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The Political-Economic Foundations of Representative Government

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  13 August 2019

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Abstract

The dominant interpretation of the Glorious Revolution portrays it as an innovative compromise that used clever institutional design to solve a coordination problem between rival elites. In contrast, I argue that it was neither innovative nor a compromise and that it was the product of structural change rather than institutional design. Following Barrington Moore, I focus on the rise of agrarian capitalism and economically autonomous elites, who, in contrast to rent-seeking elites, do not depend on favor from the state for their income. They have an interest in the creation of a political system that ensures their equal rights under the law, open access to markets, and opportunities to form broad coalitions against rent-seeking. This makes them a critical constituency for representative government. I test this argument through an analysis of patterns of allegiance for Crown and Parliament at the outset of the English Civil War and address its relevance to the Glorious Revolution.

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Article
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Perspectives on Politics , Volume 18 , Issue 2 , June 2020 , pp. 454 - 469
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© American Political Science Association 2019

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Footnotes

The author is grateful to Bill Bulman, Jeffry Frieden, Arman Grigoryan, Erin Hern, Seo-Hyun Park, Gang Wang, the participants in the “Political Economy of Regime Transitions” workshop at Lehigh University, and anonymous reviewers for their comments and advice.

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