The Peterson Foundation calculates that, since 2010…

“The desire to control everything is giving way to pluralism, uniformity to diversity, centralization to localism, opacity to transparency, and immobilisme, or the resistance…

— John Micklethwait

“If the United States sinks into political paralysis, its epitaph could well be, “government of the people, by the people, for the people.”

— John Micklethwait

“Not many people in Washington are thinking beyond the 2016 presidential election. It is sometimes argued that an American administration operates strategically for only…

— John Micklethwait

“If the eurozone collapses, its epitaph should be the words of Jean-Claude Juncker, the former prime minister of Luxembourg, in 2007: “We all know…

— John Micklethwait

“there is some evidence that governments are getting even more sluggish. It took America four years to build the Golden Gate Bridge, starting in…

— John Micklethwait

“The British general election of 2010 returned only three MPs to the Commons who described their professions as “science or research” (compared with thirty-eight barristers).”

— John Micklethwait

“George Bernard Shaw once quipped that politicians can always rely on Paul’s vote if they give him money that they steal from Peter. This…

— John Micklethwait

“We live and do business in the Information Age,” Barack Obama once complained, “but the last major reorganization of the government happened in the…

— John Micklethwait

“This is only the beginning of a huge “Copernican revolution” (to borrow a phrase from Matthew Taylor, one of Tony Blair’s advisers) that is…

— John Micklethwait

“So in both the West and the emerging world the state is in trouble. The mystery is why so many people assume that radical…

— John Micklethwait

“the “compendium of learning” set in motion by the Ming Emperor Yongle (1360–1424), which drew on the talents of more than two thousand scholars…

— John Micklethwait

“Vagueness about numbers is a curse of the public sector. In the worst cases it borders on the criminal. Challenged to find one reliable…

— John Micklethwait

“Berlusconi is us,” as Luigi Zingales of the University of Chicago puts it.”

— John Micklethwait

“There are thirty-two closed-circuit television cameras near the flat where George Orwell wrote 1984. The night watchman standing guard at the gate has become…

— John Micklethwait

“Transparency was a guardian of frugality, just as confusion had been a handmaiden of extravagance.”

— John Micklethwait