The more inclusive their political institutions, the more inclusive their economic institutions will be. Inclusive economic institutions economic policies that redistribute wealth and democratise the means of attaining wealth result in an empowered body politic. As the barriers to creative destruction are removed and property rights are protected, the invigorated population invents and invests.
Common forms are monopolies, slavery, serfdom, and feudalism. As wealth and power is concentrated, the ability of the holders of power to propagate and enforce these institutions increases. Elites, not accountable to the population, create and protect monopolies and resist any threats, such as creative destruction, to their supremacy. Policies that are inimical to the prosperity of the state are enacted. This enervates the population away from invention and investment, as the inevitable seizure of assets by the state make such pursuits abortive.
Acemoglu and Robinson employ a plethora of historical examples in support of their argument. These examples make up the bulk of pages. In citing the Western European example of why the industrial revolution occurred in England, they argue that the comparative weakness of the English crown, as compared to the Spanish and French crowns, led to the English crown having to cede powers to the parliament through the English civil war and Glorious Revolution.
Parliament, being a more inclusive institution than the alternative of absolutism of the divine right of kings, enacted policies that abolished monopolies, and granted and protected private property rights.
The mechanism through which this was assured, the authors argue, is that parliament was accountable to the people, and so people voted for a parliament that benefited the majority. The population then pursued invention and investments with surety, resulting in the industrial revolution. The first reaction to this argument is to point out the flaws in the theory lack of voting rights for women; only the wealthy, educated elite would vote or could get elected to parliament; susceptibility of people to rhetoric.
However, these flaws are not fatal if cognisant of the alternative, the absolutism of the crown. Robinson, takes as its sizable task a compelling account of what makes for a successful nation. The book opens with the case of the bisected town of Nogales, whose split halves lie in Arizona and Mexico respectively. In that regard, the great disparity in wealth and health between the two sides of Nogales makes for a powerful opening salvo, the first of a number to come. Acemoglu and Robinson summarize the large-scale structure of their argument at the end of this introductory jaunt through the history of the Americas:.
It is about the effects of institutions on the success and failure of nations — thus the economics of poverty and prosperity; it is also about how institutions are determined and change over time, and how they fail to change even when they create poverty and misery for millions — thus the politics of poverty and prosperity.
Over the course of the book, the authors largely execute this program as promised. Though at times the process of institutional development has been influenced by geography or disease ecology as our own academic research joint with Simon Johnson has documented , these are not the major factors shaping institutional variation today. But this does not mean that institutional dynamics are simply random; our book explains how institutional variation today is largely a systematic outcome of historical processes, and how these processes can be studied, revealing, for example, why Europe, the United States, and Australia are richer than the Middle East, Africa, and Latin America.
My review praised Daron Acemoglu and James Robinson for writing a wonderful book about the role of institutions in shaping why countries are rich or poor. But the reasons why those are indeed major factors are obvious and well known. Tropical diseases cause a skilled worker, who completes professional training by age thirty, to look forward to, on the average, just ten years of economic productivity in Zambia before dying at an average life span of around forty, but to be economically productive for thirty-five years until retiring at age sixty-five in the US, Europe, and Japan average life span around eighty.
Even while they are still alive, workers in the tropics are often sick and unable to work. Women in the tropics face big obstacles in entering the workforce, because of having to care for their sick babies, or being pregnant with or nursing babies to replace previous babies likely to die or already dead.
But characteristics of diamonds and oil notoriously promote corruption and civil wars more than do characteristics of iron and timber. Third, geography has had a big effect on modern prosperity through permitting local ancient origins of agriculture, in turn permitting sedentary life and social complexity. Acemoglu and Robinson misquote me in saying that I claim the Fertile Crescent to have been the only area where local agriculture could have arisen.
Of course not: instead, I cited agricultural historians who showed that the Fertile Crescent was the only such area in western Eurasia; my book Guns, Germs, and Steel discussed at length how local agriculture also arose in at least eight areas outside western Eurasia.
Although their letter describes institutional variation today as a systematic outcome of historical processes, much of their book is actually devoted to relating story after story purportedly explaining how institutional variation developed unsystematically and at random, as a result of particular events happening in particular places at critical junctures. Share your voice, join the debate. Thinking together for the Future of Europe.
Other News 17 Sep Live-streams - Multimedia 29 Jun This website uses cookies to improve your experience, click here for more info. Close Privacy Overview This website uses cookies to improve your experience while you navigate through the website.
Out of these cookies, the cookies that are categorized as necessary are stored on your browser as they are essential for the working of basic functionalities of the website. We also use third-party cookies that help us analyze and understand how you use this website. These cookies will be stored in your browser only with your consent. You also have the option to opt-out of these cookies.
But opting out of some of these cookies may have an effect on your browsing experience. Necessary Necessary.
0コメント