Governments Long Established
Medieval European traditions in representation and state capacity today
Jamie Bologna Pavlik & Andrew Young
Economics of Governance, June 2020, Pages 133-186
Abstract:
Rich economies are characterized by the coincidence of, on the one hand, high state capacity and, on the other, well-functioning markets and the rule of law. They have states that are powerful and centralized and yet also limited. Furthermore, relatively low rates of shadow economic activity and tax evasion suggest that citizens perceive their states’ limitations to be credible. This suggests that a state’s ability to be credibly limited may facilitate its investments in state capacity. Consistent with this, we explore the potential link between historical traditions of representative governance institutions and state capacity today. We report that medieval and early modern representative assembly experiences positively correlate with higher tax revenues, smaller shadow economies, greater state control of violence and yet fewer state resources dedicated to violence. Relative to tax revenues, the evidence regarding shadow economies and violence is more robust to various controls and samples.
Colonial Military Garrisons as Labor‐Market Shocks: Quebec City and Boston, 1760-1775
Jeremy Land & Vincent Geloso
Social Science Quarterly, forthcoming
Abstract:
The military occupation of Boston in 1768 shocked the city's labor market. The soldiers, who were expected to supplement their pay by working for local businesses, constituted an influx equal to 12.5 percent of greater Boston's population. To assess the importance of this shock, we use the case of Quebec City, which experienced the reverse process (i.e., a reduction in the British military presence from close to 18 percent of the region's population to less than 1 percent). We argue that, in Boston, the combination of the large influx of soldiers and a heavy tax on the local population in the form of the billeting system caused an important wage reduction, while the lighter billeting system of Quebec City and the winding down of the garrison pushed wages up. We tie these experiences to political developments in the 1770s.
The Political Economy of Feudalism in Medieval Europe
Andrew Young
Texas Tech University Working Paper, April 2020
Abstract:
Why did enduring traditions of economic and political liberty arise in Western Europe? An answer to this question must be sought at the constitutional level. Within the medieval constitutional order, traditions of representative and limited government developed through patterns of constitutional bargaining. The politically fragmented landscape that emerged following the decline of the Western Roman Empire and the barbarian migrations was conducive to those patterns. In particular, that landscape was characterized by polycentric and hierarchical governance structures; within those structures, political property rights holders were sovereign and residual claimants to governance returns. I elaborate on why this environment of polycentric sovereignty promoted constitutional bargaining in the direction of good governance and greater liberty.
War, Trade, and the Roots of Representative Governance
Gary Cox, Mark Dincecco & Massimiliano Gaetano Onorato
Stanford Working Paper, June 2020
Abstract:
We argue that the two most important representative institutions invented in medieval Europe - communes and parliaments - emerged when merchants’ bid prices for urban governance rights exceeded both the monarch’s ask price and competing bids from local lords. The main factors driving ask prices down were political fragmentation (worsening the monarch’s bargaining position) and warfare (increasing the monarch’s demand for ready money). The main factor driving merchants’ bid prices up was the Commercial Revolution, which raised the costs they bore when nobles won the urban tax farm. Exploiting two new datasets, our empirical analyses focus on how war and trade combined to motivate the formation first of communes and then of parliaments.
The Mainstreaming of Marx: Measuring the Effect of the Russian Revolution on Karl Marx’s Influence
Phillip Magness & Michael Makovi
Texas Tech University Working Paper, May 2020
Abstract:
Today, Karl Marx is considered one of the preeminent social scientists of the last two centuries, and ranks among the most frequently assigned authors in university syllabi. However in Marx’s time, many competing sociological traditions and socialist political movements espoused similar ideas from different origin points. How did Marx emerge as preeminent? We hypothesize that the 1917 Russian Revolution is responsible for elevating Marx’s fame and intellectual following above his contemporary competitors. Using the synthetic control method and Google Ngram data, we construct a synthetic counterfactual for Marx’s citation patterns. This allows us to predict how often Marx would have been cited if the Russian Revolution had not happened. We find a significant treatment effect, meaning that Marx’s intellectual influence may be partly due to political accidents.