Beating the Global Odds: Successful Decision-making in a Confused and Troubled World

Inescapable Trilemma?

Last year I traveled to Shanghai with a group of client CEOs and assorted luminaries, including renowned political scientist Francis Fukuyama. Frank made a very interesting point: We don’t know how to turn Afghanistan into Denmark, nor do we know how to unparalyze representative democracy around the world. (He also made the point that few of us know how “Denmark turned into Denmark,” that is, how—over a thousand years—assorted tribes of Nordic marauders and Viking thugs managed to become a peaceable and prosperous democratic country; if you want to understand just how it happened, read Frank’s latest book.)

Turkish-born Harvard professor Dani Rodrik, whom I cited earlier, regularly makes a point that is equally thought provoking: Is it possible to have, simultaneously, democratic mass politics, national sovereignty, and an open global economy? He thinks the answer is clearly no, and calls it the inescapable trilemma: You can have two of the three, but not all three. Try to have all three at once, and what you get is the messy gridlock that lurches from election campaign shouting matches to overhyped boom to economic crisis and back again. If he’s right (a scary thought), remedies for fixing Washington (or saving the European Union) are missing the point. Silicon Valley billionaire Peter Thiel, the libertarian cofounder of PayPal and early investor in Facebook and LinkedIn, puts Rodrik’s trilemma in slightly different (and even more ominous) terms, saying, ...