Our theory can explain why governments do not define and enforce property rights. The political history of Afghanistan illustrates the persistence of non-emergence of legal property rights. We also seek to explain why the Hobbesian account of the world in which there can be no sense of justice and no concept of property without a state is mistaken. According to our theory, self-governance would substitute for the state as a source of property rights when organizations have local monopolies, when they possess the capacity to resolve conflicts over land disputes, when their key decision makers face constraints, and when the institutions for local collective action are inclusive. Chapter 5 investigates this claim. Using original evidence from fieldwork, we show that self-governance of property works well in rural Afghanistan because customary governance satisfies the above criteria. Our theory can also explain why the formal property regime remains ineffective nearly two decades after state building commenced in 2001. Importantly, the property institutions in rural Afghanistan are typically private property rights, not unlike property rights in Western contexts. The difference is that customary private property rights in Afghanistan are effective despite not having any legal recognition.

Chapter 6 considers self-governance of two important types of commons: water and forests. The mirab, or water manager, is a person who works on behalf of a group of communities to ensure members across villages have access to irrigation water. Forest shuras govern use and access to forests. Mirabs and forest shuras are often effective in governing commons, for reasons our theory predicts, but are vulnerable to outside threats that cannot be collectively countered by the community: irrigation infrastructure has often been destroyed during conflict and is too costly for communities to provide, and the Taliban, commanders, or warlords are often able to extract forest resources by force. Thus, our conclusion is that foreign aid and other government assistance should focus on threats from the outside while leaving daily management of the commons to communities. Our analysis thus extends the insights of Elinor Ostrom, who understood well the possibility of self-governance of property, to self-governance in especially fragile, war-ravaged states such as Afghanistan. In such contexts, war – and organizations that come about during war – can be a great destabilizing force for governance of the commons.

In Chapter 3, we consider property rights in Afghanistan from the formation of the Afghan state in 1747 through 1901, when Abdur Rahman, one of Afghanistan’s most ruthless kings, died. The Afghan state during its first century was fragmented and marred by frequent political conflict. Nonetheless, its political arrangement, which we call a de facto federation because it dispersed political power in practice but not formally, provided a political foundation for the emergence of land-use rights and vibrant trading routes. The situation was not unlike England’s de facto federation that enabled the rise of markets after the Glorious Revolution, one in which the fragmentation of political power at the national level and the rise of towns contributed to a political environment in which institutions were allowed to change in response citizens’ needs. Unlike in England, where wealth-creating economic institutions strengthened over time, these productive institutional developments in Afghanistan were reversed at the conclusion of the nineteenth century as Abdur Rahman began to consolidate political power. Our theory can explain why: because coercive and administrative capacity occurred alongside the dismantling of political constraints, consolidation of political power resulted in the destruction of private property rights and trading routes.

According to its advocates, legal titling promises to improve investment (both public and private) and prospects for political order. A persistent puzzle is why its actual impact is often ambiguous or even harmful. Our theory suggests the answer lies in the qualities relating to government: when the state enjoys a monopoly on coercion and administrative capacity, when political decision makers face constraints, and when there are inclusive institutions linking communities to the state, legal titling can improve economic and political well-being. Since these political preconditions for successful legal titling are likely to be absent in conflict-affected states, it is unlikely that legal titling will be effective in such states. The evidence from Afghanistan supports our theory. The legal-titling projects in the country have not worked well, for the reasons just listed. Yet community-based recording of landownership – donor-assisted, community-initiated programs that partner with communities, not the state, to document who owns what land, buildings, and commons – have improved household land-tenure security. These community-based programs illustrate how working with customary governance institutions improves the impact of development assistance.

Chapter 8 concludes the book with a substantive discussion of a key puzzle in the comparative politics and political economy literature: Is property security a cause or consequence of political order? Much of the property rights literature views the creation of legal rights as a solution to what ails society, such as underinvestment, both public and private. Investment, in turn, is understood to be likely to result in prosperity and eventually political order. In our conclusion, we argue that it makes more sense to conceptualize political order and political institutions that limit the scope of government as a cause rather than consequence of property security. This conclusion does not deny the possibility of self-governance. But it does mean that the creation of legal rights requires that we think clearly about features of the state. The straightforward implication of our analysis is that the domestic and international policymakers should scale back land titling, relying instead on communities until there is progress in establishing robust, inclusive political institutions at higher levels of government.

The rise in social inequality and the emergence of the new nationalism place us in a new world. The postwar system of social cohesion is gone; the potential for new disruptions to capitalism has grown. So we write this chapter with a good deal of fear and trembling for two reasons. First, the capacities of many advanced capitalist states to effectively manage their economies continue to diminish.

Although France was one of the founding members of the European Economic Community, the potential benefits of membership of an integrated European economy divided opinion from the outset. On two occasions, in 1992 and 2005, the French public was consulted directly in a referendum on proposals to deepen integration through treaty changes. The first referendum was held on 20 September 1992 on the question of completing the single market and preparing for monetary union (EMU) under the Treaty of Maastricht. On that occasion, on a large turnout of 69.7 per cent, a narrow majority (51 per cent) voted in favour. The second referendum, on the question of ratification of a constitution for the European Union (EU), was held on 29 May 2005. On a similarly large turnout of 69.4 per cent, 54.7 per cent voted against. All other treaties starting with the Treaty of Paris setting up the European Coal and Steel Community (ECSC) signed on 18 April 1951 were approved by a majority in Parliament.

Attempts by historians to separate the effects of European integration from all the other factors influencing the performance of the economies of member states since 1951, and to quantify them, have proved to be very difficult indeed. While it is not possible in a short chapter to analyse the full range of issues that membership of the EEC/EU has involved for the French economy, the aim of this chapter is to summarize some of the most significant ones. These are: the European Coal and Steel Community (ECSC); the European Economic Community (EEC) and its com-mon agricultural policy (CAP); the European Single Market; and the Economic and Monetary Union (EMU).

THE EUROPEAN COAL AND STEEL COMMUNITY

The proposal in May 1950 to place the coal and steel industries of France and the Federal Republic of Germany under the supervision and control of a common High Authority was a French initiative designed to achieve two main objectives. The first was to maintain the consensus within France that the Monnet Plan had achieved, while the second was to build a positive relationship with the new Federal Republic of Germany.