The End of Power

Detailed overview

Moisés Naím writes The End of Power from the perspective of a former Venezuelan minister, a Davos regular, and a longtime editor at Foreign Policy, so the book’s central claim is not that presidents, generals, CEOs, churches, or banks have become harmless. It is that their power has become easier to challenge, harder to use, and more likely to disappear. The personal origin story matters: in February 1989, when Naím was thirty-six and serving as Venezuela’s minister of development, subsidy cuts and fuel price increases helped trigger riots in Caracas. He remembers fear, violence, and the discovery that ministerial office could look large from the outside while feeling like a “hobbled giant” from inside.

The book turns that ministerial lesson into a cross-domain account of weakening barriers. Naím defines power with Robert Dahl’s plain formula of A getting B to do something, then breaks its operation into four channels: muscle, code, pitch, and reward. Those terms let him compare a boss with an annual review, a Toyota Prius advertisement, a parent negotiating over Cocoa Puffs, a church threatening excommunication, and a state offering fuel oil to North Korea. The result is an intentionally portable vocabulary, but Naím keeps returning it to named cases rather than leaving it as political theory.

The historical middle of the book explains why twentieth-century power became associated with large organizations. Max Weber’s bureaucracy, Ronald Coase’s transaction-cost account of the firm, the Pentagon, IBM, General Motors, Bill Levitt’s housing developments, C. Wright Mills’s The Power Elite, and Eisenhower’s warning about the military-industrial complex all appear as pieces of the same old assumption: size lowered costs, coordinated work, and protected incumbents. Naím then argues that the More, Mobility, and Mentality revolutions have damaged that assumption. More people, more literacy, more prosperity, cheaper travel, mobile money, global media, and changed expectations make former audiences, voters, workers, believers, consumers, and soldiers less captive.

Naím’s best evidence comes from recurring pairings of megaplayers with micropowers. James Black Jr., a twelve-year-old chess master from Bedford-Stuyvesant with a Kmart set and chess software, stands beside the decline of Soviet chess dominance. Al Qaeda’s $500,000 preparation for 9/11 stands beside the $3.3 trillion cost of direct losses and American response. Somali pirates in fiberglass skiffs, Hezbollah’s $60,000 missile against the Israeli corvette Hanit, Chinese hackers inside the US Chamber of Commerce network, and Afghan IED makers all show small actors denying options to military institutions that still possess jets, carriers, satellites, and nuclear arsenals.

The same pattern is traced through politics, geopolitics, business, religion, labor, philanthropy, and media. The Tea Party, Citizens United Super-PACs, Ségolène Royal’s Socialist primary, the Pirate Party, Antonio di Pietro’s Mani Pulite, Baltasar Garzón’s Pinochet case, Wael Ghonim’s Egyptian Facebook organizing, and Sami Ben Gharbia’s use of WikiLeaks cables in Tunisia all show official parties and governments losing their monopoly over political intermediation. In global affairs, WikiLeaks cables, Poland’s vetoes inside the European Union, Tuvalu at Copenhagen, North Korea’s Chongryon in Tokyo, and minilateral groups like BRICS and the Cairns Group make the same point about ambassadors and hegemons.

The later chapters are careful not to celebrate fragmentation without remainder. Naím welcomes fewer autocracies, more electoral competition, more consumer choice, and new ways for donors, workers, churches, and journalists to organize. But he also worries about vetocracy, ruinous competition, slacktivism, alienation, de-skilling, and collective-action failure on climate change, nuclear proliferation, cyberwar, pandemics, trafficking, and financial crises. The final chapter therefore asks for political innovations that restore trust, strengthen parties, widen participation, and make life harder for “terrible simplifiers” such as demagogues, financial charlatans, and military fantasists who exploit a world where attention and authority are splintered.

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Chapter-by-chapter notes

Preface: How This Book Came About

Summary: Naím begins with February 1989 in democratic Venezuela, when he was thirty-six, newly appointed minister of development, and watching Caracas riots break out after subsidy cuts and fuel price increases. He uses that episode to describe the distance between the public image of ministerial power and the actual inability of a cabinet official to control violence, fear, and economic pressure. Fernando Henrique Cardoso tells him that Brazilian presidents face the same mismatch between what citizens imagine and what heads of state can do, while Joschka Fischer describes government palaces as impressive architecture around hollowed-out authority. Naím adds his own long exposure to Davos, Bilderberg, Sun Valley, IMF meetings, and senior figures who privately say their offices are weaker, more constrained, and more temporary than outsiders suppose. Source anchors: February 1989, Caracas riots, Fernando Henrique Cardoso, Joschka Fischer, Davos, hobbled giant.

Analysis: February 1989 gives Naím a concrete memory of power failing at the level of police, prices, and public anger rather than a slogan about modern politics. Cardoso and Fischer widen the Venezuelan case into a pattern among presidents and foreign ministers, while Davos and IMF meetings explain why Naím treats complaints from elites as diagnostic evidence instead of sympathy for elites. The preface’s job is to make “hobbled giant” a recurring image for the rest of the book: large offices still exist, but Caracas, Brasília, Berlin, and the global conference circuit show how much less command they deliver.

Chapter One: The Decay of Power

Summary: The first chapter defines power as the ability to get others to do, or stop doing, something, then claims that power has become easier to obtain, harder to use, and easier to lose. Naím opens with James Black Jr., the twelve-year-old chess master from Bedford-Stuyvesant who learned with a Kmart plastic set, chess books, computer programs, and admiration for Mikhail Tal. He contrasts Black, Ray Robson, Magnus Carlsen, and more than 1,200 modern grandmasters with the 88 grandmasters of 1972 and the old Soviet hold on the world championship. The chess story then becomes a bridge to South Sudan’s 2011 independence, asymmetric wars where weak actors rose from 11.8 percent success in 1800-1849 to 55 percent in 1950-1998, IEDs in Afghanistan and Iraq, Arab Spring protests, Occupy Wall Street, WikiLeaks, the Gates Foundation, and Kuala Lumpur demonstrators imitating Madrid’s Puerta del Sol. Source anchors: James Black Jr., Bedford-Stuyvesant, Kmart plastic set, Mikhail Tal, 1,200 grandmasters, South Sudan, IEDs, Puerta del Sol.

Analysis: James Black Jr. gives the chapter a small, named actor whose rise cannot be explained by old Soviet training pipelines, while South Sudan, IEDs, and Puerta del Sol move that logic into statehood, warfare, and protest. The 1,200 grandmasters and the weak-side war statistics supply Naím’s preferred kind of evidence: the incumbent still matters, but the old barrier is lower. By ending with WikiLeaks and the Gates Foundation rather than only Arab Spring crowds, the chapter makes the decay of power a general claim about access, obstruction, and agenda-setting.

Chapter Two: Making Sense of Power: How It Works and How to Keep It

Summary: Naím turns from examples to mechanics by beginning with an ordinary morning of alarms, a boss, an annual review, a Toyota Prius advertisement, Cocoa Puffs, a school pickup, and a dog refusing the rain. He argues that armies, votes, wealth, and assets are only proxies for power because power is relational and situation-specific, as shown by a G8 leader whose authority depends on domestic coalitions, scandals, approval, and the issue at hand. The chapter’s central taxonomy names four channels: muscle, code, pitch, and reward. Muscle covers force, firing, bankruptcy, excommunication, oil, and voters; code covers morals, tradition, the Golden Rule, and the Ten Commandments; pitch covers persuasion such as the Prius ad; reward covers inducements such as fuel oil to North Korea or a bidding war for a banker, singer, professor, or surgeon. Source anchors: Toyota Prius, Cocoa Puffs, G8 leader, muscle, code, pitch, reward, North Korea.

Analysis: The Toyota Prius and Cocoa Puffs examples keep muscle, code, pitch, and reward from sounding like diplomatic jargon; Naím wants readers to see the same levers in households, workplaces, churches, companies, and states. The G8 leader matters because the office alone does not reveal which channel is usable in a given dispute, and North Korea shows how reward can do work that muscle cannot. This chapter gives the later material a measuring tool: when churches, armies, parties, or CEOs lose power, Naím can ask which of the four channels has become costlier or less reliable.

Chapter Three: How Power Got Big: An Assumption’s Unquestioned Rise

Summary: This chapter explains why modern power came to look like size, hierarchy, and bureaucracy. Naím starts with Max Weber’s account of bureaucracy, then uses the National Association for the Study and Prevention of Tuberculosis, Jacob Riis’s Christmas seals, and 500,000 donors by 1915 to show how organized scale could mobilize people. Ronald Coase’s 1937 essay “The Nature of the Firm” supplies the economic logic: high transaction costs made firms grow, integrate, and bring oil refining, airlines, smelters, cement, and banks inside large structures. World War II, the Pentagon built from 1941 to 1943, IBM’s buttoned-down culture, General Motors earning more than $1 billion in 1955, Bill Levitt’s mass housing, C. Wright Mills’s The Power Elite, Eisenhower’s military-industrial complex warning, IBM’s later defeat by the personal computer, and Google’s growth from “Don’t Be Evil” startup to giant all mark the rise and criticism of big power. Source anchors: Max Weber, Jacob Riis, Ronald Coase, transaction costs, Pentagon, General Motors, Bill Levitt, C. Wright Mills.

Analysis: Max Weber and Ronald Coase give Naím two reasons that size once worked: bureaucracy made command reliable, and transaction costs made internal organization cheaper than constant contracting. The Pentagon, General Motors, and Bill Levitt turn those reasons into American institutions after World War II, while C. Wright Mills and Eisenhower show that anxiety about concentrated power emerged inside the age of concentration itself. IBM and Google let the chapter end with reversal: the same organizational scale that once protected incumbents can become the target of smaller, faster challengers.

Chapter Four: How Power Lost Its Edge: The More, Mobility, and Mentality Revolutions

Summary: Naím names the three forces that undermine barriers to power: the More revolution, the Mobility revolution, and the Mentality revolution. The chapter places them after the fall of the Berlin Wall on November 9, 1989, the execution of Nicolae and Elena Ceausescu at Christmas 1989, the storming of East Germany’s Stasi headquarters in January 1990, and Tim Berners-Lee’s first HTTP server communication at CERN in December 1990. The More revolution includes fivefold world output since 1950, income per capita multiplied 3.5 times, hundreds of millions of Chinese lifted from poverty, literacy around 84 percent, falling child mortality, and Homi Kharas’s projected global middle class of 3 billion by 2020. Mobility moves people, goods, money, and ideas faster across borders, while Mentality describes less automatic deference to presidents, priests, parties, corporations, and experts. Source anchors: Berlin Wall, Ceausescu, Stasi headquarters, Tim Berners-Lee, More revolution, Mobility revolution, Mentality revolution, Homi Kharas.

Analysis: Berlin Wall, Ceausescu, and Stasi headquarters make the chapter’s chronology political before Tim Berners-Lee makes it technological, which helps Naím avoid reducing everything to the internet. The More revolution gives ordinary people more resources and skills, Mobility makes them harder to keep captive, and Mentality weakens inherited obedience to old offices. Homi Kharas’s middle-class numbers matter because Naím’s micropowers are not only hackers or activists; they are also newly educated consumers, migrants, voters, and workers with higher expectations.

Chapter Five: Why Are Landslides, Majorities, and Mandates Endangered Species? The Decay of Power in National Politics

Summary: Chapter five applies the book’s machinery to domestic politics by tracking more countries, more democracies, weaker parties, stronger courts, assertive regions, and direct digital actors. It moves from empires to proliferating states, from autocrats to democrats, and from large parties to factions such as the Tea Party, which did not exist in 2008 but by 2012 forced Republican presidential contenders to seek its mantle. Naím includes the Pirate Party’s Swedish origins, Berlin state-parliament breakthrough, and Swiss mayoral victory; Ségolène Royal’s 2007 Socialist primary and François Hollande’s 2011 open primary; Citizens United Super-PACs; UK devolution, the Scottish and Welsh assemblies, EU Parliament seats, Catalonia, the Basque country, Lega del Nord, Bolivia’s doubled municipalities, India’s Chhattisgarh, Uttarakhand, and Jharkhand; Antonio di Pietro’s Mani Pulite, Baltasar Garzón’s Pinochet case, Liu Xiaobo’s Charter 08, Wael Ghonim in Egypt, Oscar Morales against FARC, TehranBureau.com, WikiLeaks, John Paulson, and Julian Assange. Source anchors: Tea Party, Pirate Party, Ségolène Royal, Citizens United, Mani Pulite, Liu Xiaobo, Wael Ghonim, WikiLeaks.

Analysis: The Tea Party and Pirate Party show party systems losing control over candidacies and agendas, while Citizens United and Super-PACs route money around party hierarchy. Wael Ghonim, Oscar Morales, and WikiLeaks use Platform Governance against established intermediaries: Facebook, blogs, and leak platforms set new terms for visibility and mobilization, letting individuals reach publics that parties once controlled. Mani Pulite and Baltasar Garzón add courts as rival channels, so elections remain decisive but mandates fragment among platforms, judges, regions, donors, and activists.

Chapter Six: Pentagons Versus Pirates: The Decaying Power of Large Armies

Summary: Naím opens the military chapter with cost asymmetries: Al Qaeda spent about $500,000 to produce 9/11 while direct losses plus the American response reached $3.3 trillion; Hezbollah used a reported $60,000 missile against Israel’s $260 million corvette Hanit; Somali pirates imposed $6.6 to $6.9 billion in costs in 2011 while launching 237 attacks. He then follows IEDs in Juz Ghoray near Ugly Hill in Afghanistan, the Mumbai attacks of November 26-29, 2008, Los Zetas burning a Monterrey casino in 2011, Somali hijackings near Socotra Island, and Chinese hackers inside the US Chamber of Commerce network. The chapter also uses John Arquilla’s “perpetual irregular warfare,” Robert Gates’s observation about US deployments, Thomas Mahnken on precision-guided munitions, Mao Zedong on guerrilla units, the Taliban facing more than 430,000 Afghan and coalition troops, Russia in Chechnya, Ivan Arreguín-Toft’s 197 asymmetric wars, Wesley Clark’s “full spectrum dominance,” Amos Yadlin on cyberpower, and the Zetas’ migration from Mexican elite units to Gulf Cartel enforcers to traffickers. Source anchors: Al Qaeda, Hanit, Somali pirates, Juz Ghoray, Los Zetas, John Arquilla, Ivan Arreguín-Toft, Amos Yadlin.

Analysis: Al Qaeda, Hanit, and Somali pirates make military power financially lopsided before Juz Ghoray, Mumbai, Monterrey, and Socotra show how many small actors can deny options to states. Their cheap cells, skiffs, IEDs, cyber tools, and captured expertise create Antifragility and Optionality: dispersed attackers risk little on each attempt, vary tactics rapidly, and force large militaries to defend many expensive targets. Arquilla and Arreguín-Toft explain why conventional superiority can win battles yet lose the political contest.

Chapter Seven: Whose World Will It Be? Vetoes, Resistance, and Leaks - or Why Geopolitics Is Turning Upside Down

Summary: The geopolitics chapter begins on March 28, 2012, when Australia’s Treasury calculated that less developed economies had collectively surpassed rich-world economies, then uses Peter Hartcher’s column and reader comments about China, India, sewerage, electricity, Australia, and Ken Courtis’s “couple of bad centuries” line to frame the hegemony debate. Naím argues that WikiLeaks’ 250,000 US diplomatic cables reveal not omnipotence but American frustration with the European Parliament, the Russian Duma, Turkmenistan’s landing rights, Kazakhstan’s nuclear-fuel tax exemptions, Egypt’s treatment of US NGO workers, Pakistan’s sanctuary for Osama bin Laden, Israel’s settlement policy, and Afghanistan’s dependence on US aid. He then discusses Zbigniew Brzezinski’s “post-hegemonic era,” Charles Kindleberger’s hegemonic stability theory, BRICS, Kony 2012, Poland’s EU vetoes, Lithuania’s Russia disputes, the Copenhagen climate summit blocked by Venezuela, Bolivia, Sudan, and Tuvalu, Chongryon in Tokyo, the National Endowment for Democracy, British Council, Alliance Française, Chavez’s heating-oil program with Joe Kennedy, the Cairns Group, ALBA, and minilateralism. Source anchors: March 28 2012, WikiLeaks cables, Brzezinski, Kindleberger, Poland veto, Tuvalu, Chongryon, minilateralism.

Analysis: March 28 2012 frames the question of whether China, India, or BRICS will replace the United States, but WikiLeaks cables and Brzezinski show even a hegemon obstructed from below and sideways. Poland, Tuvalu, and Lithuania turn institutional vetoes into leverage, while Chongryon and the National Endowment for Democracy perform diplomacy outside embassies. Minilateralism is Polycentric Order as a geopolitical response: smaller coalitions solve bounded problems through several centres because no hegemon can command a universal settlement.

Chapter Eight: Business as Unusual: Corporate Dominance Under Siege

Summary: Naím begins with old corporate oligopolies: the Seven Sisters in oil, the Big Five in accounting, the Big Three in cars, three television networks, and two computer companies. He then shows market power weakening through ExxonMobil, Shell, BP, ENI’s Paolo Scaroni, oil spot markets, futures, independents, state-owned oil companies, hedge funds, derivatives, shareholder activists, JPMorgan Chase, Bank of America, Citigroup, Wells Fargo, Goldman Sachs, Barclays, HSBC, Standard Chartered, Richard Branson’s Virgin Money, Craigslist, Google, Kodak, AIG’s $85 billion bailout, Bob Diamond at Barclays, and Jamie Dimon’s $6 billion JPMorgan loss. The chapter also tracks CEO turnover, Booz & Company data, Fortune 500 churn, Luxottica, De Beers, Intel, Monsanto, DuPont, Visa, MasterCard, Google search, Pankaj Ghemawat’s World 3.0, Hyundai, Twitter, KFC in China, Cinepolis in India, CEMEX, Anheuser-Busch InBev, ArcelorMittal, BATS, dark pools, KKR, TPG, TXU, George Soros, John Paulson, Amaranth, Bridgewater, and hedge funds as financial micropowers. Source anchors: Seven Sisters, Paolo Scaroni, JPMorgan Chase, Kodak, AIG bailout, Cinepolis, BATS, Bridgewater.

Analysis: Seven Sisters and Paolo Scaroni show that even concentrated industries have lost the old executive freedom to act without activists, traders, states, and media. Kodak, AIG, JPMorgan Chase, and Bob Diamond turn reputation and regulation into mechanisms that shorten corporate command, while Cinepolis, CEMEX, Anheuser-Busch InBev, and ArcelorMittal show firms from Mexico, Brazil, South Africa, and India moving into markets once reserved for rich-country incumbents. BATS, dark pools, Bridgewater, George Soros, and John Paulson matter because finance becomes Naím’s business analogue to piracy: small or obscure organizations can impose costs, move prices, and narrow the options of far larger banks and exchanges.

Chapter Nine: Hyper-Competition for Your Soul, Heart, and Brain

Summary: Chapter nine moves beyond states and firms into religion, labor, philanthropy, and media. In religion, Naím tracks Latin American Catholics falling from 80 percent to 71 percent between 1995 and 2005, Brazil’s Catholic population falling from 73.6 percent in 2000 to 64.6 percent in 2010, La Paz worshippers joining the New Pact Power of God Church, Azusa, Pentecostalism, prosperity gospel, Edir Macedo’s Universal Church of the Kingdom of God, Reborn in Christ, Bola de Neve, Nigeria’s Redeemed Christian Church of God, and Yusef al-Qaradawi on Al Jazeera. In labor, he follows the TUC, CGT, AFL, AFL-CIO, Ronald Reagan’s air-traffic-controller firing, Scott Walker in Wisconsin, SEIU’s growth to 2.1 million members under Andy Stern, Chinese Honda strikes, Foxconn, QQ.com, and the Los Angeles Garment Worker Center. In philanthropy and media, he adds Rockefeller, Carnegie, Ford, Gates, Giving Pledge, Kiva, GlobalGiving, Acumen Fund, Bono, Wyclef Jean’s Yéle Haiti, ProPublica, the Huffington Post, Nate Silver’s fivethirtyeight.com, Rupert Murdoch, Manuel Castells, Facebook’s 2012 IPO, and the Guardian’s Trafigura tweet by Alan Rusbridger. Source anchors: Edir Macedo, Bola de Neve, SEIU, Andy Stern, Kiva, Acumen Fund, Nate Silver, Trafigura.

Analysis: Edir Macedo, Bola de Neve, and the New Pact Power of God Church let Naím show religious power moving from Vatican-style hierarchy to storefront, televised, locally adaptive ministries. SEIU, Andy Stern, Chinese Honda workers, and the Garment Worker Center show labor power surviving where it changes tools, alliances, and scale instead of relying only on old industrial federations. Kiva, Acumen Fund, Nate Silver, the Huffington Post, ProPublica, and Trafigura show donors and journalists bypassing old intermediaries; the same lowered barriers that give believers, workers, donors, and readers more choice also make collective action harder to sustain.

Chapter Ten: The Decay of Power: Is the Glass Half-Full or Half-Empty?

Summary: Naím confronts the objection that governments, wealth, banks, oligarchs, media moguls, and the top 1 percent still look powerful. He answers with Vladimir Putin’s narrowed options, post-2008 bankers hit by Barclays rate-rigging, JPMorgan Chase trading losses, HSBC money laundering, Standard Chartered’s Iran dealings, Goldman Sachs insider-trading scandal, and debates about inequality from the United States to Europe, the Arab world, and China. He then lists the benefits of decaying power, including retreating authoritarianism, the Arab Spring, Tehran protests, Chinese online dissent, more parties, new business competitors, telephony competition, and fewer monopolies. The warning half of the chapter names Francis Fukuyama’s vetocracy, Peter Orszag’s proposals for automatic stabilizers and expert commissions, ruinous competition, the inverted U-curve, climate change, China and India emissions, nuclear proliferation, cyber-attack worms, slacktivism from Evgeny Morozov, Malcolm Gladwell’s critique, Émile Durkheim’s anomie, one-person American households rising from under 10 percent in 1950 to nearly 27 percent by 2010, and the Tea Party, far-right Europe, Osama bin Laden, Hugo Chavez, and nostalgia for Simon Bolivar or the Caliphate. Source anchors: Vladimir Putin, Barclays, HSBC, vetocracy, Peter Orszag, inverted U-curve, slacktivism, anomie.

Analysis: Putin, Barclays, HSBC, and JPMorgan Chase let Naím concede visible concentration while showing officeholders and executives facing stronger legal, market, and reputational limits. Vetocracy, Peter Orszag, and the inverted U-curve identify a State Capacity failure: restraints that prevent domination multiply until every actor can block and no institution can execute collective decisions on climate, finance, or infrastructure. Slacktivism and anomie deepen the problem by making participation cheap but sustained coordination scarce.

Chapter Eleven: Power Is Decaying: So What? What to Do?

Summary: The final chapter argues that people must change how they think and talk about power, starting by abandoning “elevator thinking,” the habit of asking only whether the United States, China, India, Russia, Brazil, Europe, a corporation, or a party is rising or falling. Naím cites Charles Kupchan’s “no one’s world,” Ian Bremmer’s “G-Zero,” Zbigniew Brzezinski’s post-hegemonic era, and the temptation to rank countries by GDP, landmass, population, military installations, and manufacturing prowess. He then warns against Jacob Burckhardt’s “terrible simplifiers,” naming toxic financial instruments, deficit promises without tax increases, François Hollande’s 75 percent tax, technology evangelists, Iraq “cakewalk” predictions, Al Qaeda, the Taliban, Hugo Chavez’s Bolivarian Revolution, and the US Tea Party. The chapter calls for rebuilding trust, reforming parties, learning from Occupy Wall Street and Al Qaeda as nonparty organizers, reversing the public decline of parties after the Cold War, increasing political participation, and encouraging political innovations that can handle the More, Mobility, and Mentality revolutions. Source anchors: elevator thinking, G-Zero, Brzezinski, terrible simplifiers, Hollande 75 percent, Iraq cakewalk, Occupy Wall Street, Al Qaeda.

Analysis: Elevator thinking and G-Zero let Naím reject a rankings-only view of power because the United States, China, Europe, and BRICS all face internal fragmentation as well as external rivals. The “terrible simplifiers,” Hollande’s 75 percent tax, Iraq cakewalk claims, Al Qaeda, Hugo Chavez, and the Tea Party show why easy stories become more dangerous when barriers to attention and organization are lower. Occupy Wall Street and Al Qaeda are deliberately uncomfortable examples for the party chapter: both show that disciplined or viral nonparty organization can mobilize people, so democratic parties must regain trust and competence instead of assuming their old monopoly over participation will return.