Quotes from Moisés Naím

Power has a social function.

A world where players have enough power to block everyone else's initiatives but no one has the power to impose its preferred course of action is a world where decisions are not taken, taken too late, or watered down to the point of ineffectiveness. Without

We know that power is shifting from brawn to brains, from north to south and west to east, from old corporate behemoths to agile start-ups, from entrenched dictators to people in town squares and cyberspace.

PROPENSITY OF THE YOUNG TO QUESTION AUTHORITY AND challenge power is now amplified by the More and Mobility revolutions. Not only are there more people than ever under thirty, but they have more—prepaid calling-cards, radios, TVs, cellphones, computers, and access to the Internet as well as to travel and communication possibilities with others like them at home and around the world. They are also more mobile than ever.

When people are more numerous and living fuller lives, they become more difficult to regiment and control.

He who is active in politics strives for power, either as a means in serving other ends, ideal or egoistic, or as 'power for power's sake,' that is, in order to enjoy the prestige-feeling that power gives.

Power is the ability to direct or privent the current or future actions of other groups and individuals.

The decay of power is changing the world.

power is easier to obtain and harder to use or even to keep.

Specifically it is about how power—the capacity to get others to do, or to stop doing, something—is undergoing a historic and world-changing transformation.

The key is this: When people are more numerous and living fuller lives, they become more difficult to regiment and control.

Today, we ask not what we can do for our country but what our country, employer, fast-food purveyor, or favorite airline can do for us.

enumeró las características fundamentales de las organizaciones burocráticas: puestos de trabajo específicos, con derechos, obligaciones, responsabilidades y límites a su autoridad, detallados y bien conocidos, así como un sistema claro de supervisión, subordinación y unidad de mando. Estas

Short-term travel has quadrupled: in 1980, the number of international tourist arrivals accounted for just 3.5 percent of the world's population, compared to almost 14 percent in 2010.16 Every year, an estimated 320 million people fly to attend professional meetings, conventions, and international gatherings—and their numbers are steadily growing.17

New information technologies are tools—and to have an impact, tools need users, who in turn need goals, direction, and motivation.

A world where players have enough power to block everyone else's initiatives but no one has the power to impose its preferred course of action is a world where decisions are not taken, taken too late, or watered down to the point of ineffectiveness.

It's virtually an axiom that teamwork across divisions of a ministry or police force is complicated by rivalries, turf battles, and competing personal and institutional interests.

As the historian William McNeill observed, "Innumerable bureaucratic structures that had previously acted more or less independently of one another in a context of market relationships coalesced into what amounted to a single national firm for waging war"—a process that played out in every combatant nation.18

es impresionante el poco consenso que existe sobre la orientación de los cambios en nuestro mundo y las previsibles amenazas, por no hablar de la escasez de ideas realistas acerca de cómo hacerles frente.

To put it simply, power no longer buys as much as it did in the past. In the twenty-first century, power is easier to get, harder to use—and easier to lose.

La idea tradicional de que es inevitable que las desigualdades económicas persistan e incluso empeoren hace que todos seamos, en cierto modo, marxistas.

Para él, quienes no lo apoyan, no son miembros de la oposición que confronta todo gobierno democrático, sino enemigos mortales que no tienen derecho a tener ningún rol político.

La clave es esta: cuando las personas son más numerosas y viven vidas más plenas, se vuelven más difíciles de regular, dominar y controlar. El

The decoupling of power from size, and thus the decoupling of the capacity to use power effectively from the control of a large Weberian bureaucracy, is changing the world. And this decoupling invites a disquieting thought: if the future of power lies in disruption and interference, not management and consolidation, can we expect ever to know stability again?