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By Gary W. Cox (Stanford University) and Sebastian M. Saiegh (University of California San Diego) On 7 December 2022, Peru's left-wing President Pedro Castillo attempted to dissolve Congress and establish a "government of exception." However, by the end of the day, he was ousted from power and subsequently arrested. During these events, the Peruvian stock … Continue reading Suffrage Reform and Financial Volatility: Reconsidering the Great Reform Act

By Bogdan G. Popescu Security concerns often demand the establishment of institutions in border areas that are different from the rest of the civilian territory. Scholars suggest that individuals residing in the frontier zone frequently experience distinct injustices as a result of state attempts to both defend the periphery and subjugate its inhabitants in the … Continue reading Beyond Lines of Demarcation: Borders as Buffers

By John Gerring (UT Austin), Brendan Apfeld (CVS Health), Tore Wig (University of Oslo), and Andreas Forø Tollefsen (University of Oslo and PRIO) At present, the future of democracy seems more uncertain than perhaps any time since the interwar period. Threats are apparent everywhere. Even so, the vast majority of countries remain fairly stable. Most … Continue reading The Deep Roots of Modern Democracy

By Eric Grynaviski and Sverrir Steinsson How did the state become the dominant polity in the international system? The predominant theory of state formation, advanced by Charles Tilly, holds that states formed because of warfare and competition. Conversely, a new strand of research (e.g. Anna Grzymala-Busse, David Kang and Chin-Hao Huang) has argued that state … Continue reading A bellicist theory of diffusion: State formation in Northern Europe

Law and Political Development Students of political development often privilege the study of power over the study of law. As Charles Tilly reminds us, “the central, tragic fact is simple: coercion works,” for, as Francis Fukuyama adds, predation “arise[s] naturally out of people’s basic predatory instincts.” Yet raw power has its limits. As “state-in-society” theorists … Continue reading Law and Political Development: Insights from the European Union

Why should a scholar of HPE be interested in the medieval period? Many contributions on this site have made powerful cases about the importance of the period. The key benefit, I would argue, is that it addresses many problems of endogeneity that have long affected the analysis of institutions. For instance, perhaps the leading paradigm … Continue reading Medieval Institutions: How The Analysis of Origins Inverts Some Key Causal Models

By Magnus B. Rasmussen and Carl Henrik Knutsen Some historical events turn out to have outsized legacies, with consequences reaching across the world and lasting for decades, even centuries. Well-known examples from modern history are the French Revolution, the 1885 Berlin Conference, and the Allied victory in WWII. These events shaped conflicts, political systems, and policy-making in … Continue reading Bolshevik Origins of Social Policies