Earlier this week we learned that Daron Acemoglu, Simon Johnson and James Robinson were awarded the Nobel Prize in economics, which has been long awaited because they have managed to create a serious literature. I can also say that their productivity in academia has been incredible. For example, I wanted to look at Acemoğlu’s works published in 2024, which he listed on Google Scholar. 25 in one year. Even if the majority of these are working papers, it requires a great effort to focus on nearly twenty different topics in roughly the same period of time. We have heard and known for years that Acemoğlu is a hard worker and spends most of his day working. That’s why I didn’t find it strange. I saw that the most cited work of all three of these scholars in their careers was the book “Why Nations Fail” and the article “The colonial origins of comparative development: An empirical investigation”, which is the precursor of this book. Therefore, it is clear that the book “Why Nations Fail” is the work that contains the strongest idea in their careers, and of course we have been paying attention for years to what these colleagues explain, how they explain, what examples they give, and even what they omit to explain.

This book has a history of more than ten years in our academic world. The book has been much discussed over the years. The majority of people liked it. It has also received serious criticism from time to time. But what I remember in recent years is that Acemoğlu was frequently invited to Turkey in the run-up to the May 14, 2023 elections. Although he did not make concrete statements about Turkey (he probably did not follow Turkey’s current data), he repeated his claims in this book and warned Turkey. Although he could not express his examples very clearly, he tried to explain that exclusionary institutions are becoming dominant in Turkey. However, in this book, he even mentioned the Ottoman Empire, but said nothing about modern Turkey. If he had something to say, why didn’t he write it? Interestingly, at a meeting of the CHP, we learned that he had been appointed as an economic advisor. I remember being very surprised because Acemoğlu, who we know from academia, as far as we know, had no ambition to do politics. He shouldn’t have had time for this kind of work. Then Ali Babacan, the leader of another opposition party, was citing this book as an example wherever he went. This book was so important that it became the official ideology manual of the opposition table of six. It was an obligation for us Turkish social scientists to re-evaluate this book, which could have been the main source of governance for the opposition. However, although this book has been evaluated almost to the extent of creating a literature abroad, it has not been seriously evaluated in Turkey despite being a bestseller. A few blurbs. A few newspaper columns criticizing it. Moreover, apart from a few historians like Şükrü Hanioğlu, no economic historian from Turkey has expressed an opinion. I waited for the great professors of economic historiography in Turkey, whose knowledge I trusted. Since they did not express an opinion in such a long time, I decided to write my opinion, thinking that it was my right to do so. This is the reason for the lateness of this article.

I was a PhD student when this book came out. I remember reading it piece by piece in reading groups of economic historians and discussing each chapter amongst ourselves before it was even translated. The book had a fascinating way of drawing the reader in with its narrative style. It was extremely fluent and professionally written. The references in the book, from Adam Smith to Dani Rodrik, were interesting. It is very likely that they had editorial support. Because Acemoğlu’s articles were not this fluent. (I remember that we were tortured trying to read Kenneth Pomeranz’s “The Great Divergence” in our reading group before. One of our friends even sent an e-mail to the lecturer. How did you write this text so incomprehensible?) One of the reasons why the book attracted attention was that it was a “grand theory” type of work. It claims to be able to explain big questions systematically. Nowadays, this kind of thesis is not seen much in academia. Academics are now producing cause and effect from quick and small applications without taking risks or spending a lot of time. The big questions are not asked or answered by brilliant social scientists. I remember being impressed by the book Why Nations Fail in such an environment at the time, but as I gained experience in the field, the content of the book started to diminish in my eyes. Many mistakes and shortcomings started to catch my eye. This book is such a work that the examples in it are like the Encyclopedia Britannica! There are examples from Peru, Jamaica and even Greenland. Of course, I am not knowledgeable enough or an encyclopedia reader to interpret the political systems in Greenland! But I can at least comment on how they approach the subject, how they try to solve a problem. My aim is not to cast a shadow on their Nobel Prize in Economics in the eyes of the reader. It is only and only to open up for discussion issues that do not make sense to me. In a scientific world where even Stephen Hawking and Albert Einstein can be wrong, anyone can be wrong. No matter how famous the claimants are, they are not exempt from criticism. Because we will arrive at the truth through discussion.

Even if it was not the fault of the authors of the book, the title of the book in Turkish always caught my eye. I think it was a wrong choice to translate the title “Why nations fail” as “The Fall of Nations”. In fact, there is no basic rule of translation. Mot a mot translations can sometimes be very unpleasant. So the translator may prefer to use words that express the meaning better. I can accept it so far. But the expression “The Fall of Nations” does not fulfill the content of the book in terms of meaning. It creates the impression that nations that have achieved a certain level of economic success have fallen back from that level. However, the authors are not telling a story of decline. They are telling a direct story of failure. Therefore, I think the title should have been translated literally. I am not a linguist, but I was also struck by some subject-predicate mismatches in the book and the strange choice of words for some concepts. I must also express my surprise that Acemoğlu, one of the authors, did not intervene in this title and its content despite his knowledge of Turkish. He had time to advise the opposition parties in Turkey. But he did not have time to read the Turkish version of the book that explains his most important idea!

Having made this long introduction, I would now like to list my thoughts on the content of the book. This book basically questions the most ancient topic of economic historiography. And that is why some countries are richer and others poorer. This question is almost the same age as the emergence of economics. There have been many answers to this question over the last 250 years. The answers in the literature can be grouped into several categories such as race, geography, culture, ignorance, luck, imperialism, etc. This book explains that such views are wrong and that the most fundamental factor is institutions. The claim of institutions is not actually Acemoğlu’s thesis. While it is possible to trace institutionalism back to Veblen, the foundations of the new institutionalism that Acemoğlu joined were laid in the 1940s with Ronald Coase. Over time, many great economists such as Oliver Williamson and Douglass North developed this idea theoretically. The theoretical addition of this book is the division of institutions into inclusive and exclusive. In fact, at this point, we have to admit that they succeeded in revising North’s similar discourse, albeit slightly. Other than that, it is clear that they do not bring a theoretical approach that is very different from the institutionalists........

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