John Micklethwait is the Editor-in-Chief of the Economist; Adrian Wooldridge was its Washington bureau chief until 2009, and now serves as Management Editor and ‘Schumpter’ columnist. Together they authored “The Fourth Revolution: The Global Race to Reinvent the State.”

In The Fourth Revolution, they ask: what is the state actually for? Their book describes the three great revolutions in history which have brought about in turn the nation-state, the liberal state and the welfare state. In each, Europe and America have set the example. We are now, they argue, in the midst of a fourth revolution in the history of the nation-state, but this time the Western way is in danger of being left behind.

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