States of Credit: Size, Power, and the Development of European Polities (The Princeton Economic History of the Western World) - Hardcover

Stasavage, David

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 069114057X ISBN 13: 9780691140575

Verlag: Princeton University Press, 2011

Inhaltsangabe

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.

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Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

David Stasavage is professor of politics at New York University. He is the author of Public Debt and the Birth of the Democratic State.

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"This is social science at its best. David Stasavage offers an original thesis, develops it carefully, and supports it with historical and quantitative evidence. A tour de force."--Daron Acemoglu, Massachusetts Institute of Technology

"Respectfully debunking long-held claims and laying to rest long-standing arguments, David Stasavage's masterful book ensures that no economic historian, comparative political economist, or historical sociologist will ever again be able to ignore or deny the importance of the link between a state's capacity for public credit and the existence of a representative political system. No one--until Stasavage--has offered so convincing an explanation of the variation in the development of European political institutions that foster economic innovation and growth."--Margaret Levi, University of Washington and University of Sydney

"This book presents a clear and well-constructed argument resting on a broad empirical basis over a long time period and in various regions of Western Europe. Through sophisticated statistical analysis, Stasavage convincingly demonstrates that major autonomous cities ruled by a merchant elite had easier access to credit than territorial states. In their turn, however, these mercantile elites shifted toward a rent-seeking and economically less dynamic attitude, thus paving the way to the dominance of the national states."--W. P. Blockmans, Leiden University

"States of Credit evaluates a novel conjecture regarding the relations between political representation and public debt. It is an important contribution to the literature."--Avner Greif, Stanford University

Aus dem Klappentext

"This is social science at its best. David Stasavage offers an original thesis, develops it carefully, and supports it with historical and quantitative evidence. A tour de force."--Daron Acemoglu, Massachusetts Institute of Technology

"Respectfully debunking long-held claims and laying to rest long-standing arguments, David Stasavage's masterful book ensures that no economic historian, comparative political economist, or historical sociologist will ever again be able to ignore or deny the importance of the link between a state's capacity for public credit and the existence of a representative political system. No one--until Stasavage--has offered so convincing an explanation of the variation in the development of European political institutions that foster economic innovation and growth."--Margaret Levi, University of Washington and University of Sydney

"This book presents a clear and well-constructed argument resting on a broad empirical basis over a long time period and in various regions of Western Europe. Through sophisticated statistical analysis, Stasavage convincingly demonstrates that major autonomous cities ruled by a merchant elite had easier access to credit than territorial states. In their turn, however, these mercantile elites shifted toward a rent-seeking and economically less dynamic attitude, thus paving the way to the dominance of the national states."--W. P. Blockmans, Leiden University

"States of Credit evaluates a novel conjecture regarding the relations between political representation and public debt. It is an important contribution to the literature."--Avner Greif, Stanford University

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States of Credit

SIZE, POWER, AND THE DEVELOPMENT OF EUROPEAN POLITIESBy David Stasavage

PRINCETON UNIVERSITY PRESS

Copyright © 2011 Princeton University Press
All right reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-691-14057-5

Contents

Illustrations...........................................................................ixAcknowledgments.........................................................................xiChapter One Introduction...............................................................1Chapter Two The Evolution and Importance of Public Credit..............................25Chapter Three Representative Assemblies in Europe, 1250–1750.....................47Chapter Four Assessing the City-State Advantage........................................70Chapter Five Origins of City-States....................................................94Chapter Six Three City-State Experiences...............................................110Chapter Seven Three Territorial State Experiences......................................132Chapter Eight Implications for State Formation and Development.........................156Bibliography............................................................................167Index...................................................................................187

Chapter One

Introduction

Among the many distinctive features of European state formation two have received particular attention—the invention of the concept of political representation and the development of a system of public credit. It is a matter of some debate whether Europe was unique in having a system of political representation—certainly rulers in other regions met with councils or assemblies—but it is probably not an exaggeration to say that this phenomenon initially advanced to its greatest extent in Europe. Likewise, while rulers in other regions developed mechanisms for deferring payment for goods or for receiving advances on tax collections, there seems little doubt that the most extensive early development of a system of public credit occurred in Europe. This parallel development of representation and credit suggests that a causal link might have existed between the two. Within Europe, states such as Venice or the Dutch Republic that are seen as models in the development of representative institutions can also be viewed as pioneers in the development of public credit, whereas polities such as France are considered as having trailed on both of these dimensions. Did the presence of an intensive form of representation facilitate access to credit for the former, allowing them to survive and their economies to prosper? If so, why did this intensive form of representation emerge in some places but not others? Finally, how did this joint development of credit and representation affect broader trends involving war, state formation, and economic growth? Despite the importance of these questions, no existing scholarly study examines these issues in a broad comparative context. This book is designed to fill that gap.

I will argue that the presence of an intensive form of representation characterized by an assembly that could monitor and modify expenditures was critical in facilitating access to credit by European states. But the existence of an assembly that would function in this manner was itself dependent on two underlying conditions. First, in an era of high communications and travel costs this intensive form of political representation could be maintained only in polities of limited geographic scale. Second, assemblies of this sort were more likely to take actions consistent with the interests of state creditors in polities where the same merchants who invested in government debt were also predominant among the political elite. These two underlying conditions were most frequently, but not exclusively and not always, met in city-states where assemblies could be convened by devices as simple as the ringing of a town bell and where the same merchants who purchased public debt also served as magistrates on town councils. In the territorial states of Europe, in strong contrast, geographic scale often proved to be a fundamental obstacle, making it costly to sustain a representative assembly that would meet frequently enough to monitor public expenditures. Assemblies in European territorial states could be powerful, but their influence was of a more passive form involving the ability to veto requests by monarchs for taxation. The social composition of territorial state assemblies was also fundamentally different from that of the city-states. Merchants—those who lent most frequently to government—played a more limited role within them, a fact that had significant consequences for the behavior of these institutions.

In making the above argument about representative institutions, I am not suggesting that the dominance of mercantile interests necessarily led to democracy within city-states. Certainly, none of the city-states considered within this study had the full characteristics of either a modern representative democracy or an ancient direct democracy. But more importantly, even within the group of city-states considered here, I will show that those that were more oligarchical in form tended to have better access to credit than did those with more open systems of political representation. Both my broad sample statistical tests and my qualitative case studies suggest that having a merchant oligarchy was the best recipe for obtaining access to credit. In contrast, when popular pressures led to city-states adopting more open political systems in which those who were less likely to own public debt gained seats on city councils, then access to low-cost credit was less certain. This points to a trade-off: a certain set of political institutions could reinforce the credibility of debt repayment, but these institutions were inherently undemocratic (even by the standards of the time), and, as I will argue, closed political institutions may in the long run have helped to stifle economic innovation.

My conclusions have implications for three debates involving state formation and economic development. The first debate involves the role of warfare in state formation, and in particular the proposition that as military technologies changed, the optimal size of a polity increased and the city-state became outmoded as a form of political organization. The second debate involves the sources of early modern economic growth and the question whether free cities were engines of innovation during this period. The third debate involves the question whether the adoption of representative or democratic institutions can helped solve commitment problems. I will first briefly introduce each of these debates before revisiting them in greater detail in the concluding chapter to this book.

In the first debate on war and state formation, conflict was according to a common narrative, the primary force driving state development within Europe. A key part of this argument is that exogenous changes in military technology—firearms, mass infantry, new styles of fortification—meant greater fixed costs in war-fighting, leading to an increase in the optimal size of states. Many authors also suggest that war was a powerful force prompting rulers to alter the structure of their polity's political and bureaucratic institutions. I will suggest that large size had both costs and benefits when it came to war mobilization, and therefore the effect of changes in military technology on the distribution and organization of...

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: Princeton University Press
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2011
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 069114057X
• ISBN 13: 9780691140575
• Einband: Gebundene Ausgabe
• Anzahl der Seiten: 192
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: Nicht verfügbar
• Verantwortliche Person: Nicht verfügbar