Skip to main content Accessibility help
×
Hostname: page-component-7c8c6479df-8mjnm Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-03-18T23:26:41.542Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

3 - State and private institutions

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 August 2012

Stephen Broadberry
Affiliation:
University of Warwick
Kevin H. O'Rourke
Affiliation:
Trinity College, Dublin
Get access

Summary

Economic growth depends upon institutions (rules that constrain human behavior and their enforcement mechanisms: North, 1981; Greif, 2006). Some of these rules arise by means of a public process, while others are privately adopted; some are explicit (written down as laws or contracts) and others implicit. Their enforcement can rely on public coercion, private third parties, or even reputation. We focus here on those institutions that are formal and publicly enforced. This is not because informal institutions waned with modernization, but rather because the formal institutions were the ones that underwent the most dramatic transformation during the period we are considering. Many polities adopted written constitutions and formal legislative organizations, and recast their laws. Even Britain, where no formal constitution was set down, saw electoral reform and an explosion of legislative activity.

Economic historians have long emphasized the role of institutions in ensuring prosperity; after a hiatus, development economics has come to similar conclusions (see, e.g., Acemoglu et al., 2001; Engerman and Sokoloff, 1997; Banerjee and Iyer, 2005). Scholars have particularly highlighted the benefits of secure property rights. In this light, England's early economic leadership sprang from the Glorious Revolution's institutional settlement (North and Weingast, 1989). The great variety of political and economic, public and private institutions that prevailed in Europe offers tempting ground for testing this largely inductive argument based on Britain. Although the variation in institutions is extensive, and well documented in the archival record, it raises its own problems: institutions, archaic or modern, are chosen.

Type
Chapter
Information
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2010

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure coreplatform@cambridge.org is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×