Download or read book Fiscal Crises Liberty and Representative Government 1450 1789 written by Philip T. Hoffman and published by Stanford University Press. This book was released on 2002-01-02 with total page 420 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: These essays focus on the growth of representative institutions and the mechanics of European state finance from the end of the Middle Ages to the French Revolution.
Download or read book Growth in a Traditional Society written by Philip T. Hoffman and published by . This book was released on 1996 with total page 361 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Making a strong case for the use of economic analysis in studying history and culture, Philip Hoffman shatters the widespread myth that traditional agricultural societies in early modern Europe were socially and economically stagnant - and ultimately depended on wide-scale political revolution for their growth. Through a richly detailed historical investigation of the peasant agriculture of ancien-regime France, the author uncovers evidence that requires a new understanding of what constituted economic growth in such societies. His arguments rest on a measurement of long-term growth that enables him to analyze the economic, institutional, and political factors that explain its forms and rhythms. In comparing France with England and Germany, Hoffman arrives at fresh answers to some classic questions: Did French agriculture lag behind farming in other countries? If so, did the obstacles in French agriculture lurk within peasant society itself, in the peasants' culture, in their communal property rights, or in the small scale of their farms? Or did the obstacles hide elsewhere, in politics, in the tax system, or in meager opportunities for trade? The author discovers that growth cannot be explained by culture, property rights, or farm size, and argues that the real causes of growth derived from politics and gains from trade. By challenging other widely held beliefs, such as the nature of the commons and the workings of the rural economy, Hoffman offers a new analysis of peasant society and culture, one based on microeconomics and game theory and intended for a wide range of social scientists.
Download or read book Conflict and Governance written by Amihai Glazer and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2013-06-29 with total page 201 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Conflict appears in many forms, from a dictator terrorizing his country to organized crime demanding protection money. Questions and issues addressed in this text include: the conditions which make conflict severe; whether voluntary agreements can avoid future conflict; how the outcome of one war will affect the incentives of countries to wage war in the future; and how dictators hold power. The book provides an overview of existing literature, applies the theory of conflict to new situations, and gives foundations for future work. It should interest both researchers and students studying political economy, public choice, international relations, and comparative politics.
Download or read book State Economy and the Great Divergence written by Peer Vries and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2015-02-26 with total page 513 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: State, Economy and the Great Divergence provides a new analysis of what has become the central debate in global economic history: the 'great divergence' between European and Asian growth. Focusing on early modern China and Western Europe, in particular Great Britain, this book offers a new level of detail on comparative state formation that has wide-reaching implications for European, Eurasian and global history. Beginning with an overview of the historiography, Peer Vries goes on to extend and develop the debate, critically engaging with the huge volume of literature published on the topic to date. Incorporating recent insights, he offers a compelling alternative to the claims to East-West equivalence, or Asian superiority, which have come to dominate discourse surrounding this issue. This is a vital update to a key issue in global economic history and, as such, is essential reading for students and scholars interested in keeping up to speed with the on-going debates.
Download or read book Political Transformations and Public Finances written by Mark Dincecco and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2011-09-26 with total page 249 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How did today's rich states first establish modern fiscal systems? To answer this question, Political Transformations and Public Finances by Mark Dincecco examines the evolution of political regimes and public finances in Europe over the long term. The book argues that the emergence of efficient fiscal institutions was the result of two fundamental political transformations that resolved long-standing problems of fiscal fragmentation and absolutism. States gained tax force through fiscal centralization and restricted ruler power through parliamentary limits, which enabled them to gather large tax revenues and channel funds toward public services with positive economic benefits. Using a novel combination of descriptive, case study and statistical methods, the book pursues this argument through a systematic investigation of a new panel database that spans eleven countries and four centuries. The book's findings are significant for our understanding of economic history and have important consequences for current policy debates.
Download or read book Democracy and Dictatorship in Europe written by Sheri Berman and published by Oxford University Press, USA. This book was released on 2019 with total page 561 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Democracy and Dictatorship in Europe examines the development of various political regimes in Europe from the ancien regime up through the present day. It analyzes why democracy flourishes at some times and in some places but not others and draws lessons from European history that can help us better understand the political situation the world finds itself in today.
Download or read book Charles V and the Castilian Assembly of the Clergy written by Sean T. Perrone and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2008 with total page 289 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Castilian Assembly of the Clergy has been overlooked in the scholarship on church-state relations and representative institutions in the early modern period. This oversight has distorted our understanding of political practice, royal finance, and church-state relations in sixteenth-century Castile. By examining the negotiations for subsidies between the crown and the Assembly, this book illuminates the dynamics between church and state and the limits of royal control over the church, and it challenges long-held conventions about the monolithic structure of the Spanish church and its subservience to the crown. The negotiations for subsidies also demonstrate the importance of consensus in the political process and how the Assembly sustained itself and its privileges for centuries through collaboration with the crown.
Download or read book Downsizing Democracy written by Matthew A. Crenson and published by JHU Press. This book was released on 2020-03-03 with total page 375 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Originally publushed in 2002. In Downsizing Democracy, Matthew A. Crenson and Benjamin Ginsberg describe how the once powerful idea of a collective citizenry has given way to a concept of personal, autonomous democracy. Today, political change is effected through litigation, lobbying, and term limits, rather than active participation in the political process, resulting in narrow special interest groups dominating state and federal decision-making. At a time when an American's investment in the democratic process has largely been reduced to an annual contribution to a political party or organization, Downsizing Democracy offers a critical reassessment of American democracy.
Download or read book The Military Revolution Debate written by Clifford J Rogers and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2018-10-08 with total page 400 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book brings together, for the first time, the classic articles that began and have shaped the debate about the Military Revolution in early modern Europe, adding important new essays by eminent historians of early modern Europe to further this important scholarly interchange.
Download or read book Lending to the Borrower from Hell written by Mauricio Drelichman and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2016-12-13 with total page 329 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: What the loans and defaults of a sixteenth-century Spanish king can tell us about sovereign debt today Why do lenders time and again loan money to sovereign borrowers who promptly go bankrupt? When can this type of lending work? As the United States and many European nations struggle with mountains of debt, historical precedents can offer valuable insights. Lending to the Borrower from Hell looks at one famous case—the debts and defaults of Philip II of Spain. Ruling over one of the largest and most powerful empires in history, King Philip defaulted four times. Yet he never lost access to capital markets and could borrow again within a year or two of each default. Exploring the shrewd reasoning of the lenders who continued to offer money, Mauricio Drelichman and Hans-Joachim Voth analyze the lessons from this important historical example. Using detailed new evidence collected from sixteenth-century archives, Drelichman and Voth examine the incentives and returns of lenders. They provide powerful evidence that in the right situations, lenders not only survive despite defaults—they thrive. Drelichman and Voth also demonstrate that debt markets cope well, despite massive fluctuations in expenditure and revenue, when lending functions like insurance. The authors unearth unique sixteenth-century loan contracts that offered highly effective risk sharing between the king and his lenders, with payment obligations reduced in bad times. A fascinating story of finance and empire, Lending to the Borrower from Hell offers an intelligent model for keeping economies safe in times of sovereign debt crises and defaults.
Download or read book Capitalists in Spite of Themselves written by Richard Lachmann and published by Oxford University Press, USA. This book was released on 2002 with total page 330 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Here, Lachmann offers a new explanation for the origins of nation-states and capitalist markets in early modern Europe. Comparing regions and cities within and across England, France, Italy, Spain, and the Netherlands from the 12th through 18th centuries, he shows how conflict among feudal elites---landlords, clerics, kings, and officeholders---transformed the bases of their control over land and labor, forcing the winners of feudal conflicts to become capitalists in spite of themselves as they took defensive actions to protect their privileges from rivals in the aftermath of the Reformation.
Download or read book Nontaxation and Representation written by Kevin M. Morrison and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2015 with total page 169 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Does oil make countries autocratic? Can foreign aid make countries democratic? Does taxation lead to representation? In this book, Kevin M. Morrison develops a novel argument about how government revenues of all kinds affect political regimes and their leaders. Contrary to conventional wisdom, Morrison illustrates that taxation leads to instability, not representation. With this insight, he extends his award-winning work on nontax revenues to encompass foreign aid, oil revenue, and intergovernmental grants and shows that they lead to decreased taxation, increased government spending, and increased political stability. Looking at the stability of democracies and dictatorships as well as leadership transitions within those regimes, Morrison incorporates cross-national statistical methods, formal modeling, a quasi-experiment, and case studies of Brazil, Kenya, and Mexico to build his case. This book upends many common hypotheses and policy recommendations, providing the most comprehensive treatment of revenue and political stability to date.
Download or read book States of Credit written by David Stasavage and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2011-07-05 with total page 207 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: States of Credit provides the first comprehensive look at the joint development of representative assemblies and public borrowing in Europe during the medieval and early modern eras. In this pioneering book, David Stasavage argues that unique advances in political representation allowed certain European states to gain early and advantageous access to credit, but the emergence of an active form of political representation itself depended on two underlying factors: compact geography and a strong mercantile presence. Stasavage shows that active representative assemblies were more likely to be sustained in geographically small polities. These assemblies, dominated by mercantile groups that lent to governments, were in turn more likely to preserve access to credit. Given these conditions, smaller European city-states, such as Genoa and Cologne, had an advantage over larger territorial states, including France and Castile, because mercantile elites structured political institutions in order to effectively monitor public credit. While creditor oversight of public funds became an asset for city-states in need of finance, Stasavage suggests that the long-run implications were more ambiguous. City-states with the best access to credit often had the most closed and oligarchic systems of representation, hindering their ability to accept new economic innovations. This eventually transformed certain city-states from economic dynamos into rentier republics. Exploring the links between representation and debt in medieval and early modern Europe, States of Credit contributes to broad debates about state formation and Europe's economic rise.
Download or read book The Oxford Handbook of Legislative Studies written by Shane Martin and published by OUP Oxford. This book was released on 2014-06-19 with total page 800 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Legislatures are political bodies essential to democracy and the rule of law. They present social scientists with numerous intriguing puzzles, with far-reaching implications for our understanding of political institutions. Why, and how, have these ancient assemblies, established in pre-democratic times, survived the transition to mass democracies? How have they adapted? How do they structure such processes as budgeting, legislation, and executive oversight? How do their members get selected, and what consequences flow from differences in these rules? What roles do committees and political parties play in contemporary legislatures? What functions do legislatures perform in autocratic, semi-democratic or recently democratized societies? What explains the similarities and differences in legislative rules, powers and recruitment? What are the policy and other consequences of variation in how legislatures are organized and function? The 33 chapters in The Oxford Handbook of Legislative Studies, written by 47 of the most distinguished legislative scholars, provide a comprehensive and up-to-date description and assessment of the state of the art in legislative studies. Key themes explored include theoretical paradigms and methodological approaches to the study of legislatures, representation and legislative careers, internal organization, the role of parties within legislatures and the role of legislatures in policy making and accountability. The Handbook also explores the emergence of parliaments in historical and contemporary contexts, including new democracies and trans-national institutions.
Download or read book Surviving Large Losses written by Philip T. Hoffman and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2009-07 with total page 273 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Annotation. Listen to a short interview with Philip T. Hoffman Host: Chris Gondek.
Download or read book The Parliaments of Early Modern Europe written by M.A.R. Graves and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2014-06-06 with total page 241 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A comparative survey of the emergence and development of Parliaments in Catholic Christendom from the thirteenth century, the chief focus of this work is the period between the fifteenth and seventeenth centuries,when Europe was dramatically changed by the Renaissance, the Reformation and the growth of composite monarchies which brought together diverse territories under their rule. European Parliaments experienced a variety of challenges, fortunes and fates: some survived, even flourished, but others succumbed to powerful monarchies. By investigating the powers and privileges and responsibilities of these institutions, Graves illuminates the whole business of government - the nature of executive power, the relations of ruler and ruled, the restraints of consent, and the realities of the tension between central authority and local custom.
Download or read book The Crisis of Distribution written by Shouwen Zhang and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2020-12-29 with total page 229 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The crisis of distribution is one of the longest standing and most complicated issues facing human society. Imbued with social, political, historic, and cultural elements, it varies significantly across different countries as a result of all these factors. As an emerging economy which transferred from a planned to a market economy, China has experienced large distribution gaps since it implemented the Reform and Opening-up Policy in the early 1980s, requiring stronger economic law to mitigate and regulate the crisis of distribution. In this two-volume set, the author analyzes distribution crises from a theoretical perspective and proposes law and policy solutions. In this first volume, he discusses the four main concepts and focus points of the crisis of distribution – distribution itself, the crises it faces, the rule of law, and development. Concentrating on the major distribution problems China faces in particular, the author proposes regulatory methods which can be used to overcome the distribution dilemma, such as tools from policy and economic law, and reiterates the significance of theory building in resolving the issues. The book should be of keen interest to researchers and students of law, economics, and political science.
