State Structures, State Policies, and Development across the Americas, 1500-2000

• In Event: Macroeconomía y Desarrollo

Abstract

My previous LASA papers explored the positive impact on developmental success of freer labor (not coerced); freer markets (not restricted ones); and specified and protected property rights (versus vaguely defined and vulnerable ones). Empirically, the overall research project has drawn on upwards of a thousand sources – mainly secondary, some primary – which correlate developmental levels by the years 2000 and 1950 with the aforementioned socioeconomic patterns. This particular paper begins with Weber’s stance: more-bureaucratic state forms, because they create predictably dependable environments for economic activity, better nurture developmental success than do patrimonial forms of governance, with their reliance on unpredictably interventionist and cronyistic patterns of economic regulation. (A position stastistically supported for the late 20th century by Evans & Rauch in a recent study, related to the key scholarly collection, States and Development.) I document how widespread and thoroughgoing have been Latin American patrimonial-governance forms from the colonial era into the 19th century and, at times, well into the 20th century in many such cases; in substantial contrast, the “rule of law” in such matters came increasingly to characterize (over those same eras) the political economies of Canada, of Iceland, and of the United States, serving to foster greater economic growth in much of that time, especially during the years 1750-1900, called the era of “The Great Reversal” by Mahoney in his 2010 book, on which this broader treatment builds. It also builds on important studies by Coatsworth, which address Latin America’s 1800s economic-growth lag until addressed by legislation which created more predictable civic, commercial, banking, tariff (etc.) policies; also Haber et al.’s analyses of better growth deriving from the greater “credible commitments” established during Mexico’s revolutionary era.

Author

• Timothy P Wickham-Crowley, Georgetown University