My resolution for 2012 is to restart the blogging I did on The American Interest’s web site, something I haven’t done since 2009. I stopped writing back then because I was in the process of drafting the first volume of The Origins of Political Order and didn’t have the time.
I’m now in the midst of thinking about Volume II of The Origins, which I hope to begin drafting in the coming year. (I recently realized that the manuscript is due on December 31, that is, today; it looks like I’m going to miss the deadline.) This volume will be much harder to write than Volume I: the former covered political development from prehuman primates up through the French Revolution, while the second will focus on the two centuries from the Revolution to the present. The latter period has fewer years, but has been the subject of much more analysis, and observers are much more opinionated about developments since then. It seems to me that restarting this blog will offer an opportunity to trot out some ideas from Volume II, which in any event corresponds to what I think about and research in my daily life: governance, the rule of law, democracy, and how all of them related to economic growth and ideas.
In addition, I might be able to slip in some comments on issues that really keep me up at night, like why digital is overrated and the status of the reconnaissance drone I’m building.