Moises Naim, an influential political pundit, former editor-in-chief of Foreign Policy magazine, and before that, former minister of economic development in Venezuela's last democratic government, knows firsthand what he's talking about, telling us the news, maybe not the latest, but certainly not the most obvious. . Yes, power today is not what it used to be. Gone are the days when a monarch could move a huge army with one movement of his little finger. Worse, even the president of a large corporation today has much less power than thirty years ago, not to mention a parish priest or a newspaper columnist. It is just as difficult to get power today as it was before (competition has noticeably increased), but to retain and, most importantly, to implement it is radically more difficult.
Moisés Naím is an internationally-syndicated columnist and best-selling author of influential books. In 2011, he launched Efecto Naím, an innovative weekly television program highlighting surprising world trends with visually-striking videos, graphics and interviews with world leaders which is widely watched in Latin America today. Dr. Naím gained international recognition with the successful re-launch of the prominent journal Foreign Policy and, over his fourteen years (1996-2010) as editor, turned the magazine into a modern, award-winning publication on global politics and economics.
Naim is not one of those who are inclined to consider this state of affairs a consequence of the development of communications and, in general, the global penetration of digital technologies into our lives. Such a view is justified, however, according to Naim, other factors act much stronger and more efficiently. It is no coincidence that even during the “Arab Spring”, which, according to most analysts, originated on Facebook and Twitter and serves as a textbook example of the “explosion from the Web”, more than 75% of the traffic in the respective groups was generated by foreign visitors, and not at all by potential participants in the events. The main factors, according to Naim, are the "revolution of the multitude" (everything - goods, choices, acquaintances, whatever - has become radically larger in our lives in recent years); the “mobility revolution” (people, objects and ideas began to move around the world with incredible freedom and speed) and, finally, the “mentality revolution” (we no longer see special value in the team and put the personal much higher than the public). Overlapping and intricately intertwined, these three trends are causing even the most powerful people and organizations in the world to increasingly feel bound hand and foot.
Like any truly global trend, the current decline in power has both pluses and minuses. On the one hand, the fact that power as such is becoming less consolidated and more and more limited, in the long run may lead to a reduction in social stratification, to a more equitable and democratic distribution of benefits. On the other hand, the decline of power is fraught with chaos, anarchy, the inability of humanity to agree on a joint solution to the most important problems (for example, environmental ones) - and ultimately the war of all against all described by Hobbes in his Leviathan. In his book, Moises Naim deals in some detail with why power has fallen into a state of decline, how it manifests itself today, and, finally, what behavioral strategy humanity should choose in order to take advantage of all the bonuses available in this regard and avoid all possible problems.
At the level of the basic concept, "The End of Power" looks extremely convincing and, in general, does not cause much doubt. However, at the level of a specific performance, as they say, questions arise. As every reader of Freakonomics or, let's say, Geniuses and Outsiders, knows, any good non-fiction is based on two pillars - a coherent concept and captivating insert plots. And now the second component of Naim catastrophically sags. As Carroll's Alice would say, the book obviously lacks pictures and conversations - Naim either cannot, or (more likely) does not seek to back up his calculations with good, strong, full-blooded stories. As a result, most of the five hundred pages of The End of Power look like a monotonous and redundant repetition of the same theoretical material (important and indisputable) in different words, without a single living example. However, the Russian reader, perhaps, here has some strategic advantage over the global one. If the latter is forced to find illustrations that confirm the concept of Naim on his own, then we can simply take and read The End of Power as a theoretical introduction to Mikhail Zygar’s book All the Kremlin’s Army, perhaps the best text about the futility of trying to build a power vertical in a single country. Believe me, everything will fit even in the details.
This article was sponsored by Leo Krakowsky
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