Tag Archives: Dani Rodrik

When illiberal democracy – or populism, combines with undemocratic liberalism to undermine liberal democracy COMMENT | DANI RODRIK | The crisis of liberal democracy is roundly decried today. Donald Trump’s presidency, the Brexit vote in the United Kingdom, and the electoral rise of other populists in Europe have underscored the threat …

Why one is almost always harmful, but the other can sometimes be justified in exceptional times COMMENT | DANI RODRIK | Populists in power have one thing in common: they regard limits on their power as undermining the will of the people. For many, this aversion to institutional constraints extends to …

Centrist politicians must engage in behavior so costly that a conventional politician would never emulate it COMMENT | DANI RODRIK | At a recent conference I attended, I was seated next to a prominent American trade policy expert. We began to talk about the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), which …

Even if compensation was a viable approach two decades ago, it no longer serves as a practical response to globalisation’s adverse effects By Dani Rodrik It appears that a new consensus has taken hold these days among the world’s business and policy elites about how to address the anti-globalisation backlash …

By Dani Rodrik How do politicians who are unresponsive to the interests of the vast majority of their constituents get elected? It is hardly news that the rich have more political power than the poor, even in democratic countries where everyone gets a single vote in elections. But two political …

By Dani Rodrik We need less attachment to a particular ideology and more contextually-driven thinking We live in a complicated world, so we are forced to simplify it. We categorise people around us as friends or foes, classify their motives as good or bad, and ascribe events with complex roots …

By Dani Rodrik While economies have been hit by mood swings in financial markets, the only surprise is that we are surprised How quickly emerging markets’ fortunes have turned. Not long ago, they were touted as the salvation of the world economy – the dynamic engines of growth that would …

By Dani Rodrik The symptoms are there that the US will ultimately be undone by the poor quality of its democratic discourse With its presidential election over, the United States can finally take a breather from campaign politics, at least for a while. But an uncomfortable question lingers: How is …

By Dani Rodrik Everything will rely to a greater extent on sustained improvements in human capital, institutions, and governance A year ago, economic analysts were giddy with optimism about the prospects for economic growth in the developing world. In contrast to the United States and Europe, where the growth outlook …

By Dani Rodrik Economists get stuck with the charge of being narrowly ideological because they do not communicate fully CAMBRIDGE – Early last month, a group of students staged a walkout in Harvard’s popular introductory economics course, Economics 10, taught by my colleague Greg Mankiw. Their complaint: the course propagates …