Principal Agent Relations and the Decline of the Royal African Company

Norton, Matthew

doi:10.1108/s0198-871920150000029003

Cited by 7 publications

(5 citation statements)

References 20 publications

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“…The Company was itself troubled by an uncertain and shifting policy environment (Bogart 2016) that impacted control efforts. Similar conditions plagued the other great chartered companies of the seventeenth century (Adams 1996; Carlos and Nicholas 1990; Carlos 1992; Norton 2015), but these companies were eventually able to create systems capable of effectively bringing agents behavior in line with the interests of the firm (Carlos 1994; Carlos and Hejeebu 2007; Carlos and Nicholas 1993).…”

Section: Changes In Institutional Contextmentioning

confidence: 99%

Networks, Institutions, and Uncertainty: Information Exchange in Early-Modern Markets

Erikson

Samila

2018

J. Econ. Hist.

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We analyze patterns of informal information exchange by the English East India Company’s captains to assess the role of relational and institutional governance systems and uncertainty in encouraging information exchange. Using archival data from the emerging early-modern global trade network, we show that uncertainty drove information exchange. Relational-based contract enforcement mechanisms such as small group exchange were largely absent, and increasing institutional strength was associated with decreasing rates of information exchange. The results suggest that opportunity and demand were more important determinants of information exchange than the emergence of formal and informal governance systems.

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Section: Changes In Institutional Contextmentioning

confidence: 99%

Networks, Institutions, and Uncertainty: Information Exchange in Early-Modern Markets

Erikson

Samila

2018

J. Econ. Hist.

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“…Company-states were run by a board of directors: the Heeren (Gentlemen) XVII for the VOC; the Heeren XIX for the WIC; the EIC Court of Directors; a Governor and seven Committeemen for the HBC. These boards ran a variety of more specialized committees, and delegated powers to agents in the field, who, thanks to the distances involved, often exercised great autonomy (Adams, 1996; Carlos and Nicholas, 1993, 1996; Erikson and Bearman, 2006; Norton, 2015; Wagner, 2018).…”

Section: What Were the Company-states?mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…It gradually expanded westwards from the eponymous bay, eventually reaching the Pacific. Just as the success of the VOC encouraged the creation of the WIC, so too the profits of the EIC tempted both Charles II and English private investors to wager on the HBC (and the English Royal African Company too; Pettigrew, 2013; Norton, 2015; Wagner, 2018). As with its predecessors, the HBC was forbidden to make war on European powers without permission, but was allowed to do so against indigenous polities.…”

Section: Explaining the Success Of The Company-states In European Expmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The company-states also proved superior at mitigating the principal-agent challenges entailed in long-distance trade and rule (Adams, 1996; Berg et al 2015; Carlos, 1992; Carlos and Nicholas, 1993, 1996; Blussé and Gaastra, 1981; Norton, 2015). This distinguished them from European sovereign state rivals such as the Portuguese Estado da India , which otherwise likewise enjoyed the advantages of internalized protection costs and institutional longevity.…”

Section: Explaining the Success Of The Company-states In European Expmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Company-states and the creation of the global international system

Phillips

Sharman

2020

European Journal of International Relations

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We investigate the nature and significance of the vital but neglected “company-states” in helping to facilitate the move from contained regional international systems to the first genuinely global international system. Historically, actors like the Dutch and English East India Companies were crucial in spearheading the first wave of European expansion in Asia, Africa, and the Americas. Conceptually, company-states broaden our understanding of international actors. At a time when intra-European politics favored gradual institutional convergence on the sovereign state, the demands of extra-European expansion meanwhile gave rise to diverse competing institutions. Company-states succeeded in an era of weak sovereign states because of their relative efficiency in managing the transaction costs and principal-agent challenges of intercontinental trade and rule. Conversely, company-states later declined as they succumbed to the effects of sharpening worldwide geopolitical competition, and were displaced by increasingly powerful new European empire-building projects. This argument advances earlier work on the creation of the international system by eschewing Eurocentrism and state-centrism, and foregrounding diversity and hybridization.

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“…A broader account of agency theory suggests that the recurrence of agency problems can serve as a theoretical frame for understanding a wide variety of power situations (Adams 1996(Adams , 2010(Adams , 2011Norton 2015;Reed 2017;Shapiro 2005). Building on this work, we can view state-formation as the emergence of a solution to the problem of how a small set of principals (rulers) can secure and ensure that their agents (staff, allied elites) enforce the rulers' will and maintain the rulers' legitimacy (to some degree) over the general population, under varying threat from opponents (Tyson 2018).…”

Section: State-formation As the Resolution Of Agency Problems: Three mentioning

confidence: 99%

Performative State-Formation in the Early American Republic

Reed

2019

Am Sociol Rev

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How do proto-state organizations achieve an initial accumulation of power, such that they are in a position to grow (or shrink) as an organization, maintain their prestige (or lose it), and be viewed, by elite and populace, as something real and consequential that can be argued about, supported, or attacked? This article argues that state-formation has a performative dimension, in which the publicity of acts of violence, coercion, and negotiation made by agents of the proto-state, and the variable interpretation of these acts, are paramount to the state’s success (or failure) and developing character. In the model developed here, agents of a would-be state act in response to emergencies, and when public interpretations of those actions assign their character and effectiveness to “the state,” the state is performed into being. In particular, public performance solves, in part, agency problems obtaining between state rulers and their staff and elite allies. The formation of the federal government in the early American republic (1783 to 1801), whose success is insufficiently accounted for by extant theory, provides an opportunity to develop a model of the performative dimension of state-formation.

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Principal Agent Relations and the Decline of the Royal African Company

Cited by 7 publications

References 20 publications

Networks, Institutions, and Uncertainty: Information Exchange in Early-Modern Markets

Networks, Institutions, and Uncertainty: Information Exchange in Early-Modern Markets

Company-states and the creation of the global international system

Performative State-Formation in the Early American Republic

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