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In this century, the world will conduct an extraordinary experiment in government. In 2050, forty percent of the planet's population will live in just four places: India, China, the European Union, and the United States. These are superstates - polities that are distinguished from normal countries by expansiveness, population, diversity, and complexity. How should superstates be governed? What must their leaders do to hold these immense polities together in the face of extraordinary strains and shocks? Alasdair Roberts looks to history for answers. Superstates, he contends, wrestle with the same problems of leadership, control, and purpose that plagued empires for centuries. But they also bear heavier burdens than empires - including the obligation to improve life for ordinary people and respect human rights.One axiom of history was that empires always died. Size and complexity led to fragility, and imperial rulers improvised constantly to put off the day of reckoning. Leaders of superstates are doing the same today, pursuing radically different strategies for governing at scale that have profound implications for democracy and human rights. History shows that there are ways to govern these sprawling and diverse polities well. But this requires a different way of thinking about the art and methods of statecraft.

Frontmatter -- Contents -- Acknowledgments -- Introduction: Time for a New Approach -- PART I. KEY IDEAS -- 1. Summary of Propositions -- 2. Acknowledging the State -- 3. States and Societies -- 4. Leaders and Their Goals -- 5. Strategies for Governing -- 6. Factors and Forces -- 7. Laws, Organizations, Programs, and Practices -- 8. Aspects of Institutional Stewardship -- 9. Challenges in Strategy-Making -- 10. The Struggle for Mastery -- 11. Danger, Strategic Fragility, and Realism -- 12. Time and Progress -- 13. Unexceptionalism -- PART II. DILEMMAS IN STRATEGY-MAKING -- 14. Efficiency or Extravagance -- 15. Tight or Loose Control -- 16. Separation or Connection -- 17. Present or Future -- 18. Commitment or Equivocation -- 19. Planning or Improvisation -- PART III. APPLYING THE APPROACH -- 20. Research -- 21. Teaching -- 22. Practice -- Conclusion: Grand Challenges -- A Glossary of States -- Further Reading -- Notes -- Index

"Across the Western world, people are angry about the inability of government to perform basic functions competently. With widespread evidence of policy failures at home and ill-conceived wars and interventions abroad, it is hardly surprising that politicians are distrusted and government is derided as a sprawling, wasteful mess. But what exactly is government supposed to do, and is the track record of Western governments really so awful? In this compelling book, leading scholar of public policy and management, Alasdair Roberts, explores what government does well and what it does badly. Political leaders, he explains, have always been obliged to wrestle with shifting circumstances and contending priorities, making the job of governing extraordinarily difficult. The performance of western democracies in recent decades is, admittedly, far from perfect but - as Roberts ably shows - it is also much better than you might think"--

The End of Protest -- Contents -- The Quiet Crisis -- 1. Schumpeter's Paradox -- 2. Controlling Disorder in the First Liberal Age -- Bread or Blood -- "Can Capitalism Survive?" -- Building the Capacity for Repression -- Law, Urban Space, and the Language of Control -- Reducing Economic Risks -- 3. The Market Comes Back -- Two Myths about Peaceful Reform -- 4. The New Method of Controlling Disorder -- Breaking the Unions -- The Limits of Networked Protest -- Strengthening the Police -- Technocratic Crisis Management -- The New Politics of Intolerance -- 5. The End of Crowd Politics -- Notes -- About the Author.

America's First Great Depression -- Contents -- Introduction: Back to the Future -- 1. Boom and Bust -- Hard times -- Gauging the losses -- The bubble -- The collapse -- 2. The States' Crisis -- Defaulting on state debts -- Disgrace in Europe -- Shackling the states -- 3. The Federal Government's Crisis -- Gridlock in Washington -- The fraying national compact -- Losing the arms race -- Reconciling with the superpower -- 4. Law and Order -- Rebellion in Rhode Island -- The anti-rent war -- Cannon fire in Philadelphia -- Building civic armies -- 5. The End of the Crisis -- A proxy war in Mexico -- Redemption -- Conclusion: Freedom, Order, and Economic Crisis -- Note on Method and Acknowledgments -- Notes -- Index.

Cover -- Contents -- Figures -- 1. The Logic of Discipline -- 2. The Quiet Revolution: Central Bank Independence -- 3. Treasury Power and Fiscal Rules -- 4. Islands in the Public Sector: Tax Collectors -- 5. The Gates of Trade: Autonomous Mainports -- 6. Protecting Capital: Independent Regulators and Super Courts -- 7. Devils in the Details: Long-Term Infrastructure Contracts -- 8. Beyond Discipline -- Notes -- Afterword -- Index -- A -- B -- C -- D -- E -- F -- G -- H -- I -- J -- K -- L -- M -- N -- O -- P -- Q -- R -- S -- T -- U -- V -- W -- Y -- Z.

When the Bush presidency began to collapse, pundits were quick to tell a tale of the "imperial presidency" gone awry, a story of secretive, power-hungry ideologues who guided an arrogant president down the road to ruin. But the inside story of the failures of the Bush administration is both much more complex and alarming, says leading policy analyst Alasdair Roberts. In the most comprehensive, balanced view of the Bush presidency to date, Roberts portrays a surprisingly weak president, hamstrung by bureaucratic, constitutional, cultural and economic barriers and strikingly unable to wield auth

Since the 1990s and Bill Clinton's embrace of key parts of Ronald Reagan's legacy, mainstream US governance has been guided by a bipartisan consensus around a formula of shrinking the federal government's responsibilities and deregulating the economy. Hailed as the ultimate solution to the age-old problem of governing well, the formula was exported to the developing world as the Washington Consensus. Yet growing political polarization weakened the consensus, and in a series of three major crises over the past two decades—9/11, the global financial crisis, and the COVID-19 pandemic—US policymakers opted for pragmatism rather than adherence to the old formula, which appears increasingly inadequate to cope with current governance challenges.