Was the Glorious Revolution a Constitutional Watershed?

2012 ◽  
Vol 72 (3) ◽  
pp. 567-600 ◽  
Author(s):  
GARY W. COX
Keyword(s):  
Property Rights ◽  
Interest Rates ◽  
Sovereign Debt ◽  
Glorious Revolution ◽  
Public Finances ◽  
Constitutional Reforms ◽  
The Glorious Revolution ◽  
Douglass North ◽  
The Revolution

Douglass North and Barry Weingast's seminal account of the Glorious Revolution argued that specific constitutional reforms enhanced the credibility of the English Crown, leading to much stronger public finances. Critics have argued that the most important reforms occurred incrementally before the Revolution; and that neither interest rates on sovereign debt nor enforcement of property rights improved sharply after the Revolution. In this article, I identify a different set of constitutional reforms, explain why precedents for these reforms did not lessen their revolutionary impact, and show that the evidence, properly evaluated, supports a view of the Revolution as a watershed.

War, Moral Hazard, and Ministerial Responsibility: England After the Glorious Revolution

2011 ◽  
Vol 71 (1) ◽  
pp. 133-161 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gary W Cox
Keyword(s):  
Moral Hazard ◽  
Sovereign Debt ◽  
Central Element ◽  
Central Problem ◽  
Glorious Revolution ◽  
Credible Commitment ◽  
Ministerial Responsibility ◽  
The Glorious Revolution ◽  
Douglass North ◽  
The Revolution

I reexamine Douglass North and Barry Weingast's argument regarding credible commitment and sovereign debt in post-revolution England. The central problem that the architects of the revolution settlement had to solve, I argue, was not the king's frequent reneging on financial commitments (a symptom), but the moral hazard that generated the kings' malfeasance (the underlying cause). The central element of the revolution settlement was thus not better holding kings to their commitments, but better holding royal advisors to account for all consequences of the Crown's policies—through what we now call ministerial responsibility.

Institutional Reforms, Financial Development and Sovereign Debt: Britain 1690–1790

2006 ◽  
Vol 66 (4) ◽  
pp. 906-935 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nathan Sussman ◽  
Yishay Yafeh
Keyword(s):  
Financial Markets ◽  
Interest Rates ◽  
Financial Development ◽  
Sovereign Debt ◽  
Glorious Revolution ◽  
Institutional Reforms ◽  
Short Run ◽  
Per Capita ◽  
The Glorious Revolution ◽  
The Cost

We revisit the evidence on the relations between institutions, the cost of government debt, and financial development in Britain (1690–1790) and find that interest rates remained high and volatile for four decades after the Glorious Revolution, partly due to wars and instability; British interest rates co-moved with those in Holland; Debt per capita remained lower in Britain than in Holland until around 1780; and Britain did not borrow at lower rates than European countries with more limited protection of property rights. We conclude that, in the short run, institutional reforms are not rewarded by financial markets.

scholarly journals 1688 and all that: property rights, the Glorious Revolution and the rise of British capitalism

2016 ◽  
Vol 13 (1) ◽  
pp. 79-107 ◽  
Author(s):  
GEOFFREY M. HODGSON
Keyword(s):  
Property Rights ◽  
Middle Ages ◽  
Direct Effect ◽  
Industrial Revolution ◽  
Glorious Revolution ◽  
13Th Century ◽  
Plausible Answer ◽  
The Glorious Revolution ◽  
Douglass North ◽  
Commercial Expansion

AbstractIn a seminal 1989 article, Douglass North and Barry Weingast argued that by making the monarch more answerable to Parliament, the Glorious Revolution of 1688 helped to secure property rights in England and stimulate the rise of capitalism. Similarly, Daron Acemoglu, Simon Johnson, and James Robinson later wrote that in the English Middle Ages there was a ‘lack of property rights for landowners, merchants and proto-industrialists’ and the ‘strengthening’ of property rights in the late 17th century ‘spurred a process of financial and commercial expansion’. There are several problems with these arguments. Property rights in England were relatively secure from the 13th century. A major developmental problem was not the security of rights but their feudal nature, including widespread ‘entails’ and ‘strict settlements’. 1688 had no obvious direct effect on property rights. Given these criticisms, what changes promoted the rise of capitalism? A more plausible answer is found by addressing the post-1688 Financial and Administrative Revolutions, which were pressured by the enhanced needs of war and Britain's expanding global role. Guided by a more powerful Parliament, this new financial system stimulated reforms to landed property rights, the growth of collateralizable property and saleable debt, and thus enabled the Industrial Revolution.

scholarly journals 1688 and all that: Property rights, the Glorious Revolution and the rise of British capitalism

2017 ◽  
pp. 63-92 ◽  
Author(s):  
G. M. Hodgson
Keyword(s):  
Property Rights ◽  
Middle Ages ◽  
Direct Effect ◽  
Industrial Revolution ◽  
Glorious Revolution ◽  
13Th Century ◽  
Plausible Answer ◽  
The Glorious Revolution ◽  
Douglass North ◽  
Commercial Expansion

In a seminal 1989 article, Douglass North and Barry Weingast argued that by making the monarch more answerable to Parliament, the Glorious Revolution of 1688 helped to secure property rights in England and stimulate the rise of capitalism. Similarly, Daron Acemoglu, Simon Johnson, and James Robinson later wrote that in the English Middle Ages there was a “lack of property rights for landowners, merchants and proto-industrialists” and the “strengthening” of property rights in the late 17th century “spurred a process of financial and commercial expansion”. There are several problems with these arguments. Property rights in England were relatively secure from the 13th century. A major developmental problem was not the security of rights but their feudal nature, including widespread “entails” and “strict settlements”. 1688 had no obvious direct effect on property rights. Given these criticisms, what changes promoted the rise of capitalism? A more plausible answer is found by addressing the post-1688 Financial and Administrative Revolutions, which were pressured by the enhanced needs of war and Britain’s expanding global role. Guided by a more powerful Parliament, this new financial system stimulated reforms to landed property rights, the growth of collateralizable property and saleable debt, and thus enabled the Industrial Revolution.

‘The Rulers now on Earth’: Locke'sTwo Treatisesand the Revolution of 1688

1985 ◽  
Vol 28 (2) ◽  
pp. 279-298 ◽  
Author(s):  
Charles D. Tarlton
Keyword(s):  
Glorious Revolution ◽  
William Iii ◽  
The Glorious Revolution ◽  
The Revolution

When we believed that Locke had writtenTwo treatises of governmentto justify the Glorious Revolution, we could say a great deal about his purposes in relation to the events of 1688–89. The book served to interpret those events, to disclose their underlying meaning; philosophy and action were joined in such a manner that both gained lustre from the link. But, now we have generally accepted the view that Locke actually wroteTwo treatisesin the partisan heat of the Exclusion debate, and we have stopped saying very much of anything about the book's relation to William III and the events of the year in which Locke anonymously published it.

The Fourth English Civil War: Dissolution, Desertion and Alternative Histories in the Glorious Revolution

1988 ◽  
Vol 23 (2) ◽  
pp. 151-166 ◽  
Author(s):  
J. G. A. Pocock
Keyword(s):  
Civil Society ◽  
Civil War ◽  
Just War ◽  
Political Process ◽  
English Civil War ◽  
Edmund Burke ◽  
Glorious Revolution ◽  
The Glorious Revolution ◽  
The Revolution

EDMUND BURKE, REVIEWING IN 1790 THE EVENTS OF 102-101 years previously, saw no objection to penning and printing the following remarkable words: ‘The Revolution of 1688 was obtained by a just war, in the only case in which any war, and much more a civil war, can be just. Justa bella quibus necessaria’. He cannot have meant that the revolution was ‘obtained’, in the sense of ‘secured’, by the wars in Europe which followed from 1688 to 1697, for he speaks of ‘civil war’; nor is it likely that he intended his words to refer to the war in Ireland which ended with the Treaty of Limerick. Burke's Irish perspectives might indeed lead to his viewing this as a civil war rather than a war of conquest, but the context which surrounds the words quoted makes it clear that he is thinking of the ‘Revolution of 1688’ as an English political process and an English civil war. The ‘cashiering’ or dethroning of a king, he is instructing readers of Richard Price's sermon to the Revolution Society, is not a legal or a constitutional process, which can form one of the normal procedures of an established civil society.

Women and the Glorious Revolution

1986 ◽  
Vol 18 (2) ◽  
pp. 195-218 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lois G. Schwoerer
Keyword(s):  
French Revolution ◽  
Good Deal ◽  
Direct Access ◽  
Basic Question ◽  
Glorious Revolution ◽  
Women's Participation ◽  
Role Of Women ◽  
The Glorious Revolution ◽  
The Revolution

The role of women in revolutions has recently excited a good deal of scholarly interest. Innovative studies have appeared on women in the English Civil War, the French Revolution and the Russian Revolution that have not only rescued women from oblivion but also modified and enlarged understanding of the revolutions themselves. But for the English Revolution of 1688-89 there has been, aside from biographical studies of the two future queens, Mary and Anne, very little published work on the role of women. My purpose is to remedy that situation, and to broaden the inquiry by addressing four major questions: (1) what role did women from all social groups, lower, middle, aristocratic and royal, play in the Revolution: (2) why, in view of customary restraints, did they enter the public arena; (3) what influence did they have on the Glorious Revolution; and (4) what influence did the Revolution have on women? Underlying these queries is the basic question of what are the contextual conditions that encourage or even make possible women's participation in revolutions?Such a topic requires changes in the questions customarily used in studying political history. If politics is defined in traditional terms simply as the competition for and exercise of power by individuals through their office, voting, and decision making, then there is nothing to say about women in the Glorious Revolution. Women, whatever their social status, had no direct access to the levers of conventionally-defined politics. They did not vote, sit in either house of Parliament, or hold office on any level of government, unless they were queens. In a predominantly patriarchal society, females, except for widows, were customarily subordinate to their fathers or husbands and confined to the sphere of the family and household.

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