Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-mlc7c Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-05T14:24:19.321Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Rights to the Realm: Reconsidering Western Political Development

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 November 2015

ALEXANDER WILLIAM SALTER
ALEXANDER WILLIAM SALTER*
Affiliation:
Berry College
*
Alexander William Salter is Assistant Professor, Department of Economics, Rawls College of Business, Texas Tech University, 703 Flint Ave., Lubbock, TX 79424 ([email protected])
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

I explore how political property rights to revenues from governance relate to generality norms in governance. I do so by examining the rise of Western constitutional liberalism from the perspective of property rights economics and political economy. While it is true that Western political development has been the result of bargains between political elites (Congleton 2011), the implications of the fact that parties to these bargains historically were “owners of the realm” have been underappreciated. I argue the unintended consequence of these political bargains among “owners of the realm” was a de facto supermajority rule, approaching conceptual unanimity for those party to the bargains. In developing this argument I elaborate on the relationship between political and economic property rights, noting that while they were and will continue to be intertwined, there was a hierarchy of rights that became inverted over the course of elites’ constitutional bargains.

Type
Research Article
Information
American Political Science Review , Volume 109 , Issue 4 , November 2015 , pp. 725 - 734
Copyright
Copyright © American Political Science Association 2015 

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.)

References

REFERENCES

Acemoglu, Daron. 2003. Why Not a Political Coase Theorem? Social Conflict, Commitment, and Politics. Journal of Comparative Economics 31 (4): 620–52.Google Scholar
Acemoglu, Daron, and Robinson, James A.. 2005. The Economic Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Acemoglu, Daron, and Robinson, James A.. 2012. Why Nations Fail: The Origins of Power, Prosperity, and Poverty. New York: Crown Business.Google Scholar
Anderson, J. L. 1991. Explaining Long-Term Economic Change. London: Macmillan.Google Scholar
Anderson, Terry L. and Hill, P. J.. 2004. The Not So Wild, Wild West: Property Rights on the Frontier. Stanford: Stanford University Press.Google Scholar
Baechler, Jean. 1975. The Origins of Capitalism. Cooper, Barry, trans. Oxford: Basil Blackwell.Google Scholar
Beattie, David. 2004. Liechtenstein: A Modern History. Triesen: van Eck Publishers.Google Scholar
Benson, Bruce L. 2011 [1990]. The Enterprise of Law: Justice Without the State. Oakland: The Independent Institute.Google Scholar
Berman, Harold J. 1983. Law and Revolution: The Formation of the Western Legal Tradition. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Boettke, Peter J. 2012. Living Economics: Yesterday, Today, and Tomorrow. Oakland: Independent Institute.Google Scholar
Boettke, Peter J., Coyne, Christopher J., and Leeson, Peter T.. 2011. Quasimarket Failure. Public Choice 149 (1–2): 209–24.Google Scholar
Buchanan, James M. 1975. The Limits of Liberty: Between Anarchy and Leviathan. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Buchanan, James M., and Congleton, Roger D.. 1998. Politics by Principle, Not Interest: Toward Nondiscriminatory Democracy. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Buchanan, James M., and Tullock, Gordon. 1962. The Calculus of Consent: Logical Foundations of Constitutional Democracy. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press.Google Scholar
Congleton, Roger. 2011. Perfecting Parliament: Constitutional Reform, Liberalism, and the Rise of Western Democracy. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
de Jouvenel, Bertrand. 1993 [1945]. On Power: The Natural History of its Growth. Indianapolis: Liberty Fund.Google Scholar
de Jouvenel, Bertrand. 1997 [1957]. Sovereignty: An Inquiry into the Political Good.Google Scholar
Davidson, Christopher M. 2005. The United Arab Emirates: A Study in Survival. Boulder: Lynne Rienner Publishers.Google Scholar
Doucouliagos, Hristos and Ulubaşoğlu, Mehmet Ali. 2008. Democracy and Economic Growth: A Meta-Analysis. American Political Science Review 52 (1): 61–83.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Foldvary, Fred. 1994. Public Goods and Private Communities. Aldershot: Edward Elgar Google Scholar
Friedman, David. 1973. The Machinery of Freedom: A Guide to Radical Capitalism. Chicago: Open Court Publishing.Google Scholar
Friedman, David. 1979. Private Creation and Enforcement of Law: A Historical Case. Journal of Legal Studies 8 (2): 399–415.Google Scholar
Fukuyama, Francis. 1992. The End of History and the Last Man. New York: Free Press.Google Scholar
Herb, Michael. 1999. All in the Family: Absolutism, Revolution, and Democracy in the Middle Eastern Monarchies. Albany: State University of New York Press.Google Scholar
Herb, Michael. 2009. A Nation of Bureaucrats: Political Participation and Economic Diversification in Kuwait and the United Arab Emirates. International Journal of Middle East Studies 41 (3): 375–95.Google Scholar
Hoppe, Hans-Hermann. 2001. Democracy: The God that Failed. Rutgers: Transaction Publishers.Google Scholar
Kurrild-Klitgaard, Peter. 2000. The Constitutional Economics of Autocratic Succession. Public Choice 103 (1–2): 63–84.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kurrild-Klitgaard, Peter. 2003. Rational Bandits: Plunder, Public Goods, and the Vikings. Public Choice 117 (3–4): 255–272.Google Scholar
Leeson, Peter T. 2007. Anarchy, Monopoly, and Predation. Journal of Institutional and Theoretical Economics 163 (3): 467–82.Google Scholar
Leeson, Peter T. 2011. Government, Clubs, and Constitutions. Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization 80 (2): 301–8.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Leeson, Peter T. 2014. Anarchy Unbound: Why Self-Governance Works Better Than You Think. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Lence, Ross M., eds. 1992. Union and Liberty: The Political Philosophy of John C. Calhoun. Indianapolis: Liberty Fund.Google Scholar
Low, Linda. 2006. The Political Economy of a City-State Revisited. Singapore: Marshall Cavendish Academic.Google Scholar
Menger, Carl. 2007 [1871]. Principles of Economics. Auburn: Ludwig von Mises Institute.Google Scholar
Meltzer, Alan H., and Richard, Scott F.. 1981. A Rational Theory of the Size of Government. Journal of Political Economy 89 (5): 914–27.Google Scholar
North, Douglas C., Wallis, John Joseph, and Weingast, Barry R.. 2009. Violence and Social Orders: A Conceptual Framework for Reinterpreting Recorded Human History. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
O’Driscoll, Gerald P. Jr., and Rizzo, Mario J.. 2002 [1985]. The Economics of Time and Ignorance. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Olson, Mancur. 1993. Dictatorship, Democracy, and Development. American Political Science Review 87 (3): 567–76.Google Scholar
Ostrom, Vincent. 1997. The Meaning of Democracy and the Vulnerability of Democracy: A Response to Tocqueville's Challenge. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press.Google Scholar
Ostrom, Vincent. 2008a [1971]. The Political Theory of a Compound Republic: Designing the American Experiment. Plymouth: Lexington Books.Google Scholar
Ostrom, Vincent. 2008b [1973]. The Intellectual Crisis in American Public Administration. Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press.Google Scholar
Parisi, Francesco. 2003. Political Coase Theorem. Public Choice 115 (1–2): 1–36.Google Scholar
Popper, Karl. 1945. The Open Society and its Enemies. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Raico, Ralph. 1994. The Theory of Economic Development and the “European Miracle.” In The Collapse of Development Planning, Boettke, Peter J., ed. New York: New York University Press.Google Scholar
Rothbard, Murray N. 1982. The Ethics of Liberty. Atlantic Highlands: Humanities Press.Google Scholar
Salter, Alexander W. 2015. Calhoun's Concurrent Majority as a Generality Norm. Constitutional Political Economy 26 (3): 375–90.Google Scholar
Salter, Alexander W., and Hall, Abigail R.. 2014. Calculating Bandits: Quasi-Corporate Governance and Institutional Selection in Autocracies. http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2506028.Google Scholar
Salter, Alexander W., and Hebert, David J.. 2014. Tullock's Challenge: A Reconsideration of Constitutional Monarchy. Procesos de Mercado: Revista Europea de Economía Política, forthcoming. Available online at http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2462919.Google Scholar
Stark, Rodney. 2011. The Triumph of Christianity: How the Jesus Movement Became the World's Largest Religion. New York: HarperCollins.Google Scholar
Stringham, Edward P. 2006. Overlapping Jurisdictions, Proprietary Communities, and Competition in the Realm of Law. Journal of Institutional and Theoretical Economics 162 (3): 516–34.Google Scholar
Stringham, Edward P. 2007. Anarchy and the Law. Oakland: The Independent Institute.Google Scholar
Tiebout, Charles. 1956. A Pure Theory of Local Expenditures. Journal of Political Economy 64 (5): 416–24.Google Scholar
Tullock, Gordon. 2002. Undemocratic Governments. Kyklos 55 (2): 247–64.Google Scholar
Tullock, Gordon. 2005a. The Rent-Seeking Society. Indianapolis: Liberty Fund.Google Scholar
Tullock, Gordon. 2005b. The Social Dilemma: Of Autocracy, Revolution, Coup D’Etat, and War. Indianapolis: Liberty Fund.Google Scholar
Wagner, Richard E. 2007. Fiscal Sociology and the Theory of Public Finance. Cheltenham: Edward Elgar.Google Scholar
Wagner, Richard E. 2012a. The Cameralists: Fertile Sources for a New Science of Public Finance. In Handbook of the History of Economic Thought, ed. Backhaus, Juergen. New York: Springer, 123–35.Google Scholar
Wagner, Richard E. 2012b. Deficits, Debt,, and Democracy: Wrestling With the Tragedy of the Fiscal Commons. Cheltenham: Edward Elgar.Google Scholar
Wagner, Richard E. 2014. Entangled Political Economy: A Keynote Address. Advances in Austrian Economics 18: 15–36.Google Scholar
Wagner, Richard E. 2014. Politics as a Peculiar Business: Public Choice in a System of Entangled Political Economy. Forthcoming.Google Scholar
Wagner, Richard E., and Backhaus, Juergen. 1987. The Cameralists: A Public Choice Perspective. Public Choice 53 (1): 3–20.Google Scholar
Wicksell, Knut. 1958. A New Principle of Just Taxation. Reprinted in Classics in the Theory of Public Finance, eds. Musgrave, Richard A. and Peacock, Alan T.. New York: St. Martin's.Google Scholar
Wintrobe, Ronald. 1990. The Tinpot and the Totalitarian: An Economic Theory of Dictatorship. American Political Science Review 84 (3): 849–72.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
World Bank. 2001. Total Rewards for Civil Servants. Note prepared for the Public Sector Group of the PREM Network. Available online at http://www1.worldbank.org/publicsector/civilservice/Mayseminar/Mukherjee.pdf.Google Scholar
World Bank. 2014. World Development Indicators. (Accessed 18 January 2015) Available online at http://data.worldbank.org/data-catalog/world-development-indicators.Google Scholar
Submit a response

Comments

No Comments have been published for this article.