The more elderly among The Spectator’s readership, who still secretly mourn the loss of Nyasaland and the Aden protectorate, may be pleased to hear that a small step was taken last month towards reversing the Empire’s inexorable decline. More surprising still, the idea behind this expansion comes from an American economist and the flag raised will be not the red ensign but the maple leaf. But it’s a start.
The original proposal (mentioned here three years ago) is to create ‘charter cities’ in the developing world where the institutions, infrastructure and government are not those of the surrounding nation but are imported wholesale from somewhere else. City-states whose success supports this approach might include Hong Kong, Macau or Singapore; earlier precedents are found among the Baltic cities of the Hanseatic League. The state of Pennsylvania was granted to William Penn under a similar ‘charter’ arrangement.
Why reinvent the city-state? Paul Romer, the economist behind the idea, simply observed that, in trying to change the world you needed to start somewhere — a village was too small and a nation state too big.
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