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  • Published: 17 October 2012
  • ISBN: 9780141975221
  • Imprint: Penguin eBooks
  • Format: EBook
  • Pages: 192
Categories:

The Great Degeneration

How Institutions Decay and Economies Die




By the author of Civilization

The decline of the West is something that has long been prophesied. Symptoms of decline are all around us today, it seems: slowing growth, crushing debts, aging populations, anti-social behaviour. But what exactly is amiss with Western civilization? The answer, Niall Ferguson argues, is that our institutions - the intricate frameworks within which a society can flourish or fail - are degenerating.

Representative government, the free market, the rule of law and civil society: these were once the four pillars of West European and North American societies. It was these institutions, rather than any geographical or climatic advantages, that set the West on the path to global dominance after around 1500. In our time, however, these institutions have deteriorated in disturbing ways.

Our democracies have broken the contract between the generations by heaping IOUs on our children and grandchildren. Our markets are increasingly distorted by over-complex regulations that are in fact the disease of which they purport to be the cure. The rule of law has metamorphosed into the rule of lawyers. And civil society has degenerated into uncivil society, where we lazily expect all our problems to be solved by the state.

The Degeneration of the West a powerful - and in places polemical - indictment of an era of negligence and complacency. While the Arab world struggles to adopt democracy, and while China struggles to move from economic liberalization to the rule of law, Europeans and Americans alike are frittering away the institutional inheritance of centuries. To arrest the degeneration of the West's once dominant civilization, Ferguson warns, will take heroic leadership and radical reform.

This book is based on Niall Ferguson's 2012 BBC Reith Lectures, which were broadcast under the title The Rule of Law and Its Enemies.

  • Published: 17 October 2012
  • ISBN: 9780141975221
  • Imprint: Penguin eBooks
  • Format: EBook
  • Pages: 192
Categories:

About the author

Niall Ferguson

Niall Ferguson is one of Britain's most renowned historians. He is a Laurence A. Tisch Professor of History at Harvard University, a Senior Research Fellow of Jesus College, Oxford University, and a Senior Fellow of the Hoover Institution, Stanford University. The bestselling author of Paper and Iron, The House of Rothschild, The Pity of War, The Cash Nexus, Empire and Colossus, he also writes regularly for newspapers and magazines all over the world. Since 2003 he has written and presented three highly successful television documentary series for Channel Four: Empire, American Colossus and, most recently, The War of the World. He, his wife and three children divide their time between the United Kingdom and the United States.

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Praise for The Great Degeneration

Brilliantly written, full of wit and virtuosity, stuffed with memorable lines and gorgeous bits of information. A great read

The Times (on Civilization)

A dazzling history of Western ideas ... epic

Economist

This is sharp. It feels urgent. Ferguson... twists his knife with great literary brio

Andrew Marr (on Civilization)

A masterpiece ... fascinating facts burst like fireworks on every page

Sunday Times

Brings history alive for the reader with a dazzling knowledge ... peerless

Independent on Sunday