracy Is Contingent
Acemoglu rejects the idea that liberal democracy is the natural or inevitable endpoint of development.
- Democratic gains can be reversed when institutions cease to deliver opportunity and fairness.
- Periods of unregulated markets and excessive corporate power undermine both equality and the pluralism on which democracy relies.
Therefore, survival requires institutional reform, not complacent faith that “the system will correct itself.”
3. Re‑taming Markets and Power: Institutional Reforms
He argues liberal democracy must reassert control over markets and concentrated power:
- Rein in corporate and financial influence so that policy is not captured by narrow interests.
- Strengthen checks and balances, independent courts, competition policy, and campaign‑finance or lobbying rules so that economic power does not automatically become political power.
- Rebuild social protections and opportunity structures (education, active labor‑market policies, local development) so citizens experience democracy as materially meaningful, not just formal.
Unregulated or “hyper‑market” phases, he notes, dig their own graves by breeding both inequality and backlash; reforms must therefore prevent markets from hollowing out democratic norms.
4. Steering Technology, Especially AI, in a Democratic Direction
A central theme is that technology is not destiny; societies choose which technologies they develop and how they are used.
He warns that AI, left to current incentives:
- Will likely create “big winners and losers”—huge gains at the top, job loss and insecurity below—unless democratically steered.
- Can be deployed in ways that erode democracy, via surveillance, manipulation, and automated control, especially when combined with social media and data monopolies.
To survive, liberal democracy must:
- Establish democratic oversight of AI (regulation, standards, public input) so its deployment augments workers and public services instead of primarily replacing labor or empowering surveillance states.
- Favor “people‑complementing” technologies—AI that increases the productivity and agency of ordinary workers and citizens—rather than “people‑replacing” systems that concentrate power in a few firms or state agencies.
- Embed AI governance within broader institutions of accountability (independent regulators, transparency rules, constraints on data exploitation).
Without this steering, he suggests, AI will deepen inequality and distrust and thus further weaken democratic legitimacy.
5. Rebuilding Broad Coalitions and Civic Trust
Acemoglu emphasizes that institutional and technological reforms require political coalitions that cross class and identity divides.
He highlights:
- The need to reconstruct center‑left and centrist coalitions that represent workers and the middle classes, rather than aligning primarily with globalized elites.
- The importance of restoring trust by showing, concretely, that democratic governments can solve problems—improving public services, addressing inequality, and managing shocks (financial crises, pandemics, climate) competently.
- Investing in civic education and public discourse that explains these reforms and counters fatalism and conspiratorial thinking that feed extremism.
If democracy again delivers tangible improvements and a sense of shared purpose, he argues, support for authoritarian populists will wane.
6. How Liberal Democracy Survives: Acemoglu’s Formula
Putting it together, Acemoglu’s answer to “How can liberal democracy survive?” is roughly:
- Rebuild inclusive institutions so markets and technology operate within democratic constraints, not above them.
- Democratically steer AI and new technologies toward complementing people, not replacing or controlling them.
- Reduce inequality and precarity through policies that expand opportunity and social insurance.
- Reconstruct political coalitions and civic trust so citizens feel represented and see democracy as capable of solving real problems, not just managing decline.
Liberal democracy survives, in his view, only if it becomes once again a vehicle for shared prosperity, dignity, and agency in the face of technological and geopolitical shocks, rather than a system that appears to protect only the winners of globalization and automation.
The world has reached various inflection points, or so we are often told. Advanced technology, such as artificial intelligence, promises to transform our way of life. In geopolitics, the growing competition between China and the United States heralds an uncertain new era. And within many democracies, the old assumptions that undergirded politics are in doubt; liberalism appears to be in disarray, and illiberal forces on the rise.
Few scholars are grappling with the many dimensions of the current moment quite like Daron Acemoglu is. “The world is in the throes of a pervasive crisis,” he wrote in Foreign Affairs in 2023, a crisis characterized by widening economic inequalities and a breakdown in public trust. Acemoglu is a Nobel Prize–winning economist, but his research and writing has long strayed beyond the conventional bounds of his discipline. He has written famously, in the best-selling book Why Nations Fail, about how institutions determine the success of countries. He has explored how technological advances have transformed—or indeed failed to transform—societies. And more recently, he has turned his attention to the crisis facing liberal democracy, one accentuated by economic alienation and the threat of technological change.
Deputy Editor Kanishk Tharoor spoke with Acemoglu about a stormy world of overlapping crises and about how the ship of liberal democracy might be steered back on course.
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