The End of Power: From Boardrooms to Battlefields and Churches to States, Why Being In Charge Isn't What It Used to Be: Naím, Moisés: 9780465065691: Amazon.com: Books

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The End of Power: From Boardrooms to Battlefields and Churches to States, Why Being In Charge Isn't What It Used to Be Paperback – March 11, 2014

by Moisés Naím (Author)

4.0 916 ratings

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The provocative bestseller explaining the decline of power in the twenty-first century -- in government, business, and beyond.
br> Power is shifting -- from large, stable armies to loose bands of insurgents, from corporate leviathans to nimble start-ups, and from presidential palaces to public squares. But power is also changing, becoming harder to use and easier to lose. In The End of Power, award-winning columnist and former Foreign Policy editor MoisÃ©NaÃilluminates the struggle between once-dominant megaplayers and the new micropowers challenging them in every field of human endeavor. Drawing on provocative, original research and a lifetime of experience in global affairs, NaÃexplains how the end of power is reconfiguring our world.

"The End of Power will . . . change the way you look at the world." -- Bill Clinton

"Extraordinary." -- George Soros

"Compelling and original." -- Arianna Huffington

"A fascinating new perspective . . . NaÃmakes eye-opening connections." -- Francis Fukuyama

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Print length

320 pages
Language

English
Publication date

March 11, 2014
Dimensions

5.63 x 0.88 x 8.25 inches
ISBN-10

0465065694
ISBN-13

978-0465065691
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The End of Power: From Boardrooms to Battlefields and Churches to States, Why Being In Charge Isn't What It Used to Be

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Customer reviews

916 global ratings

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Customers say

Customers find the book interesting, well-written, and remarkable. They also appreciate the insightful and fascinating topic. Opinions are mixed on the pacing, with some finding it compelling and good, while others say it's repetitive and boring.

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81 customers mention "Readability"67 positive14 negative

Customers find the book interesting, well-written, and well-researched. They appreciate the high-quality dialogue and deliberation. Readers also mention the book is an easy read that provides a valuable opportunity to engage, think, and debate.

"...to view global current events and trends, Naim provides a valuable opportunity to engage, think, and debate." Read more

"...transpartisanship, and high quality dialogue and deliberation...." Read more

"...I strongly recommend this fascinating, easy read for anyone wishing a better understanding of the world we live in, as well as the one it will..." Read more

"...power is novel and the premise on which the whole book is built is compelling, as many other reviewers have noted here, in particular, the three "Ms..." Read more

62 customers mention "Insight"62 positive0 negative

Customers find the book instructive, amazing, and fascinating. They say the information conveyed is valuable and the ideas presented are enjoyable.

"...new economies based on simplicity, sustainability, equity, meeting deeper human needs, healthy "commons", sharing, gifting, local exchanges, and..." Read more

"...It took me a long time to finish because although the concept is engaging (like, you mean the END of power?) the writing is not so much...." Read more

"...I strongly recommend this fascinating, easy read for anyone wishing a better understanding of the world we live in, as well as the one it will..." Read more

"...The approach to analyzing power is novel and the premise on which the whole book is built is compelling, as many other reviewers have noted here, in..." Read more

21 customers mention "Pacing"8 positive13 negative

Customers have mixed opinions about the pacing of the book. Some mention it has a good premise and compelling case, while others say it's repetitive, boring, and predictable.

"...It is not entertaining and who really cares if power no longer matters...." Read more

"...There are plenty of examples, and documentation galore to back the author's points, sometimes even to the point of overkill (for me.)..." Read more

"...However I've found its conclusion not convincing...." Read more

"...But still, the topic is fasinating and hopeful and the book is good, supporting reading and the three revolutions give an interesting angle." Read more

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Insightful, Entertaining, and Thought-Provoking

Reviewed in the United States on March 19, 2013

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I first read an opinion piece that outlined some of the ideas in this book a few weeks ago in the Washington Post Outlook Section. Mr. Naim hooked me with that shorter piece and I sought the book out, reading it at a torrid pace. What Mr. Naim has been able to do is actually quite astonishing: in a world that seems to get harder and harder to understand as the pace of economic, social, political, and cultural change accelerates, he has laid out a framework to think about how the collapse of traditional power structures has affected these changes. In many respects, what is so puzzling about the world today is that these punctuated changes (whether political as in the Arab Spring, economic in the European economic collapse, or otherwise) are not the watershed events they initially appear to be. Instead, intractable problems seem to arise out of half-mediated solutions and stalemates. In turn, Naim goes through how the fragmentation of traditional power and the rise of impactful "micro"-players has created large gains for those bent on disrupting power and diminished returns from those who have traditionally tamed it. In other words, the shake ups of today are easy to induce and hard to put an end to. It is a mistake to think that this change is for good or evil -- rather, like someone trained in the world of international affairs (I believe he was the editor of Foreign Policy for years), Naim presents the multifaceted beast of this new power matrix. For those of us looking to avoid the denser, dry conventions of political science reading but looking for a cohesive, comprehensive framework with which to view global current events and trends, Naim provides a valuable opportunity to engage, think, and debate.

22 people found this helpful

What kind of power, for whom, and for what?

Reviewed in the United States on May 31, 2013

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Moises Naim's new book THE END OF POWER should properly be called "The Decay of Power". His thesis is that while it is becoming easier to get power, it is also becoming harder to use it to control others and harder to keep it once you have it.

Naim suggests that globalization, economic growth, a growing global middle class, the spread of democracy, and rapidly expanding telecommunications technologies have changed our world. Together these developments have created a fluid and unpredictable environment which has unsettled the traditional dominions of power.

Three revolutions, he says, "make it more difficult to set up and defend the barriers to power that keep rivals at bay." He details these revolutions as follows:
* "the More revolution, which is characterized by increases in everything from the number of countries to population size, standards of living, literacy rates, and quantity of products on the market";
* "the Mobility revolution, which has set people, goods, money, ideas, and values moving at hitherto unimagined rates toward every corner of the planet"; and
* "the Mentality revolution, which reflects the major changes in mindsets, expectations, and aspirations that have accompanied these shifts."

In other words, says Naim, there is too much going on, too much moving around, too many changing demands and perspectives - and at any time someone new can show up and effectively challenge or undermine your power. In addition, "when people are more numerous and living fuller lives, they become more difficult to regiment and control." Among other things, such people value transparency, human rights, and fairness to women and minorities - and they share a sense that "things do not need to be as they have always been - that there is always...a better way" and that they need not "take any distribution of power for granted."

All this is happening at the very time when large hierarchical institutions are losing their "economies of scale" and becoming increasingly difficult to manage, while smaller, more flexible organizations and networks are proving increasingly successful.

Naim provides compelling evidence that power is decaying in all these ways in all fields - from business, governance, geopolitics, and military affairs to religion, philanthropy, labor, and journalism.

Of course, decay is not the whole picture of what's happening with power. Naim admits that centers of concentrated power are consolidating in every field. He notes that "the wealthy are accumulating enormous riches, and some are using money to gain political power...[a} trend as alarming as it is unacceptable". He reminds us that "the same information technologies that empower average citizens have ushered in new avenues for surveillance, repression, and corporate control." While he celebrates both the new limits on the powerful - "after all, power corrupts, doesn't it?" - and the blessings of broader access to power, that's not his focus.

THE DANGERS OF BOTH POWER AND ITS DECAY

The purpose of Naim's book is to highlight the problems associated with instability of power. He sees power as the primary organizing force in society. He believes that the loss of stable social power portends loss of social order and functional governance. "The more slippery power becomes, the more our lives become governed by short-term incentives and fears," he claims, "and the less we can chart our actions and plan for the future."

However, his analysis is unreasonably biased against the small powers (the "micropowers") and towards the larger powers (the "megaplayers"). Here are some vivid examples:

* While noting that as more competing power centers emerge, it becomes harder to coherently address our collective problems and crises at every level - especially global issues like nuclear proliferation, terrorism, and climate change - he barely mentions the roles that concentrated economic, political and media power have played in generating those very problems.

* He bewails how "more and more 'small' countries veto, foot-drag, demand special consideration, or generally undermine the efforts of the 'big' nations in one area after another" but does not talk about how much the 'big' nations block viable solutions being pushed by the 'small' nations.

* He deplores the loss of skill and knowledge that so often accompanies the demise of major cultural, economic and political institutions, but doesn't note the destruction of cultural, biological and physical resources caused by the exploitive activities of corporations and governments (including the firing of experienced employees in profit-taking mergers and downsizing initiatives). Nor does he celebrate the mind-boggling new knowledge and capacity being created everyday by independent entrepreneurs and grassroots initiatives.

* He calls fringe demagogues and extremists "terrible simplifiers" who "seek power by exploiting the ire and frustration of the population and making appealing but 'terribly simplified' and, ultimately, deceitful promises" - without acknowledging that this is the stock and trade of many mainstream governments, politicians, corporations, and other major political agents and economic actors as well.

* He warns of chaos and potential disaster as more destructive forms of power become increasingly available to smaller and smaller groups of people,* without noting that most of those destructive forms of power were created and have been used by dominant countries, militaries, and corporations.

* Naim also warns that the emerging micropowers "are not committed to the general good". But he doesn't balance that concern with concern about the megaplayers who are just as likely to harm the general welfare. Governments, corporations, and other established powers have a long history of selfishness, exploitation, and destruction generating widespread suffering and disaster.

NAIM'S BIGGEST BLIND SPOT

But I think the biggest shortcoming of Naim's otherwise excellent book lies not so much in its elite bias, but in its very foundation - his definition of power. He defines power in three related ways - "the capacity to get others to do, or stop doing, something"; "the ability to direct or prevent the current or future actions of other groups and individuals"; and "what we exercise over others that leads them to behave in ways they would not otherwise have behaved." Within these definitions he sees four ways to get people to do what we want - coercion, moral codes, persuasion, and rewards.

These definitions lead him to some statements that seem odd to those of us who don't share his assumptions - for example, "the whole point of branding is to deter competition". To me, it seems that the whole point of branding is to help consumers know what to expect from what they buy.

In my view Naim's definitions of power have two fundamental shortcomings that make his thesis gravely incomplete:

First, his power worldview is confined to what many of us would call "power-over" - the capacity to control, manage or dominate. It ignores other forms of power that become visible when we define power simply as "the ability to create effects". These other forms of power include power-with (the power of cooperation), power-from-within (the power of spirit, belief and motivation), and power-from-among (the power of synergy and collective intelligence).

Second, Naim's power worldview is confined to the human realm - to social power. It does not acknowledge that there are other sources of and targets for power, notably nature. The power of nature - and our power relationships with nature - are central factors in our sustainability as a species.

Combined, these two defining limitations blind him and his readers to the role of power-over in generating the very problems he frets we won't be able to solve, like climate change. Self-interested and ideological efforts to dominate nature and people - largely through technologically enhanced economic, political, military and media power (power-over) that is now global - have produced most of our 21st century crises, from climate change and terrorism to resource depletion and economic meltdowns. Furthermore, these emerging crises may well disrupt the conditions - notably the rising global middle class, its mobility and aspirations - that have produced the power-limiting shifts he describes. On the other hand, those crises may also empower the "micropowers" because traditional power centers will lack resources (especially oil) that they need to maintain their global control, resulting in power devolving necessarily (if sometimes painfully) to more local levels where alternative economic and political forms have been evolving, often in more participatory directions.

His two defining limitations - blindness to the full varieties and sources of power - also blind him and his readers to the the role that the other forms of power have played, can play and are playing in creating a more functional and sustainable society. To the extent we practice and develop all these forms of power with people and in human systems - as well as in our interactions with nature and natural systems - we can nurture a self-organized social and natural order that has fewer toxic side effects than those associated with domination and control. Competent partnership skills in a partnership culture can make all the difference in the world.

BUILDING MORE FUNCTIONAL POWER-OVER?

It seems to me that Naim's solutions are designed primarily to help dominant powers function more benignly. He seems to believe that proper political participation needs to manifest "through more competitive political parties". He sees participation as happening IN THE PARTIES rather than in society as a whole. He apparently considers the partisan battle for domination as the inevitable and proper form for participation in a democracy. This causes him to offer little insight into our immense and emerging potential for collaboration, common ground, co-creativity, and functional, "leaderful" self-organization, even across the traditional rifts that competitive power dynamics and institutions have bequeathed to us. Such dynamics are, to me, the most promising blessings of the decay of domination. But they are blessings we must work to earn.

In contrast, Naim says we need to develop more trust in our leaders and help political parties "regain the ability to inspire, energize and mobilize people - especially the young." He suggests making political parties "more flat, less hierarchical" - but primarily to make them more able to "reach new members, become more agile, advance their agendas, and hopefully become better at fighting the terrible simplifiers that seek power inside and outside the party." He frames leadership accountability, transparency and freedom from "dark or unknown interests" as issues of perception rather than substance. He suggests that political parties "need to elicit" in their followers "the feeling" that their party has integrity without describing how TRUE accountability should and could be established.

Naim tells us that "The exercise of power in any realm involves, fundamentally, the ability to impose and retain control over a country, a marketplace, a constituency, a population of adherents, a network of trade routes, and so on." From that power-over perspective, the challenge of power is clear: "The task of governing, organizing, mobilizing, influencing, persuading, disciplining or repressing a large number of people with generally good standards of living requires different methods than those that worked for a smaller and less developed community." That may be true enough for power elites, but is that where most of us want to go?

"INTERNAL CONTRADICTIONS"

Ironically, many of the attempts to consolidate power are creating conditions for the decay of that power. Creating educated middle classes in developing countries to staff Western-style governments and corporations generates indigenous aspirations and capacities that lead to upstart challengers and revolutions. Vested interests' efforts to undermine national governments - from campaign contributions to trade agreements to war - generate populist protests and demands for greater local control. Tools created to enhance corporate collective intelligence get used by groups and communities to enhance their own collective capacities or to undermine centralized authorities. Weapons and civil rights designed to uphold elite privileges get claimed, adopted and used by marginalized populations.

I do not want to suggest that there is no role for power-over. There is much in life that requires control in order to be functional. However, power-over has greater potential for harm than the other forms of power. Much of its seeming efficiencies derive from its tendency to displace or "externalize" those harms and their costs onto other people or systems or into the future. For example, polluting companies externalize the harmful effects and expenses of their pollution onto communities, taxpayers, nature, and future generations, rather than paying the price to be clean.

For this reason, power-over should be practiced within - and constrained by - these more holistic forms of human potency, rather than the other way around. The answer is not simply, as Naim would have it, "to give more power to those who govern us," but rather to expand and strengthen our ability to govern ourselves and to responsibly oversee those to whom we delegate some of our power.

REVITALIZED ANCIENT COMMON GROUND

It is these understandings that inspire more and more people - especially young people - to seek guidance from traditional forms of power that predate hierarchical industrial civilization. People are waking up to the more sustainable ways of early agricultural communities, indigenous cultures, and the self-organizing patterns of nature and evolution. These ways include competition and control, but usually in the context of partnership and spirit. Even science has evolved from the linear cause-effect perspectives of Newtonian physics and discredited dog-eat-dog versions of Darwinism toward more holistic, systemic, probabilistic worldviews of ecology, relativity, quantum physics, co-evolution, and emerging chaos and complexity theories grounded in the dynamics of interdependence.

It is on that newly understood and revitalized ancient common ground that people - especially young people - are beginning to use technologies (both old and new) to innovate forms of democracy based on active participation, co-creation, nonviolent action, citizen journalism, empathy, universal rights (including the rights of nature), transpartisanship, and high quality dialogue and deliberation. (This is especially significant considering, as the U.S. Intelligence Council notes, that "more than 80 states [i.e., countries] have populations with a median age of 25 years or less.")

It is also on that revitalized ancient common ground that people - especially young people - are co-creating new economies based on simplicity, sustainability, equity, meeting deeper human needs, healthy "commons", sharing, gifting, local exchanges, and producing "goods and services" themselves, together and for people they know and care about.

It is in this context that networking, crowd-sourcing, open-sourcing, peer-to-peer productivity, celebrations, and inclusive, powerful conversations and gatherings are unfolding - empowered by - but not limited to - emerging technologies.

CONCLUSIONS

While Naim touches briefly on these phenomena, his definition of power blinds him to their relevance: He rightfully sees the emerging "micropowers" as opposing, constraining and challenging what the big players can do - but fails to realize how many of these micropowers are actively creating the most potent solutions to our problems and the greatest realizations of our dreams. To miss this because one can only see social order arising from the power to "get others to do or stop doing" things is a tragedy of immense proportions.

On the other hand, those of us who see this bigger picture of what's happening with power need to focus our attention on further empowering this new, grounded self-organizing capacity, making it as collectively wise as possible, and checking the efforts of dominant powers to undermine it. Because out of this will come the kind of society we want, since this new power regime empowers us all to co-create that society and to continually co-evolve it forever.

Naim almost sees this, but not quite. After stating that "today's decay of power has yet to give birth to its own institutional responses: innovations in organizing public life that can allow us to enjoy the fulfillment and personal autonomy that hyper-diffuse power promises while staving off its very real, very dangerous threats," Naim closes his book with this observation: "We are on the verge of a revolutionary wave of positive political and institutional innovations. As this book has shown, power is changing in so many arenas that it will be impossible to avoid important transformations in the way humanity organizes itself to make the decisions it needs to survive and progress.... Driven by the transformation in the acquisition, use, and retention of power, humanity must, and will, find new ways of governing itself."

It seems he does not realize the deep truth of that prophetic summary, in ways more fundamental and profound than he has yet dreamed.

For my own conclusion, I want to highly recommend Moises Naim's THE END OF POWER for the gifts it gives clarifying one of the primary trends in the evolution of power. And I highly recommend thinking about it in the context of the many other evolutionary trends happening parallel to that - from the concentration of power and its use in consolidating future power to the grassroots explosion of innovations in life-centered economics and politics. We need to keep the whole picture in mind as we co-create the future we are living into, tacking with the wind as we keep our eyes up ahead on the world we want.

----

* I'm surprised that Naim does not highlight the dark sides of rapidly developing biotech, nanotech, robotics and computing power converging to empower small groups and even technologically adept individuals - as well as major institutions - to cause unprecedented catastrophe - on purpose or by accident. This possibility (or probability) was brought to public attention by techno-guru Bill Joy in his 2000 WIRED magazine essay "Why the Future Doesn't Need Us."
[...] He pointed out that the capacity to create self-replicating entities that consume or toxify the environment - anything from virulent viruses to nanotech micro-robots - would probably spell the end of humanity. While some critics have dismissed his concerns, others have advocated tighter controls on technological development, while still others have advocated even greater transparency to rapidly crowdsource solutions to such developments. This debate is especially potent at highlighting both the upsides and downsides of technologically altered forms of power.

----

Tom Atlee
author of The Tao of Democracy, Reflections on Evolutionary Activism, and Empowering Public Wisdom

----

A few of the many books on the emerging forms of power:

Sacred Economics: Money, Gift, and Society in the Age of Transition
The Open-Source Everything Manifesto: Transparency, Truth, and Trust (Manifesto Series)
Here Comes Everybody: The Power of Organizing Without Organizations
Makers: The New Industrial Revolution
The Change Handbook: The Definitive Resource on Today's Best Methods for Engaging Whole Systems
The Wealth of Networks: How Social Production Transforms Markets and Freedom
Permaculture: Principles and Pathways Beyond Sustainability
Blessed Unrest: How the Largest Social Movement in History Is Restoring Grace, Justice, and Beauty to the World
Leadership and the New Science: Discovering Order in a Chaotic World
The Great Turning: From Empire to Earth Community

22 people found this helpful

Great start, but fizzles out at the end.

Reviewed in the United States on March 10, 2015

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I hopped on the Zuckerberg bandwagon and decided to read this book. It took me a long time to finish because although the concept is engaging (like, you mean the END of power?) the writing is not so much.

Chapter 4 (about the More, Mobility, and Mentality Revolutions) and chapters 5 through 9 (examples of decay in different contexts) were the most enjoyable. Naím makes a good case that power, indeed, is decaying in business, the military, politics, and elsewhere.

Where he lost me was in chapters 10 and 11 where he laments the decline in the political and corporate elite's ability to get what they want. And his solutions (strengthening political parties?, putting trust in politicians?) are laughable. And his warnings about the decay of state power are overblown. His "inverted-U" graph measuring power on one axis and "political stability and economic vitality" on the other is presented without an iota of evidence that the only way to enjoy maximum stability and prosperity is to have some kind of magical balance of power that isn't too tyrannical yet not "anarchy" all at once.

His final paragraphs talk about a surge of political innovations. That part I agree with. Those innovations are coming, but not in the way Naím thinks. Power will become more and more decentralized, and it's gonna be confusing and disorderly while we figure out how to fill that vacuum. But as more and more people take responsibility for themselves, they'll collaborate outside of traditional state frameworks to solve the problems we face.

I gave the book three stars instead of two because I enjoyed the middle section more than I didn't like the last two chapters.

12 people found this helpful

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Amazon Customer

Informative, factual and engaging.

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on June 6, 2023

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Anyone who has an interest in the way our societies engage, lead and fail to inspire should read this book.

Plet

LIVRE EN VERSION ORIGINALE THE END OF POWER

Reviewed in France on August 26, 2021

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livre reçu très rapidement et bien emballé . Aucun défaut apparement .

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EG

Great perspective on current state of affairs in democracy

Reviewed in Spain on July 29, 2020

Verified Purchase

Excellent reflection of our times. Unfortunately it still applies nowadays. A must to learn about a great danger we currently face as a democracy.

Amazon Customer

Great book!

Reviewed in Canada on February 5, 2017

Verified Purchase

I finally received it. I had to do a book restoration as it had unwanted stickers, unnecessary scratches and a plastic cover. It belonged to a library prior to the owner owning this book. Now I have purchased this book through Amazon this book can have a nice place on my bookshelf and in great discussions.

James R. Hunter

Important Analysis

Reviewed in Brazil on March 19, 2015

Verified Purchase

What is power today and how do we use in politics and business? That is the theme that Moises Naim, a former Venezuelan finance minister explores here. He has many thought-provoking points to make and he makes them elegantly. This book is especially pertinent in Latin America (source of many of his examples), but with applicability to most of the world's major conflicts and the breakdown in power in executive circles.

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