Revisiting the Glorious Revolution: property rights, economic institutions and the developing world

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.

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Learning and the Creation of Stock-Market Institutions: Evidence from the Royal African and Hudson's Bay Companies, 1670–1700

The Journal of Economic History ◽

10.1017/s0022050700020532 ◽

1998 ◽

Vol 58 (2) ◽

pp. 318-344 ◽

Cited By ~ 14

Author(s):

Ann M. Carlos ◽

Jennifer Key ◽

Jill L. Dupree

Keyword(s):

Time Series ◽

Stock Market ◽

Property Rights ◽

Full Advantage ◽

Capital Markets ◽

Capital Market ◽

Glorious Revolution ◽

Market Institutions ◽

Unique Source ◽

The Glorious Revolution

In this article we use a unique source—a 30-year time series of the share transactions of two joint-stock companies—to examine the growth of the London capital market prior to and immediately after the Glorious Revolution. We argue that the London experience with open capital markets was not solely the result of 1689. Rather it was the learning by private individuals and goldsmith bankers which took place in the decades before 1689 that allowed the market to take full advantage of the property rights changes which occurred with the change in regimes.

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Economic Crisis and the Mexican State: Toward a New Institutional Interpretation

Mexican Studies/Estudios Mexicanos ◽

10.1525/msem.2001.17.1.1 ◽

2001 ◽

Vol 17 (1) ◽

pp. 1-16

Author(s):

Aldo R. Flores-Quiroga

Keyword(s):

Economic Growth ◽

Seventeenth Century ◽

Property Rights ◽

Economic Crisis ◽

Private Investment ◽

Glorious Revolution ◽

Mexican State ◽

Mexican Government ◽

The Glorious Revolution ◽

Siglo Xx

This article proposes an institutional interpretation of Mexico's long economic crisis of the end of the twentieth century. It argues that the inability of the Mexican government to commit credibly to protecting property rights is largely responsible for the stagnation of private investment levels between 1982 and 1995. This inability is similar to that of the English Crown in the seventeenth century, which resorted to property rights assaults to confront recurrent fiscal crises. The English solution to this problem came in the form of the Glorious Revolution and its associated reforms that stabilized the property rights regime by constraining the Crown's discretion. England's economic growth increased substantially afterwards. Mexicans have attempted a similar reform, through the adoption of domestic and international mechanisms that, as discussed in this article, stabilize the property rights regime. The reform is still unfinished, and it still faces considerable challenges, but if they are surmounted, a return to sustained economic growth is very likely. Este artíículo propone una interpretacióón institucional de la extensa crisis econóómica de Mééxico a finales del siglo XX. Aquíí se establece que la ineptitud delgovierno mexicano paracomprometerse verazmente aprotegerlos derechos de propiedad es laresponsible delestancamiento de los niveles de las inversiones privadas entre 1982 y 1995. Esta ineptitud es similar a la de la Corona inglesa en el siglo XVII, la cual recurrióó a atropellos a los derechos de propiedad para confrontar las reiteradas crisis fiscals. La solucióón inglesa a dicho problema fue la Revolucióón Gloriosa y sus reformas que estabilizaron elregimen de los derechos de propiedad limitando el poder de la Corona. Posteriormente, Inglaterra tuvo un crecimiento econóómico sustancial. Los mexicanos han intentado hacer una reforma similar a travéés de la adopcióón de mecanismos doméésticos e internacionales que,como se arguye en este artíículo, estabilizan el regimen de los derechos de propiedad. La reforma aúún no ha terminado, y todavíía se enfrenta a desafííos considerables, pero si ééstos se superan, es probable el retorno a un crecimiento econóómico sostenido.

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Constitutions and Commitment: The Evolution of Institutions Governing Public Choice in Seventeenth-Century England

The Journal of Economic History ◽

10.1017/s0022050700009451 ◽

1989 ◽

Vol 49 (4) ◽

pp. 803-832 ◽

Cited By ~ 1912

Author(s):

Douglass C. North ◽

Barry R. Weingast

Keyword(s):

Seventeenth Century ◽

Property Rights ◽

Institutional Changes ◽

Glorious Revolution ◽

Rights Protection ◽

Property Rights Protection ◽

The Government ◽

New Institutions ◽

The Glorious Revolution ◽

The Relationship

The article studies the evolution of the constitutional arrangements in seventeenth-century England following the Glorious Revolution of 1688. It focuses on the relationship between institutions and the behavior of the government and interprets the institutional changes on the basis of the goals of the winners—secure property rights, protection of their wealth, and the elimination of confiscatory government. We argue that the new institutions allowed the government to commit credibly to upholding property rights. Their success was remarkable, as the evidence from capital markets shows.

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Was the Glorious Revolution a Constitutional Watershed?

The Journal of Economic History ◽

10.1017/s0022050712000307 ◽

2012 ◽

Vol 72 (3) ◽

pp. 567-600 ◽

Cited By ~ 36

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.

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

Voprosy Ekonomiki ◽

10.32609/0042-8736-2017-11-63-92 ◽

2017 ◽

pp. 63-92 ◽

Cited By ~ 2

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.

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Institutional Theory of Endless Redistribution

Voprosy Ekonomiki ◽

10.32609/0042-8736-2005-7-4-18 ◽

2005 ◽

pp. 4-18 ◽

Cited By ~ 5

Author(s):

K. Sonin

Keyword(s):

Property Rights ◽

Institutional Theory ◽

Growth Rates ◽

Rent Seeking ◽

Economic Institutions ◽

Wide Spread ◽

Grass Roots ◽

Protection Systems ◽

Private Protection ◽

The Rich

In unequal societies, the rich may benefit from shaping economic institutions in their favor. This paper analyzes the dynamics of institutional subversion by focusing on public protection of property rights. If this institution functions imperfectly, agents have incentives to invest in private protection of property rights. The ability to maintain private protection systems makes the rich natural opponents of public protection of property rights and precludes grass-roots demand to drive the development of the market-friendly institution. The economy becomes stuck in a bad equilibrium with low growth rates, high inequality of income, and wide-spread rent-seeking. The Russian oligarchs of the 1990s, who controlled large stakes of newly privatized property, provide motivation for this paper.

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John Company Armed: The English East India Company, the Anglo-Mughal War and Absolutist Imperialism, c. 1675–1690

Britain and the World ◽

10.3366/brw.2017.0283 ◽

2018 ◽

Vol 11 (1) ◽

pp. 101-137 ◽

Cited By ~ 1

Author(s):

James M. Vaughn

Keyword(s):

Seventeenth Century ◽

South Asian ◽

East India Company ◽

Economic Conditions ◽

Glorious Revolution ◽

Mughal Empire ◽

Imperial Expansion ◽

English East India Company ◽

Formed Part ◽

The Glorious Revolution

During the 1670s and 1680s, the English East India Company pursued an aggressive programme of imperial expansion in the Asian maritime world, culminating in a series of armed assaults on the Mughal Empire. With important exceptions, most scholarship has viewed the Company's coercive imperialism in the later seventeenth century and the First Anglo-Mughal War as the results primarily, if not exclusively, of political and economic conditions in South Asia. This article re-examines and re-interprets this burst of imperial expansion in light of political developments in England and the wider English empire during the later Stuart era. The article contends that the Company's aggressive overseas expansion was pursued for metropolitan and pan-imperial purposes as much as for South Asian ones. The corporation sought to centralise and militarise the English presence in Asia in order both to maintain its control of England's trade to the East and in support of Stuart absolutism. By the eve of the Glorious Revolution, the Company's aggressive imperialism formed part of a wider political project to create an absolute monarchy in England and to establish an autocratic English empire overseas.

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