Michael Hoffman is an economist and armchair philosopher in Washington, DC. Views are his own and do not necessarily represent those of his employer.
Marie-Jean-Antoine-Nicolas de Caritat (better known as the Marquis de Condorcet) was a pioneer in probability theory, a revolutionary, a constitutionalist, and a martyr for the Enlightenment. His life story and tragic death have been the subject of many philosophical and biographical histories. One biography in particular, J. Salwyn Schapiro’s
It is nearly always productive to explore the tension between democracy and liberty, as this is not a tension that any society resolves on a lasting basis. Resolutions are by nature temporary and tenuous—immediately reviled, vigorously renegotiated, and, sometimes, productively reformed. That is why Annelien De Dijn’s Freedom:
“This crisis has long been concealed by the survival of the outward forms and historical institutions created by freedom, veiling its internal decay beneath,” wrote Guido de Ruggiero ominously in his History of European Liberalism (HEL). In 1922, when de Ruggiero was an historian of philosophy, teaching at the University
In The Narrow Corridor, with impressive historical breadth, Daron Acemoglu and James Robinson (hereafter A&R) develop and apply a conceptual framework to explain the emergence, sustenance, and, all too often, disappearance, of liberty. It is a serious, important and wide-ranging scholarly effort. Narrative histories provide the empirical grist
During and after World War II the architects of the economic institutions of the liberal international order articulated a compelling rationale for the structure and rules of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT). In a recent article I identified a common set of
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