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The Red Queen Effect

    The Red Queen effect refers to a situation where you have to keep on running just to maintain your position, like the state and society running fast to maintain the balance between them. In Carroll's book all that running was wasteful. Not so in the struggle of society against the Leviathan. If society slacks off and does not run fast enough to keep up with the state's growing power, the Shackled Leviathan can quickly turn into a despotic one. We need society's competition to keep the Leviathan in check, and the more powerful and capable the Leviathan is, the more powerful and vigilant society must become. We need the Leviathan to keep on running too, both to expand its capacity in the face of new and formidable chal- lenges and to maintain its autonomy, which is critical not only for resolving dis- putes and impartially enforcing laws but also for breaking down the cage of norms. This all sounds quite messy (all that running!), and that, we'll see, is often the case. Even though it's messy, we depend on the Red Queen for human prog- ress and for liberty. But the Red Queen herself creates lots of swings in the balance of power between state and society, as one party and then the other pulls ahead.


This graphic is meant to illustrate this race. Getting into the corridor is a game of chase between the power of the state and society. Keeping the balance is delicate act—one that no nation has perfected—which requires society to check the power of the state and the state to provide checks to society. 
They define the Red Queen as “The process of competition, struggle and cooperation between state and society”.

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