In their 2019 publication, The Narrow Corridor: States, Societies, and the Fate of Liberty, Daron Acemoglu and James Robinson outline a theoretical structure highlighting the need for society to perpetually strive for a power balance with the government. Utilizing a reference from Lewis Carroll’s Through the Looking-Glass, they summon the character of the Red Queen and her well-known warning — “You must run as fast as you can just to stay in the same place” — to depict a political environment where freedom survives only via a persistent struggle between a growing state and a watchful citizenry that monitors, opposes, and demands accountability.
This phenomenon is labeled the “Red Queen effect,” a mechanism that maintains societies inside what the authors term the “narrow corridor.” This is a delicate area where a potent but constrained state lives in tandem with an alert and structured society. Within this specific corridor, the government avoids turning into a tyranny, and the public refrains from tearing down the foundations of official authority.
The Red Queen effect highlights a straightforward but unsettling reality: liberty is not a permanent status or a certainty provided by constitutions, democratic elections, or visionary rulers. Instead, it is the product of a never-ending competition between government power and social power — a rivalry that compels both sides to constantly boost their capabilities to sustain a state of equilibrium. When the government advances too quickly, it moves toward despotism. Conversely, when society moves faster than the state without building accountable and effective institutions, public authority breaks down, leading to chaos or unofficial rule. Freedom persists only when the state and the public advance together at a similar rate within the narrow corridor, where the balance must be perpetually reconstructed rather than fixed.
Navigating Between the Despotic and Absent Leviathans
The core of Acemoglu and Robinson’s argument is the metaphor of the narrow corridor. On one side is the despotic Leviathan — a government with unrestricted power and a weak populace, resulting in authoritarian control. On the opposite side is the absent Leviathan — a situation where society limits the state so severely that public power dissolves into local territories, lawlessness, or horizontal systems of informal governance managed by local figures and traditional notables.
In this framework, the Red Queen effect is vital for staying inside the corridor. As the government boosts its administrative, coercive, or legal capacity, society must also become more organized and better at demanding transparency. The vital takeaway is that this balance is not a finalized deal or a milestone to be reached and ignored. It is a dynamic state of equilibrium that must be constantly tested, fixed, and re-established. A populace that becomes indifferent, believing it has reached a “good bargain” with those in power, will eventually lose that advantage. By its nature, the state tends to grow its influence whenever it faces no structured opposition.
The Red Queen in Literature: Running to Avoid Retreat
The Red Queen character first appeared in Lewis Carroll’s 1871 work Through the Looking-Glass, a piece of imaginative fiction chronicling Alice’s journey in Wonderland. In the story, Alice enters a fantasy realm dictated by chessboard logic. Starting as a minor piece trying to move forward, she meets the Red Queen, a dominant figure who governs through inflexible and strict regulations. While not traditionally evil, the Red Queen represents an authority that is both instructional and disciplinary. She details the laws of her domain and expects total compliance, as if power in this world convinces through correction and instruction rather than debate.
The Red Queen grabs Alice’s hand and forces her into a frantic run, until Alice discovers that despite her massive effort, she has not moved at all. It is then that the Queen speaks her famous line: “It takes all the running you can do to stay in the same place, and to get somewhere else you must run twice as fast.” This simple moment captures the logic of the Red Queen’s domain, where hard work is a requirement for survival rather than a prize for advancement. In the political sphere, the message is even more serious. When the elements that check power go to sleep, the system regresses rather than remaining stable.
A Perpetual Competition
A primary conclusion of The Narrow Corridor is that social mobilization and state-building do not happen in isolation or sequence; they evolve together. As the government increases its reach via regulation, law enforcement, bureaucracy, or surveillance, it may provide public services, but it also creates new dangers of oppression. Such expansions must trigger matching reactions from the public: stronger civic groups, independent courts, a free press, social movements, political parties, and norms that permit dissent and participation.
The Red Queen effect views this as a race without a finish line where neither side tries to win, but rather to maintain a balance. A state that moves faster than its society falls into autocracy, while a society that outpaces the state without building accountability mechanisms destroys public order, allowing informal power centers to rise. Consequently, the authors suggest the best political setup is a restrained Leviathan — a state powerful enough to lead but limited by social pressures that are constantly reinforced and renegotiated.
This perspective is grounded in realism. Institutions and laws do not manage themselves. Even the most intricate systems fail when citizens pull back from public life or view authority as a permanent reality. A strong government with no structured opposition will slowly broaden its reach, frequently using administrative or legal tools that seem neutral but steadily tighten control.
Just as dangerous is the opposite urge: to think freedom means the total weakening of the state. When social groups fracture authority without establishing accountable institutions, society exits the corridor in the other direction, resulting in coercive norms, insecurity, or constant instability. Therefore, the Red Queen effect dismisses both romantic distrust of the state and authoritarian trust in government power. Liberty relies on constant tension rather than harmony — a continuous push and pull that keeps the government effective without letting it escape its limits.
Historical records provide plenty of evidence for this. In China during the Warlord Era from 1916 to 1928, central power broke down into warring armed groups. In Russia during the 1990s, a fragile state allowed a grey economy and oligarchic networks to flourish, turning laws into special rights controlled by influence. Furthermore, in Somalia, following the 1991 collapse of the central government, clan-based systems took over.
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