The rule of law is critical for economic development; without clear property rights and contract enforcement, it is difficult for businesses to break out of small circles of trust.
The rule of law constitutes a basic protection of individuals against tyrannical government. But in the second half of the twentieth century, law lost its focus as a constraint on government and becam...
The proponents of identity politics on the left would argue that assertions of identity on the right are illegitimate and cannot be placed on the same moral plane as those of minorities, women, and ot...
The organization of public-sector unions and the emergence of merit employees as a powerful interest group underscores one of the great inherent dilemmas of bureaucratic autonomy. On the one hand, the...
The local Creole elites came to support independence in Mexico and Peru only because Ferdinand VII back in Spain agreed to accept the liberal constitution of 1812; independence for them was thus meant...
The failure to find adequate funds to finance deficits caused the Spanish Crown to declare bankruptcy in 1557, 1560, 1575, 1596, 1607, 1627, 1647, 1652, 1660, and 1662.14 These bankruptcies were not f...
The degree to which people in developed countries take political institutions for granted was very much evident in the way that the United States planned, or failed to plan, for the aftermath of its 2...
Societies are not trapped by their pasts and freely borrow ideas and institutions from each other.
Slavery and serfdom, while not unknown in tribal societies, expand enormously under the aegis of states.
Should we then regret the fact that Latin America has not seen more violence over the past two centuries, either in the form of massive interstate wars or social revolutions? It goes without saying th...
Putting one’s parents out to pasture in a nursing home has very deep historical roots in Western Europe.
Property came to be owned not by groups of kinfolk but by individuals, who increasingly won the right to buy and sell it at will. Their rights to that property were enforced not by kin but by courts a...
Most neoclassical economists would argue that state-owned firms will inevitably be less efficient than private ones because the state lacks the proper incentives to run enterprises efficiently. The st...
Mental models and rules are intimately intertwined, since the models often suggest clear rules for societies to follow. Religions are more than theories; they are prescriptive moral codes that seek to...
Many people today inside and outside the region are aware that many regimes, particularly in the Arab world, are cruel dictatorships unconstrained by any sense of higher law or justice.6 Westerners of...
Lorimer for his part was contemptuous of the municipal reformers, calling them hypocrites who were using the reform cause as a means of increasing their own power and influence.
Liberal democracy is built around the rights given to individuals who are equal in their freedom, that is, who have an equal degree of choice and agency in determining their collective political lives...
Left-wing populism made a strong showing primarily in parts of Latin America in the 1990s and 2000s, with the rise of Hugo Chávez in Venezuela, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva in Brazil, and the Kirchners i...
In the period immediately following ratification of the Constitution in 1789, the national public service at its upper levels has been described as a Government by Gentlemen and it did not look too di...
In opting for large scale, Korean state planners got much of what they bargained for. Korean companies today compete globally with the Americans and Japanese in highly capital-intensive sectors like s...