The recent book on ‘Violence and Social Orders’ by the Nobel Prize winner Douglass North and others distinguishes between limited access and open access states. Most states in the world remain limited access, or natural, states dominated by coalitions of elites capturing rents from the...

"It is 2015. George Clooney is US President. Angelina Jolie is Vice President. Bob Geldof and Bono, respectively, Irish President and Prime Minister. China has just overtaken the US as the world's largest economy. India is not so far behind. Some of the UN poverty targets - the Millennium...