The End of Power by Moises Naim is the first pick in Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg's Year of Books. The book purports to explain and explore the changes in power during recent decades- "From boardrooms to battlefields and churches to states, why being in charge isn't what it used to be", as the cover states.
The model he proposes for examining power and the decay of power is perhaps the best part of the book. First, he defines power. 'Power is the ability to direct or prevent the current or future actions of other groups and individuals.' As he states in the text, this is similar to political scientist Robert Dahl's definition of power given in The Concept of Power. "A has power over B to the extent that he can get B to do something that B would not otherwise do." He identifies what he calls the four channels of power- the means through which power is expressed and employed. They are The Muscle, The Code, The Pitch and The Reward. This is a clean and simple division that really does encapsulate most options and doesn't require much explanation. Even if we were to try and introduce another 'channel' into this model (say, The Drive for the use of intrinsic motivation) it could easily be explained away as a synthesis of two 'basic' channels of power- in that case, The Pitch and The Code.
He goes on to analyze the accumulation and distribution of power from an economics perspective, using the idea of 'barriers to entry' and 'market power'. I am always fond of the use of Economics as Universal Toolkit and Moises Naim does this well. He then explains why 'big' became almost synonymous with 'powerful'. Ranging from Max Weber's belief in the power of bureaucracy to Ronald Coase's Nature of The Firm and his elucidation of economies of scale and transaction costs, his analysis is sharp and edifying.
He then proposes why the nature of power is changing- why large actors seem more constrained and less effective than their smaller competitors. His economic analysis is important here; he identifies the changing nature of transaction costs, the existence of 'diseconomies of scale' (my terminology) and, ultimately, the lowering of barriers to entry in nearly all fields. He tends to downplay the Internet as the primary game changer in the structure of power. He considers it only one factor among many, which is refreshing. He identifies three 'revolutions' affecting the employment of power- More, Mobility and Mentality. The More Revolution: 'Overwhelming the means of control.' The Mobility Revolution: 'The end of captive audiences'. The Mentality Revolution: Taking nothing for granted Anymore.' This is an intuitive and flexible model- and better yet, it is simple and can be universally applied without much problem. Each of these is tied to his earlier use of 'barriers of entry' and to his 'channels of power' to show how each one complicates the exercise and accumulation of power.
It is after the demonstration of his model that the book really declines in quality. Editing is extraordinarily poor for a book of this type. For one example, he continually hints at an analysis of education using his model in the earlier chapters. He ends a later chapter with, and I'm paraphrasing: This chapter could have been about education. His charts and visual aids are even worse- I had to wonder if his publisher gave him a quota. One of his charts is a U-curve he uses to explain that too much power and too little power have their own problems. The X axis is labelled (confusingly) Decay of power and the Y axis is labeled with the practically non-descript phrase political and social stability, economic vitality. It is a completely worthless chart, dropped into the middle of the text without reason and without any basis in fact.
The quality of his commentary on the 'decay of power' and the examples he chooses to prove his thesis are equally poor. In the military focused chapter, I found his emphasis on 'drones' to be particularly jarring and a waste of space. One line stuck out in particular: "More disturbing, ordinary hobbyists and private users abound: in the United States in 2012 a group called DIY Drones had twenty thousand members." He isn't the only one to get scared about drones since we stopped calling them RC planes, but there were infinitely better examples that could have been used. He never talks about the massive deployment of Palestinian rockets and Israel's construction of the Iron Dome, for example. He doesn't talk about denial-of-service attacks done in conjunction with rocket strikes or about the terrifying rise of 'armchair jihadists' as even a concept, much less a reality. (I said I wouldn't use his poor citation of sources in this review but it bears mentioning: when talking about the possible use of drones by terrorist groups and about a confirmed use by Hezbollah of drone use in 2004, he instead cites this article- which is about the use of drones by Israeli security forces and the culture of fear it has created among Palestinians.)
He promises at the beginning of The End of Power that "this is not a call to feel sorry for those in power." He presumably forgot that promise somewhere in the editing process, because his entire section on what is to be done about the decay of power as well as his commentary on the negative effects of the decay of power is impossible to read as anything but "a call to feel sorry for those in power." He argues that democratic societies need to give their governments more power over their lives- and while he's not alone in this contention, it is nothing more than the final lament of a 20th century technocrat at the dawn of the 21st. There are some good points to his final analysis, but they don't outweigh the bad.
The End of Power presents a useful model for understanding power's changing nature in the modern day. Moises Naim then proceeds to do nothing useful or thought-provoking with that model for 200 pages. I would recommend this book only for those interested in the model and nothing else. The flaws outside of his model-building portions make this book not worth the effort.
Final musing- Why Mark Zuckerberg Picked This Book: References to Facebook and the tech industry abound throughout The End of Power and well they should. (Moises Naim often says they succeed for the same reasons al-Qaeda did, which is useful for grabbing attention if nothing else.) The tech industry's 'disruption' of various industries are the David vs. Goliath struggles that many now imagine when talking about the changing nature of power. The nimble startup fending off the industry giant is ingrained into the public consciousness and is brought up everywhere, critically or no, from Uber's fights with taxi companies to Kodak's replacement by Instagram. We live in a world where private companies such as SpaceX and Virgin Galactic define space travel more than NASA. Mark Zuckerberg picked this book because the rise of Silicon Valley is just one expression of the end of power.
UP NEXT: The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined, Steven Pinker, A Year of Books' 2nd pick
He goes on to analyze the accumulation and distribution of power from an economics perspective, using the idea of 'barriers to entry' and 'market power'. I am always fond of the use of Economics as Universal Toolkit and Moises Naim does this well. He then explains why 'big' became almost synonymous with 'powerful'. Ranging from Max Weber's belief in the power of bureaucracy to Ronald Coase's Nature of The Firm and his elucidation of economies of scale and transaction costs, his analysis is sharp and edifying.
He then proposes why the nature of power is changing- why large actors seem more constrained and less effective than their smaller competitors. His economic analysis is important here; he identifies the changing nature of transaction costs, the existence of 'diseconomies of scale' (my terminology) and, ultimately, the lowering of barriers to entry in nearly all fields. He tends to downplay the Internet as the primary game changer in the structure of power. He considers it only one factor among many, which is refreshing. He identifies three 'revolutions' affecting the employment of power- More, Mobility and Mentality. The More Revolution: 'Overwhelming the means of control.' The Mobility Revolution: 'The end of captive audiences'. The Mentality Revolution: Taking nothing for granted Anymore.' This is an intuitive and flexible model- and better yet, it is simple and can be universally applied without much problem. Each of these is tied to his earlier use of 'barriers of entry' and to his 'channels of power' to show how each one complicates the exercise and accumulation of power.
It is after the demonstration of his model that the book really declines in quality. Editing is extraordinarily poor for a book of this type. For one example, he continually hints at an analysis of education using his model in the earlier chapters. He ends a later chapter with, and I'm paraphrasing: This chapter could have been about education. His charts and visual aids are even worse- I had to wonder if his publisher gave him a quota. One of his charts is a U-curve he uses to explain that too much power and too little power have their own problems. The X axis is labelled (confusingly) Decay of power and the Y axis is labeled with the practically non-descript phrase political and social stability, economic vitality. It is a completely worthless chart, dropped into the middle of the text without reason and without any basis in fact.
The quality of his commentary on the 'decay of power' and the examples he chooses to prove his thesis are equally poor. In the military focused chapter, I found his emphasis on 'drones' to be particularly jarring and a waste of space. One line stuck out in particular: "More disturbing, ordinary hobbyists and private users abound: in the United States in 2012 a group called DIY Drones had twenty thousand members." He isn't the only one to get scared about drones since we stopped calling them RC planes, but there were infinitely better examples that could have been used. He never talks about the massive deployment of Palestinian rockets and Israel's construction of the Iron Dome, for example. He doesn't talk about denial-of-service attacks done in conjunction with rocket strikes or about the terrifying rise of 'armchair jihadists' as even a concept, much less a reality. (I said I wouldn't use his poor citation of sources in this review but it bears mentioning: when talking about the possible use of drones by terrorist groups and about a confirmed use by Hezbollah of drone use in 2004, he instead cites this article- which is about the use of drones by Israeli security forces and the culture of fear it has created among Palestinians.)
He promises at the beginning of The End of Power that "this is not a call to feel sorry for those in power." He presumably forgot that promise somewhere in the editing process, because his entire section on what is to be done about the decay of power as well as his commentary on the negative effects of the decay of power is impossible to read as anything but "a call to feel sorry for those in power." He argues that democratic societies need to give their governments more power over their lives- and while he's not alone in this contention, it is nothing more than the final lament of a 20th century technocrat at the dawn of the 21st. There are some good points to his final analysis, but they don't outweigh the bad.
The End of Power presents a useful model for understanding power's changing nature in the modern day. Moises Naim then proceeds to do nothing useful or thought-provoking with that model for 200 pages. I would recommend this book only for those interested in the model and nothing else. The flaws outside of his model-building portions make this book not worth the effort.
Final musing- Why Mark Zuckerberg Picked This Book: References to Facebook and the tech industry abound throughout The End of Power and well they should. (Moises Naim often says they succeed for the same reasons al-Qaeda did, which is useful for grabbing attention if nothing else.) The tech industry's 'disruption' of various industries are the David vs. Goliath struggles that many now imagine when talking about the changing nature of power. The nimble startup fending off the industry giant is ingrained into the public consciousness and is brought up everywhere, critically or no, from Uber's fights with taxi companies to Kodak's replacement by Instagram. We live in a world where private companies such as SpaceX and Virgin Galactic define space travel more than NASA. Mark Zuckerberg picked this book because the rise of Silicon Valley is just one expression of the end of power.
UP NEXT: The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined, Steven Pinker, A Year of Books' 2nd pick
