The Long Process of Development
Building Markets and States in Pre-industrial England, Spain and their Colonies

This groundbreaking book examines the history of Spain, England, the United States, and Mexico to explain why development takes centuries.

Jerry F. Hough (Author), Robin Grier (Author)

9781107670419, Cambridge University Press

Paperback / softback, published 30 April 2015

460 pages, 2 b/w illus. 4 tables
22.9 x 15.2 x 2.4 cm, 0.61 kg

'It may sound obvious and trite, yet it is the most underappreciated fact of comparative development: constructing effective states takes time - a very long time. As Jerry Hough and Robin Grier show, the process took more than four centuries in England and Spain. Their analytical history sheds light on why the norms and practices that sustain modern states require long periods of gestation to become solidly entrenched. This is a book with critical implications for today's state-building efforts in the developing world. It warns us not to expect miracles and teaches us that chance, contingency and time all play a larger role than we typically allow.' Dani Rodrik, Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton

Douglass North once emphasized that development takes centuries, but he did not have a theory of how and why change occurs. This groundbreaking book advances such a theory by examining in detail why England and Spain developed so slowly from 1000 to 1800. A colonial legacy must go back centuries before settlement, and this book points to key events in England and Spain in the 1260s to explain why Mexico lagged behind the United States economically in the twentieth century. Based on the integration of North's institutional approach with Mancur Olson's collective action theory, Max Weber's theory of value change, and North's focus on dominant coalitions based on rent and military in In the Shadow of Violence, this theory of change leads to exciting new historical interpretations, including the crucial role of the merchant-navy alliance in England and the key role of George Washington's control of the military in 1787.

1. Introduction
2. The collective-action difficulties of creating an effective state
3. The pre-state of England and Spain: the importance of man-made geography
4. The early state in England and Spain
5. The minimally effective state
6. The truly effective state
7. English and Spanish colonial policies
8. The English colonies
9. Colonial Mexico
10. The collective-action problems of the formation of the United States
11. The collective-action problems of the formation of Mexico
12. The implications for development theory.

Subject Areas: Economic history [KCZ], Political economy [KCP], Economic theory & philosophy [KCA]