One thing you cannot say about the second Trump presidency is that it is uneventful. Zigzagging tariffs, vertiginous stock market, closing of government agencies, students’ arrests by masked agents, stripping universities of government grants, diplomatic spats with our traditional allies, donations of airplanes by friendly governments and crypto investments in the presidential family by disinterested investors, all these things would be unimaginable for any presidential administration. Some of these actions may have a more long-lasting effect on the country than others.
A few years ago I introduced fellow campers to the magnum opus of Daron Acemoglu and James Robinson (who have since received the Nobel Prize in Economics) “Why Nations Fail”. The chief idea of this work is that it is not the geography, or race, or culture, or expert knowledge of its citizens that explain each country’s prosperity, but the country’s institutions. The book’s main thesis is that nations with inclusive institutions tend to prosper, while those with extractive institutions tend to fail.
I would like to use this book as the framework for a practical discussion of changes in the American institutions under Trump’s presidency. The reason extractive institutions exist is for a small group of people in power to “extract” resources from the rest of the country’s population, while trying to stay in charge indefinitely. Are we watching the transformation of the American institutions from inclusive to extractive?
I will start the class by defining the terms “inclusive” and “extractive” institutions followed by historic examples.
After the introduction, I would like to discuss the changes the Trump administration imposed on legal institutions (the courts, Department of Justice, the FBI, the law firms), civil service/government bureaucracy, foreign policy institutions, the press and media, educational institutions, financial regulatory institutions, social safety-net institutions and electoral institutions. We are going to analyze Trump’s policies only from the standpoint of their effect on the American institutions.
I have my opinions regarding the head-spinning changes taking place in the US, but the goal of the class is to have a civilized, fact-based discussion with the goal of coming to understanding whether Trump is a run-of-the-mill leader and the inclusive US institutions are safe and sound under his presidency or we have a “critical junction” (a term from “Why Nations Fail”), which may damage the heretofore inclusive institutions and present a real danger to US as a democracy.
I would like to end the session with talking about the role of civil society in preventing the slide towards authoritarianism - an idea at the center of the second book by Acemoglu and Robinson, “The Narrow Corridor”.