The J Curve: A New Way to Understand Why Nations Rise and Fall [Hardcover]

Ian Bremmer (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: August 29, 2006

Locate nations on the J Curve - left for authoritarian, right for democratic. Then figure out how to force those on the left to open their societies, rather than encouraging them to shut them tighter by further isolating them. The West's isolation of Kim Jong-il's North Korea gives him the cover he needs to extend his brutal regime (the mistake the U.S. made for a long time with Saddam Hussein and Castro); in Saudi Arabia, western governments should encourage manageable change before the country breaks apart; they should help strengthen China's economy so it can further liberalize; they must encourage Israel to decide what kind of country it will be. Filled with imaginative and surprising examples of how to correct outworn political ideas, THE J CURVE points the way for western governments to lead the way to a realistic political balance and a healthier economic future.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

With this timely book, political risk consultant Bremmer aims to "describe the political and economic forces that revitalize some states and push others toward collapse." His simple premise is that if one were to graph a nation's stability as a function of its openness, the result would be a "J curve," suggesting that as nations become more open, they become less stable until they eventually surpass their initial levels of stability. In other words, a closed society like Cuba is relatively stable; a more open society like Saudi Arabia is less so; and an extremely open society like the United States is extremely stable. Bremmer expertly distills decades—sometimes centuries—of history as he analyzes 10 countries at different positions on the J curve. North Korea is perhaps the most disturbing example of the left side of the curve, where a closed authoritarian regime produces effective stability; on the right of the curve sit stable countries like Turkey, Israel and India. This leads Bremmer to conclude that political isolation and sanctions often work against their intended resultsand that globalization is the key to opening closed authoritarian states. Bremmer persuasively illustrates his core thesis without eliding the complexities of global or national politics. (Sept.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Booklist

On a graph on which the vertical axis measures a nation's stability and the horizontal axis measures its relative openness to external political and economic forces, the "J curve" plots the trajectory nations must take as they move from authoritarian control toward liberal democracy (or vice versa). Essentially, the curve is a graphical representation of the commonsense proposition that governments moving toward or away from authoritarianism must necessarily survive a "slide toward instability" as their institutions of governance are broken down and then reformed in new configurations. In Bremmer's hands, however, the J curve is a powerful heuristic that is capable of clarifying the persistent dilemma of how to nudge nations toward openness while sparing their citizens--and the world--the chaos that accompanies such transitions. In part, the J curve is effective because it explains why authoritarian states (like North Korea, on the curve's far left) are often more stable than relatively young liberal democracies (like South Africa and Russia); it may also show the fallacy of trying to undermine authoritarian states though isolation. A quick, fascinating read. Brendan Driscoll
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 320 pages
• Publisher: Simon & Schuster (August 29, 2006)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0743274717
• ISBN-13: 978-0743274715
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 6.2 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (39 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #838,535 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Ian Bremmer is the president of Eurasia Group, the world's leading global political risk research and consulting firm. He has written for The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, Newsweek, Foreign Affairs, and other publications, and his previous books are The J Curve: A New Way to Understand Why Nations Rise and Fall and The Fat Tail: The Power of Political Knowledge for Strategic Investing.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

21 of 21 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars May you live in interesting times, September 16, 2006

By 

Mary Byron (Tokyo, Japan) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The J Curve: A New Way to Understand Why Nations Rise and Fall (Hardcover)

This is a timely and thought-provoking book for anyone who wants to better understand our rapidly changing world but is required reading for anyone leading an institution - public sector or private - at the forefront of globalization. Ian Bremmer argues that none of us can afford to ignore the risks created by failing and failed nations in a world where disease, terrorism, refugees and weapons of mass destruction can cross borders more easily than ever before. The complex dynamics of openness and stability brought by globalization are challenging all societies, markets and governments in new ways. This book provides an excellent framework for understanding the journey.

The J-Curve is an innovative approach to mapping these complex dynamics to the behavior of governments around the world. Much of what has been written to date has focused solely on the economic and social impacts of globalization. This book synthesizes those impacts and explains how they can undermine or strengthen a nation depending on where it is on the J-Curve. Understanding the political decision-making and the forces within their societies that are motivating these governments is the crucial missing piece of the puzzle laid out in the J-Curve.

His insightful analysis distills the history and the current political, social and economic forces in the countries most relevant to the world economy and global stability - North Korea, Iran, Russia, Saudia Arabia, Turkey, China and more. Ian not only explains where they are but provides a framework to interpret current events and understand in which direction they are headed on the J-Curve.

I find myself interpreting news in a new way after reading this book. Three environmental disasters in China this week and the government response is to tighten controls on journalism, a clear move up the left side. Opium production at record highs in Afghanistan - we are still aren't through the bottom of the curve. While he does provide some foreign policy prescriptions, you are ultimately left with an understanding of the limits of foreign policy in our increasingly complex world and the dangers in not providing enough of the right assistance to the nations most at risk.

32 of 36 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars smart, persuasive, engaged, September 8, 2006

By 

Marci Shore - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The J Curve: A New Way to Understand Why Nations Rise and Fall (Hardcover)

The central argument of The J Curve is quite persuasive: the path from authoritarian "closed" societies to democratic "open" ones leads through a "dip in the curve"--that is, a prolonged moment of dangerous instability. In this way, authoritarian societies that begin to democraticize become paradoxically more unstable in the early stages of "opening." The J Curve is an explanatory model. But the book is normative as well: If "closed" states are ultimately to emerge on the other, "open" side of the curve, they require sustained international support, in particular from Western democracies.

The J Curve is the work of a once precocious Sovietologist whose political education came inside a disintegrating Soviet Union-turned-dazzlingly successful president of a political risk consulting firm whose now experience extends far beyond former Soviet borders. Ian Bremmer's prose is lively, sharp and eminently accessible--free of both academic and policy jargon. His voice is a human one, and strikes a rare balance: devoid of sentimentality, but marked by an authentic concern about the human condition.

10 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars The world doesn't always move in curves, October 17, 2006

By 

Beatles Fan (Indiana) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The J Curve: A New Way to Understand Why Nations Rise and Fall (Hardcover)

This book is recommended, but with a caveat. Like most books about international relations written by social scientists who tend to simplify things for the sake of providing an over-arching structure, this one is to be read with a measure of skepticism. For a detailed review (or two), check out the recent debate in Slate.com between the journalists Bill Emmott and Fareed Zakaria, who are, respectively, an editor of The Economist and a columnist for Newsweek. (You can search within Slate by typing out their names and the title of the exchange: "Debating the J-Curve".) Here's two quotes from their exchanges.

Emmott: "I found this a useful representation of what happens as institutions and regimes change and, certainly, a salutary warning against the view that democracy will grow as naturally as flowers in the spring. The book's main interest for me, however, lay not so much in the chart that gives it its title but in the fine and revealing case studies that Bremmer lays out to establish how complicated the political form of states really is. He outlines the situations in North Korea, Cuba, Iran, and China adeptly and looks also at countries, such as South Africa, that have made a successful transition to democracy; at others, such as India, where democracy has survived seemingly against the odds; and at Russia, where democracy has lately been foundering. The conclusion? That there is no clear rule that can guide us in judging which countries will move up the J curve and which will not. It all depends. Societies are fragile and complex organisms."

Zakaria: "he biggest real-world test of Bremmer's thesis is taking place right now in Asia. If he's right, India is a better long- and even medium-term bet than China. Is he correct? I look at China, which is doing so much economic and even social reform. Its strange free-market dictatorship is building world-class infrastructure--new schools, colleges, and universities; special economic zones; nuclear power plants--and is opening the economy and society to international trade. India, meanwhile, moves its reform process forward at a snail's pace, remaining in many ways well behind China, largely because it is a democracy and the government is busy subsidizing interest groups and voters. They're both doing fine, but China's economy is now three times the size of India's and grows about 2 percentage points faster. Will that change? I puzzle about this and am genuinely curious as to your response."

Political scientists may come up with elegant and even persuasive models such as this J-Curve. But in the long run, it's historians and their research that give the last words.