Navigating political action typically requires coalition building across different interest groups. Because members represent divergent interests and are embedded in different networks, however, alliance formation is difficult. In this article, I consider how elites rely on political brokerage to overcome these divisions and form successful coalitions, with successful organization of the parliamentary opposition to the king before the English Civil War as a case in point. Supporting quantitative evidence comes from rich network data on the business, kinship, and political affiliations among 346 political and mercantile elites. Rather than the mere presence of mediator positions, I argue that effective brokerage of mobilizing alliances between interest groups requires political mediators who are equally affiliated with these diverse networks. Successful brokerage is conditional on both their structural position between groups and the diversity of ties that compose their personal networks. The results demonstrate that new merchant elites who were engaged in the American colonial trades acted as political mediators and facilitated the formation of a parliamentary opposition strong enough to defeat the royalist forces in London.

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Abstract.To refine the understanding of the social network characteristics of entrepreneurial teams, we present a new construct: structural role complementarity. In particular, we examine the variation between team members' respective abilities to act as network brokers. Based on the cofounding networks of 9,461 entrepreneurs and 2,446 large-scale industrial enterprises over 45 years in Russia's emerging economy , our findings show that variation among team members' brokering ability significantly predicts the starting capital raised by their firm. The effect is moderated by the team's average brokering potential. When both the team's average and variation in brokering potential is high, firms raise greater starting capital. By using multiple membership models, we demonstrate that greater starting capital is largely attributable to team factors rather than the attributes of the individual team members. We also take advantage of discriminatory laws that were passed in 1887 in an instrumental variable analysis to address potential endogeneity issues.

What mechanisms account for the long-run differences in economic development across historical settings? Current scholarship has renewed the argument that institutions are essential for promoting market transactions, industrialization, trade, and economic growth. In particular, recent work in economic history offers valuable empirical and theoretical insights into the development of market-supporting institutions, their long-term consequences, and their relationship to state-building. The purpose of this review is to bring contributions in economic history to the attention of sociologists interested in the evolution of economic institutions. Drawing on salient historical cases, the article contrasts formal market-supporting institutions that are provided by the state with settings where such public provision fails and private-order institutions based on reputation effects within informal social networks offer an alternative. Moving beyond mere existence proofs that institutions matter, the review then discusses recent advances in understanding the precise mechanisms responsible for the persistent effects of institutions on economic development.