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James A. Robinson

James A. Robinson is a British political economist recognized for his pioneering work on the role of institutions in shaping economic development and prosperity. Born in 1960 in Sheffield, United Kingdom, he is best known for his collaborations with Daron Acemoglu, including the landmark books “Why Nations Fail” and “The Narrow Corridor”. Robinson’s research combines political economy, history, and cultural beliefs to understand why some societies thrive while others stagnate. In 2024, he was awarded the Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel.

Economic theory, on its own, was never enough for Robinson. As a child growing up in 1970s Britain during blackouts and labor strikes, he was drawn not to markets or finance, but to the forces shaping people's lives: conflict, ideology, and power. He grew up in a house where television was not allowed and the family spent time discussing the issues happening in their country and around the world. Feeling like many of the issues were tied to economics in one way or another, Robinson began teaching himself the field while he was still in high school.

By the time he entered university, was in full swing, and there were many debates about economics and the role of the state in society. He decided he wanted to master economic theory, but it wasn’t until after he finished his PhD that things came into focus for him. “All of this economic theory doesn’t explain anything,” Robinson says he told his thesis advisor. The response? “How long did it take you to figure that out?” his advisor laughed.

It served as an a-ha moment for Robinson who was fascinated with history and politics but didn’t feel economists were talking about these topics. In his head, there were parallels but he wasn’t finding intersections. He met fellow economist Daron Acemoglu in the early 1990s and in him found a kindred spirit who was asking himself the same questions. It was a meeting of minds that would change the course of their lives and lead both men to become co-laureates decades later along with Simon Jonhson. 

It was this pursuit of context that would shape Robinson’s life’s work. With his now longtime collaborator Acemoglu, they developed the distinction between inclusive and extractive institutions, a deceptively simple binary that helps explain why some societies thrive and others stagnate.

Inclusive institutions create broad incentives and opportunities. South Korea, for instance, is a democratized society that enables a flourishing of economic and cultural creativity. Extractive ones, like in North Korea, concentrate power and prosperity in the hands of a few, systematically stifling innovation and agency. The difference isn’t about culture or resources but rather rules, who makes them, who enforces them, and who benefits from them. The two Koreas provide a powerful illustration of this in their book, “Why Nations Fail”. “If you look at the Korean peninsula at night, you see South Korea blazing with light and North Korea black,” says Robinson. “It’s not because they don’t know about light bulbs in North Korea. It’s because the place is extremely poor, people don’t have access to electricity, and you have this highly extractive society.”

The institutional failure in extractive systems is both what causes and keeps societies living in poverty. Inclusive societies with inclusive institutions lead to cultural creativity via incentives and opportunities. “It allows all of this talent to blossom,” he says. “It allows all of these people to do their thing. What humans are great at: to be creative, invent, be entrepreneurs, be artists, be musicians, be whatever. All of that explodes when you get that inclusive playing field.”

It allows all of these people…to be creative, invent, be entrepreneurs, be artists, be musicians, be whatever. All of that explodes when you get that inclusive playing field.

If inclusive institutions lead to more prosperity, why aren’t they more common?
For Robinson, the answer is blunt. “Because the elites can’t control it,” he says. Power is rarely relinquished willingly. Certain nations and their leaders would rather preside over scarcity than risk opening the door to potentially destabilizing creativity. Growth under extractive systems is often short lived.

If “Why Nations Fail” offered a map of institutions, Robinson and Acemoglu reframed institutional change not as an event, but as a process in “The Narrow Corridor”. It introduces a new metaphor: a narrow corridor where both the state and society must grow strong, together. Too much dominance on either side, and inclusion collapses.
China and Somalia, for instance, both fall outside the corridor—but for opposite reasons. China has a strong state that dominates society. Somalia has a fragmented society and almost no state. In both, meaningful inclusion remains elusive. 

"The way you structure institutions and policies, that's a choice,” says Robinson. “It's not something inevitable. I think that's the biggest mistake of looking at the economics and forgetting about society and politics.”

What we call democracy today is only the latest chapter in a long, uneven struggle toward political inclusion and Robinson says it’s important to not project contemporary norms backward onto history.

“When you go back in history, it's a bit anachronistic to talk about democracies existing in the sense that they do today because in some sense that's a very recent phenomena,” he says. Democracies, he argues, come in waves. They advance, retreat, mutate. Some become corrupt or clientelistic, exchanging goods or services for political support. Others falter when layered atop weak state institutions. Their mere presence does not guarantee accountability or development. But over time, democracies—when they take root—tend to provide more education, better public services, and more sustained growth.

Democracies existing in the sense that they do today…that's a very recent phenomena.

While many assume that democracy is synonymous with inclusion, Robinson says that isn’t always the case. Electoral democracy can exist without genuine pluralism, and even historically strong democracies can drift into exclusion. Today, many countries from Latin America to the United States are experiencing a rollback of democratic gains, according to Robinson. “In Colombia, a third of the country has no roads,” he says. “What can democracy do for you when the state can’t reach you?”

The roots of these modern declines in liberal norms, he believes, lie in unmet expectations. Where people expected prosperity, stability, and dignity, democracy delivered bureaucracy, corruption, or simply inertia. The outcome is not necessarily dictatorship, but disillusionment. “There's a lot of challenges at the moment. The system is being shocked and challenged,” he says, but he maintains an air of optimism. “What history suggests is that once you get on to these paths, it is difficult to go off that kind of path. There's a deep history which is positive.” 

Despite his rigorous models, Robinson acknowledges that data alone doesn’t move people. Ideas do. Legitimacy, belief, and narratives are all essential to building lasting institutions. In his most recent work, Robinson is focusing on the concept of the normative order: the moral and cosmological beliefs that shape how societies view power, fairness, and authority. These beliefs aren’t always rational or self-serving. They can be ancestral, religious, or deeply symbolic.

“Many societies in the world are not organized in a way which is going to promote economic prosperity,” he says. “But the reason they're organized in that way is not because somebody is benefiting from it. It's because they believe that is the right thing to do and to organize.”

“You don't sell land in Africa,” he says. “Why? Because your ancestors are buried under the land so how could you sell the land? These ontological beliefs are important.”

Understanding such ontologies, he argues, is essential for any theory that hopes to capture why institutions endure or change. They need to reflect the past and the collective imagination of the people and this is something Robinson says has long been ignored by many in the field. “The ideational foundations of institutions, ideas, and a social imaginary are enormously important for getting support in institutions,” he says. “People have to believe in them. People have to come together.”

Robinson’s path has been shaped as much by the field as by theory. From Botswana to the Congo to Colombia, it has been firsthand encounters that forced him to challenge or let go of existing assumptions. “There were all sorts of things I'd never thought about, I'd never heard before, stuff you can’t learn sitting behind your desk in Chicago,” he says. “For me, fieldwork is a way of shedding preconceptions and that’s been terribly important for me and refocusing the way I think about the world.”

You don't sell land in Africa because your ancestors are buried under the land so how could you sell the land? These ontological beliefs are important.

For all the theoretical reach of his work, Robinson’s worldview remains grounded in people. The university, for him, isn’t just a workplace. It’s a vantage point, a privilege, a place where curiosity stretches across generations.

“I don't fear the young,” he says. “Quite the opposite. I think it's very important in academia to recognize your role when you get older and not stand in the way of young people or get trapped into your paradigm, your own way of thinking. Young people do different things and that’s exciting. I never stop learning.” 

Whether he’s debating with a colleague, guiding students, or being the student himself, Robinson find energy in movement. His exposure to the world and to all the people he’s come across is at the core of his optimism. He has seen societies shaped by violence, resilience, and complex histories that refuse to be categorized into neat narratives. That experience sharpens, rather than softens, his sense of what’s at stake today. “I always joke with my colleagues that they don’t know how to cope with the world we’re heading into. But I do because I’ve seen it, I’ve worked in it and I’ve lived it,” he says.

The arc of Robinson’s work may be about institutions, but his presence—curious, collaborative, unafraid of change—is itself a model of how to inhabit one.