Lectures
Bernard L. Schwartz Forum on Constructive Captialism | Lectures
"Getting to Denmark: Where the State, Rule of Law, and Accountable Government Come From"
A Lecture Series by
Lecture 1 (September 16), "Political Development and Political Decay: An Overview"
Lecture 2 (September 23), ìThe Origins of the State: China and India"
Lecture 3 (October 7th), "The Origins of the Rule of Law: Europe and the Middle Eastî
Lecture 4 (October 14th), "The Origins of Accountable Government"
Location: SAIS Nitze Building, Kenney Auditorium
Time: All lectures are from 12:30-1:30
Summary
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ìDenmarkî is a mythical country said to have good institutions: it is stable, peaceful, democratic, inclusive, with good public services and low levels of corruption. Many development agencies like the World Bank and USAID have set for themselves the agenda of helping poor, chaotic countries like Afghanistan, Iraq, Haiti, and the Solomon Islands acquire strong, modern political institutionsÃ_they want, in other words, to help them become ìDenmark.î Few people, however, including many Danes, understand how Denmark itself came to be the politically modern society it is today.The book from which these lectures are drawn is not just about getting to Denmark, but about political development more generally. It is the story of the evolution of three categories of political institutions: the state itself, as it evolves out of kinship-based forms of social organization; the rule of law, or the sovereignty of law over rulers; and the rise of accountable government, or what we now understand to be democracy.
The lectures accept the premise of Samuel HuntingtonÃ_s classic work Political Order in Changing Societies that political development follows a logic separate from economic and social development. Unlike traditional accounts of modernization, which center around the Western experience, these lectures will begin with the first society to create a modern state, China, and try to understand why other societies in India, the Middle East, and Europe diverged from the Chinese path of development. They will carry the story of political development from prehuman times to the eve of the French and American Revolutions.