Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-hc48f Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-23T06:07:10.142Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Ideas, leaders, and institutions in 19th-century Chile

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  21 February 2018

JUAN PABLO COUYOUMDJIAN  and
CRISTIÁN LARROULET
JUAN PABLO COUYOUMDJIAN*
Affiliation:
Facultad de Economía y Negocios & Facultad de Gobierno, Universidad del Desarrollo, Santiago, Chile
CRISTIÁN LARROULET*
Affiliation:
Facultad de Economía y Negocios, Universidad del Desarrollo, Santiago, Chile
*
*Email: [email protected]
**Email: [email protected]
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Institutions matter for economic growth. Thus, the leaders who help to develop institutions, and their ideas and beliefs, must play a central role in any narrative that seeks to explain such growth. This leads to the appearance of institutional entrepreneurs, who act in a given cultural and political environment. We focus on the problem of state building, where formal institutions designed by leaders must be consistent with a given society's existing informal institutions. We consider an analytical narrative focusing on the Chilean experience in the 19th century. This serves as an interesting quasi-natural experiment on the role of ideas, leaders, and institutions in the problem of economic growth and development.

Type
Research Article
Information
Journal of Institutional Economics , Volume 14 , Issue 5 , October 2018 , pp. 925 - 947
Copyright
Copyright © Millennium Economics Ltd 2018 

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

Acemoglu, D. and Robinson, J. A. (2012), Why Nations Fail. The Origins of Power, Prosperity, and Poverty, New York, NY: Crown Business.Google Scholar
Acemoglu, D., Gallego, F., and Robinson, J. A. (2014), “Institutions, Human Capital, and Development”, Annual Review of Economics, 6: 875–912.Google Scholar
Alberdi, J. B. (1852), Bases: y puntos de partida para la organización política de la República Argentina, Valparaíso: Imprenta del Mercurio.Google Scholar
Alesina, A. and Giuliano, P. (2015), “Culture and Institutions”, Journal of Economic Literature, 53 (4): 898–944.Google Scholar
Alesina, A., Easterly, W., and Matuszeski, J. (2011), “Artificial States”, Journal of the European Economic Association, 9 (2): 246–77.Google Scholar
Alston, L. J. (2008), “The ‘Case’ for Case Studies in New Institutional Economics,” in Brousseau, E. and Glachant, J.-M. (eds.), New Institutional Economics: A Guidebook, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 103–21.Google Scholar
Alston, L. J., Melo, M. A., Mueller, B., and Pereira, C. (2016), Brazil in Transition: Beliefs, Leadership, and Institutional Change, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Bates, R. H., Greif, A., Levi, M., Rosenthal, J.-L., and Weingast, B. R. (1998), Analytic Narratives, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Baumol, W. J., Litan, R. E., and Schramm, C. J. (2007), Good Capitalism, Bad Capitalism and the Economics of Growth and Prosperity, New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.Google Scholar
Beck, T. and Levine, R. (2005), “Legal Institutions and Financial Development,” in Ménard, C. and Shirley, M. (eds.), Handbook of New Institutional Economics, Berlin: Springer, pp. 251–78.Google Scholar
Bello, A. [1833](1981), “Reformas a la Constitución,” in Obras Completas de Andrés Bello, Caracas: Fundación La Casa de Bello (Vol. 18), pp. 85–92.Google Scholar
Bello, A. [1836](1981), “Observancia de las leyes,” in Obras Completas de Andrés Bello, Caracas: Fundación La Casa de Bello (Vol. 18), pp. 50–65.Google Scholar
Bernedo, P., Camus, P., and Couyoumdjian, R. (2014), 200 años del Ministerio de Hacienda de la República de Chile, Santiago: Ministerio de Hacienda.Google Scholar
Besley, T. and Persson, T. (2009), “The Origins of State Capacity: Property Rights, Taxation, and Politics,” American Economic Review, 99 (4): 1218–44.Google Scholar
Besley, T. and Persson, T. (2011), Pillars of Prosperity: The Political Economics of Development Clusters, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Bisin, A. and Verdier, T. (2010), “The Economics of Cultural Transmission and Socialization,” in Benhabib, J., Bisin, A., and Jackson, M. (eds.), Handbook of Social Economics (Vol. 1A), North Holland: Elsevier, pp. 339–416.Google Scholar
Boettke, P. J., Coyne, C., and Leeson, P. T. (2008), “Institutional Stickiness and the New Development Economics,” American Journal of Economics and Sociology, 67 (2): 331–58.Google Scholar
Botana, N. R. (1997), La tradición republicana. Alberdi, Sarmiento y las ideas políticas de su tiempo, Buenos Aires: Sudamericana.Google Scholar
Brahm, E. (2007), Mariano Egaña: derecho y política en la fundación de la república conservadora, Santiago: Ediciones Centro de Estudio Bicentenario.Google Scholar
Bryce, J. (1912), South America, Observations and Impressions, New York, NY: Macmillan.Google Scholar
Bunzl, M. (2004), “Counterfactual History: A User's Guide,” American Historical Review, 109 (3): 845–58.Google Scholar
Carlyle, T. (1966), On Heroes, Hero Worship and the Heroic in History, Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press.Google Scholar
Cavieres, E. (1988), Comercio chileno y comerciantes ingleses 1820–1880: un ciclo de historia económica, Valparaíso: Universidad Católica de Valparaíso, Instituto de Historia.Google Scholar
Centeno, M. A. (2002), Blood and Debt: War and the Nation-State Latin America, University Park, PA: Penn State University Press.Google Scholar
Centeno, M. A. and Ferraro, A. (eds.) (2013), State and Nation Making in Latin America and Spain. Republics of the Possible, New York, NY: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Chile (1833), Constitución de la República de Chile. Jurada y promulgada el 25 de mayo de 1833, Santiago: Imprenta de la Opinión.Google Scholar
Collier, S. (1993), “From Independence to the War of the Pacific,” in Bethell, L. (ed.), Chile since Independence, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 1–32.Google Scholar
Collier, S. (2003), Chile: The Making of a Republic, 1830–1865: Politics and Ideas, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Collier, S. and Sater, W. F. (1996), A History of Chile, 1808–1994, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Cordero Quinzacara, E. (2006), “La dogmática constitucional de la propiedad en el derecho chileno,” Revista de Derecho, 19 (1): 125–48.Google Scholar
Couyoumdjian, J. R. (1989), “Portales y las transformaciones económicas de Chile en su época: una aproximación,” in Lira, B. Bravo, Portales, el hombre y su obra: la consolidación del gobierno civil, Santiago: Ed. Andrés Bello, pp. 243–80.Google Scholar
Couyoumdjian, J.R, Millar, R., and Tocornal, J. (1993), Historia de la Bolsa de Comercio de Santiago 1893–1993: Un siglo del mercado de valores de Chile, Santiago: Bolsa de Comercio de Santiago.Google Scholar
Couyoumdjian, J. P. (2012), “Are Institutional Transplants Viable? An examination in light of the proposals by Jeremy Bentham,” Journal of Institutional Economics, 8 (4): 489–509.Google Scholar
Couyoumdjian, J. P. (2015), “Importando modernidad: La evolución del pensamiento económico en Chile en el siglo XIX,” Revista Historia, 48 (1): 43–75.Google Scholar
Couyoumdjian, J. P. (2008), “Hiring a Foreign Expert: Chile in the Nineteenth Century,” in Peart, S. J. and Levy, D. M. (eds.), The Street Porter and the Philosopher: Conversations on Analytical Egalitarianism, Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, pp. 289–316.Google Scholar
Dean, W. (1970), “Latin American Golpes and Economic Fluctuations, 1823–1966,” Social Science Quarterly, 51 (1): 70–80.Google Scholar
Deas, M. (1982), “The Fiscal Problems of Nineteenth-Century Colombia,” Journal of Latin American Studies, 14 (2): 287–328.Google Scholar
Diamond, J. and Robinson, J. A. (eds.)(2011), Natural Experiments of History, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Dunning, T. (2012), Natural Experiments in the Social Sciences. A Design-Based Approach, New York, NY: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Dye, A. (2006), “The Institutional Framework,” in Bulmer-Thomas, V., Coatsworth, J., and Cortes-Conde, R. (eds.), The Cambridge Economic History of Latin America (Vol. 2), New York, NY: Cambridge University Press, pp. 167–208.Google Scholar
Egaña, M. (1948), Cartas de Don Mariano Egaña a su padre: 1824–1829, Santiago: Sociedad de Bibliófilos Chilenos.Google Scholar
Eggertsson, T. (2005), Imperfect Institutions: Possibilities and Limits of Reform, Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press.Google Scholar
Elkins, Z., Ginsburg, T., and Melton, J. (2014), “Characteristics of National Constitutions, Version 2.0,” Comparative Constitutions Project (Last modified: April 18, 2014), available at: http://www.comparativeconstitutionsproject.org (accessed January 15, 2018).Google Scholar
Escobar, B. (2014), “The Doctrines and the Making of an Early Patent System in the Developing World: the Chilean Case. 1840s-1910s,” Documento de Trabajo 58, Facultad de Economía y Empresa, Universidad Diego Portales.Google Scholar
Estefane, A. (2012), “Enumerar lo que se gobierna. La producción del Anuario Estadístico de la República de Chile,” in Anuario Estadístico de la República de Chile: Estudios sobre territorio y población, Santiago: Cámara Chilena de la Construcción, Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile and Dirección de Bibliotecas Archivos y Museos, pp. ix–lxi.Google Scholar
Fearon, J. (1991), “Counterfactuals and Hypothesis Testing in Political Science,” World Politics, 43 (2): 169–95.Google Scholar
Fogel, R. W. (1967), “The Specification Problem in Economic History,” Journal of Economic History, 27 (3): 283–308.Google Scholar
Glaeser, E., La Porta, R., de Silanes, F. Lopez and Shleifer, A. (2004), “Do Institutions Cause Growth?” Journal of Economic Growth, 9 (3): 271–303.Google Scholar
Greif, A. (2006), Institutions and the Path to the Modern Economy. Lessons from Medieval Trade, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Hall, P. A. (1993). “Policy Paradigms, Social Learning and the State: The Case of Economic Policy-Making in Britain,” Comparative Politics, 52 (3): 275–96.Google Scholar
Halperín Donghi, T. (1973), The Aftermath of Revolution in Latin America, translated from the Spanish by de Bunsen, J., New York, NY: Harper & Row.Google Scholar
Halperín Donghi, T. (1993), The Contemporary History of Latin America, edited and translated by Chasteen, J. C., Durham, NC: Duke University Press.Google Scholar
Hodgson, G. (2015), Conceptualizing Capitalism. Institutions, Evolution, Future, Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Hume, D. [1777](1987), “Of the Rise and Progress of the Arts and Sciences,” in his Essays, Moral, Political and Literary, Indianapolis, IN: Liberty Fund, pp. 111–37.Google Scholar
Islas, G. (2013), “Does Regulation Matter? An Analysis of Corporate Charters in a Laissez-Faire Environment,” Revista de Historia Económica – Journal of Iberian and Latin American Economic History, 31 (1): 11–39.Google Scholar
Jaksic, I. (2001), Andrés Bello: La pasión por el orden, Santiago: Editorial Universitaria.Google Scholar
Jaksic, I. and Serrano, S. (2010), “El gobierno y las libertades. La ruta del liberalismo chileno en el siglo XIX,” Estudios Públicos, 118: 69–105.Google Scholar
Langlois, R. (2016), “Institutions for getting out of the way,” Journal of Institutional Economics, 12 (1): 53–61.Google Scholar
Larroulet, C. and Couyoumdjian, J. P. (2017), “Emprendedores y Desarrollo. Chile en el siglo XIX,” Unpublished manuscript, Universidad del Desarrollo.Google Scholar
Lastarria, J. V. (1896), Don Diego Portales. Juicio histórico, Santiago: Imprenta y oficina de La Democracia.Google Scholar
Leighton, W. and López, E. J. (2012), Madmen, Intellectuals, & Academic Scribblers, Palo Alto, CA: Stanford University Press.Google Scholar
Letelier, V. (1901), La gran convención de 1831–1833: recopilación de las actas, sesiones, discursos, proyectos y artículos de diarios a la Constitución de 1833, Santiago: Impr. Cervantes.Google Scholar
López Taverne, E. (2014), El proceso de construcción estatal en Chile. Hacienda pública y burocracia (1817–1860), Santiago: DIBAM, Centro de Investigaciones Diego Barros Arana.Google Scholar
Loveman, B. (1993), The Constitution of Tyranny: Regimes of Exception in Spanish America, Pittsburgh, PA: University of Pittsburgh Press.Google Scholar
Lüders, R. (1998), “The comparative economic performance of Chile: 1810–1995,” Estudios de Economía, 95 (2): 217–49.Google Scholar
McCloskey, D. (2010), Bourgeois Dignity. Why Economics Can't Explain the Modern World, Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Mellafe, R. (1952), “Reseña de la historia censal del país,” in XII Censo General de Población y I de Vivienda. Levantado el 24 de abril de 1952, Santiago: Servicio Nacional de Estadísticas y Censos (vol. I), pp. 11–33.Google Scholar
Mirow, M. C. (2000), “The Power of Codification in Latin America: Simón Bolívar and the Code Napoléon,” Tulane Journal of International & Comparative Law, 8: 83–116.Google Scholar
Mokyr, J. (2016), A Culture of Growth: The Origins of the Modern Economy, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Monsalve, M. (1998), “I el silencio comenzó a reinar”: Documentos para la historia de la instrucción primaria 1840–1920, Santiago: Centro de Investigaciones Diego Barros Arana, DIBAM and Universidad Católica Blas Cañas.Google Scholar
Nazer, R. (2000), “El surgimiento de una nueva élite empresarial en Chile: 1830–80,” in Bonelli, F. and Stabili, M. R. (eds.), Minozare e Cultura Imprenditoriali: Cile e Italia (secoli XIX-XX), Rome: Ed. Carocci, pp. 59–84.Google Scholar
Newland, C. (1991), “La educación elemental en Hispanoamérica: Desde la independencia hasta la centralización de los sistemas educativos nacionales,” Hispanic American Historical Review, 71 (2): 335–64.Google Scholar
North, D. C. (1981), Structure and Change in Economic History, New York, NY: W.W. Norton.Google Scholar
North, D. C. (2005), Understanding the Process of Economic Change, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
North, D. C., Summerhill, W. and Weingast, B. R. (2000), “Order, Disorder and Economic Change: Latin America vs. North America,” in de Mesquita, B. Bueno and Root, H. L. (eds.), Governing for Prosperity, New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, pp. 17–58.Google Scholar
North, D. C., Wallis, J. J., and Weingast, B. R. (2009), Violence and Social Orders: A Conceptual Framework for Interpreting Recorded Human History, New York, NY: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Oppenheimer, R. (1982), “National Capital and National Development: Financing Chile's Central Valley Railroads,” Business History Review, 56 (1): 54–75.Google Scholar
Ortega, L. (2005), Chile en ruta al capitalismo. Cambio, euforia y depresión. 1850–1880, Santiago: DIBAM, LOM Ediciones.Google Scholar
Parente, S. and Prescott, E. C. (2006), “What a Country Must Do to Catch-Up to the Industrial Leaders,” in, Balcerowicz, L. and Fischer, S. (eds.), Living Standards and The Wealth of Nations: Successes and Failures in Real Convergence, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, pp. 17–40.Google Scholar
Portales, D. (1936–8), Epistolario de don Diego Portales: 1821–1837. Recopilación y notas de Ernesto de la Cruz; con un prólogo y nuevas cartas, algunas recopiladas y anotadas, por Guillermo Feliú Cruz, Santiago: Dirección General de Prisiones.Google Scholar
Prados de la Escosura, L. (2007), “Inequality and poverty in Latin America: a long-run exploration,” in Hatton, T. J., O'Rourke, K. H., and Taylor, A. M. (eds.), The New Comparative Economic History, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, pp. 291–315.Google Scholar
Rajan, R. G. and Zingales, L. (1998), “Financial Dependence and Growth,” American Economic Review, 88 (3): 559–86.Google Scholar
Riker, W. H. (1984), “The Heresthetics of Constitution-Making: The Presidency in 1787, with Comments on Determinism and Rational Choice,” American Political Science Review, 78 (1): 1–16.Google Scholar
Rodrik, D. (2014), “When Ideas Trump Interests: Preferences, Worldviews, and Policy Innovations,” Journal of Economic Perspectives, 28 (1): 189–208.Google Scholar
Safford, F. (1985), “Politics, Ideology and Society in PostIndependence Spanish America,” in Bethell, L. (ed.), Cambridge History of Latin America (vol. 3), Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 347–421.Google Scholar
Sagredo, R. (2014), Historia mínima de Chile, Madrid/México D. F.: Turner/El Colegio de México.Google Scholar
Sagredo, R. (1989), “Pragmatismo proteccionista en los orígenes de la República,” Revista Historia, 24: 267–86.Google Scholar
Salinas Araneda, C. (1982), “La biblioteca de don Mariano Egaña, con especial referencia a sus libros de derecho,” Revista de Estudios Histórico-Jurídicos, 7: 389–540.Google Scholar
Saylor, R. (2012), “Sources of state capacity in Latin America: commodity booms and state building motives in Chile,” Theory & Society, 41 (3): 301–24.Google Scholar
Schlueter, A. (2014), Institutions and Small Settler Economies. A Comparative Study of New Zealand and Uruguay, 1870–2008, New York, NY: Palgrave Macmillan.Google Scholar
Schneider, M. and Teske, P. (1992), “Toward A Theory of the Political Entrepreneur: Evidence from Local Government,” American Political Science Review, 86 (3): 737–47.Google Scholar
Schumpeter, J. A. (1934), The Theory of Economic Development: An Inquiry into Profits, Credit, Interest, and the Business Cycle (2nd edn, translated by Opie, R.), Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Serrano, S. (1994), Universidad y nación: Chile en el siglo XIX, Santiago: Editorial Universitaria.Google Scholar
Silva Vargas, F. (1977), “Notas sobre la evolución empresarial chilena en el siglo XIX,” in Durán, F., Vargas, F. Silva, de Arce, H. Pérez, S-M, G. Ibáñez, Cáceres, C. F., Ojeda, P. Ibáñez, Huneeus, P., Sanfuentes, E., Vicuña, F. Orrego, Valdés, R. Claro, and Prieto, P., Empresa Privada, Viña del Mar: Escuela de Negocios de Valparaíso, Fundación Adolfo Ibáñez, pp. 73–103.Google Scholar
Tabellini, G. (2008), “Institutions and Culture,” Journal of the European Economic Association, 6 (2–3): 255–94.Google Scholar
Tetlock, P. E. and Belkin, A. (eds) (1996), Counterfactual Thought Experiments in World Politics: Logical, Methodological, and Psychological Perspectives, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Tilly, C. (1975), “Reflections on the History of European State-Making,” in his The Formation of National States in Western Europe, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, pp. 3–83.Google Scholar
Will, R. M. (1960), “La política económica de Chile, 1810–64,” El Trimestre Económico, 27 (2): 238–57.Google Scholar
Zhang, W. (2015), “The Power of Ideas and Leadership in China's Transition to a Liberal Society,” Cato Journal, 35 (1): 1–40.Google Scholar