History as a laboratory to better understand the formation of institutions

Abstract

A main instrument for better understanding the formation of institutions, and explaining the differences in their long-run development between periods and societies, would be to use history as a laboratory, allowing us to test the hypotheses developed in the social sciences. This paper discusses the study by Douglas Allen, The Institutional Revolution, in that context, in order to identify some of the pitfalls in the current attempts by economists to use historical analysis. Next, the paper places his English case into a comparative perspective, helped by the recent insights gained by economic and social history, to see how these pitfalls can be avoided. Based on this, I argue for comparisons at the regional, national and global levels, and for a multidimensional view which includes social contextualization, combined with an open eye for discontinuity in long-run patterns, in order to avoid one-dimensional and teleological approaches to institutional change. *

Understanding the economics of limited access orders: incentives, organizations and the chronology of developments

“…We have noted that guilds, town communities, village communities and charitable organizations were founded in large numbers in Western Europe from the 11th century onwards (De Moor, 2008). Their heyday as independent bodies was in the 13th to 16th centuries, and can be situated more specifically in Italy and, next, the Low Countries, where their position was strongest and most pronounced, as most clearly with the town communities (Jones, 1997; van Bavel, 2015).…”

Medieval Roots of the Modern State: The Conditional Effects of Geopolitical Pressure on Early Modern State Building

“…Several generations of historians have emphasized that the European state-building process was shaped by horizontal links based on strong communities (e.g., Blickle 1997; Genet 1992, 1998: 7; Hariss 1993; Reynolds 1997 [1984], 2012; Van Bavel 2015: 85). To quote Genet (1992: 125): The “modern” state was not built on a tabula rasa , and corporate bodies and communities of all kinds were in existence long before its appearance.…”

“…2.According to Tocqueville, the medieval institutions of self-government were to a large extent staffed and controlled by the aristocracy, the group he saw as making up the main bulwark against arbitrary monarchical power. Later research has shown that in many parts of medieval Europe—particularly in Northern Italy and the Low Countries—it was not nobles but merchants, members of guilds, or even wealthy peasants that staffed the local institutions (Van Bavel 2015: 80–81). This does not alter the point that the intermediary institutions singled out by Tocqueville served to check the monarchical exercise of power.…”

The Darwinian dynamic of sexual selection that Thorstein Veblen missed and its relevance to institutional economics

“…Nevertheless, a sense of its potential character might be garnered from a glimpse at the manner in which institutions evolved to channel sexual selection during early human history. History can, as Bas van Bavel (2015) reminds us, serve as a laboratory for better understanding institutional change.…”