Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Timothy Besley is the School Professor of Economics and Political Science at the London School of Economics and Political Science. Torsten Persson is the Torsten and Ragnar Söderberg Chair in Economic Sciences and professor of economics at the Institute for International Economic Studies, Stockholm University.

Von der hinteren Coverseite

"This book is a must-read for any serious student of development economics and political economy. Besley and Persson provide a rich framework for understanding the evolution of economic, legal, and political institutions, and rightly place the state at its center. Their emphasis on fiscal and legal capacity and political violence is particularly apt. This work will inspire, motivate, and challenge many generations of researchers and students."--Daron Acemoglu, Massachusetts Institute of Technology

"Pillars of Prosperity is a landmark analysis of political economy. It provides the first rigorous foundations for the emergence of the effective states needed for development. In the process, this book opens many paths for new research."--Paul Collier, Centre for the Study of African Economies, University of Oxford

"For much of the poor world, economic development is not about resources but about state capacity. Without an understanding of what makes an effective state, aid is as likely to harm as to help, and millions are doomed to cycles of poverty and violence. In Pillars of Prosperity, two of the world's leading political economists bring together the economics and politics of development. This book will fundamentally reshape debates about global poverty and foreign aid."--Angus Deaton, Princeton University

"Why are some countries rich and peaceful while others are poor and prone to political violence? This book is an ambitious attempt to cut theoretically into the Gordian knots of reciprocal causation that make progress on answering this question so hard won. Besley and Persson develop an original approach to examining state decisions to develop fiscal and legal capacity, along with decisions bearing on political repression and violence, within a single theoretical framework."--James Fearon, Stanford University

"With an elegant and sophisticated series of models, this book illuminates the processes that cause prosperity and political order to develop together. Offering powerful insights into the divergent paths countries have taken, it is a major contribution to the fields of political economy and development economics."--Daniel Treisman, author ofThe Return: Russia's Journey from Gorbachev to Medvedev

Aus dem Klappentext

"This book is a must-read for any serious student of development economics and political economy. Besley and Persson provide a rich framework for understanding the evolution of economic, legal, and political institutions, and rightly place the state at its center. Their emphasis on fiscal and legal capacity and political violence is particularly apt. This work will inspire, motivate, and challenge many generations of researchers and students."--Daron Acemoglu, Massachusetts Institute of Technology

"Pillars of Prosperity is a landmark analysis of political economy. It provides the first rigorous foundations for the emergence of the effective states needed for development. In the process, this book opens many paths for new research."--Paul Collier, Centre for the Study of African Economies, University of Oxford

"For much of the poor world, economic development is not about resources but about state capacity. Without an understanding of what makes an effective state, aid is as likely to harm as to help, and millions are doomed to cycles of poverty and violence. In Pillars of Prosperity, two of the world's leading political economists bring together the economics and politics of development. This book will fundamentally reshape debates about global poverty and foreign aid."--Angus Deaton, Princeton University

"Why are some countries rich and peaceful while others are poor and prone to political violence? This book is an ambitious attempt to cut theoretically into the Gordian knots of reciprocal causation that make progress on answering this question so hard won. Besley and Persson develop an original approach to examining state decisions to develop fiscal and legal capacity, along with decisions bearing on political repression and violence, within a single theoretical framework."--James Fearon, Stanford University

"With an elegant and sophisticated series of models, this book illuminates the processes that cause prosperity and political order to develop together. Offering powerful insights into the divergent paths countries have taken, it is a major contribution to the fields of political economy and development economics."--Daniel Treisman, author ofThe Return: Russia's Journey from Gorbachev to Medvedev

Auszug. © Genehmigter Nachdruck. Alle Rechte vorbehalten.

Pillars of Prosperity

PRINCETON UNIVERSITY PRESS

Contents

Series Foreword......................................ixPreface..............................................xiCHAPTER 1 Development Clusters.......................1CHAPTER 2 Fiscal Capacity............................40CHAPTER 3 Legal Capacity.............................103CHAPTER 4 Political Violence.........................169CHAPTER 5 State Spaces...............................215CHAPTER 6 Development Assistance.....................237CHAPTER 7 Political Reform...........................259CHAPTER 8 Lessons Learned............................302References...........................................333Name Index...........................................357Subject Index........................................363

Chapter One

Little else is required to carry a state to the highest degree of opulence from the lowest barbarism, but peace, easy taxes, and a tolerable administration of justice, all the rest being brought about by the natural course of things. Adam Smith, 1755

Almost all economic analyses presume the existence of an effective state. Specifically, economists invoke the existence of an authority that can tax, enforce contracts, and organize public spending for a wide range of activities. We then study concepts such as market failure and the state's response to it, the provision of public goods, and optimal taxation for the funding of state activities. But many of the major developments in world history have been about creating this starting point. Arguably, the situation presumed by economists is relevant only to the past 100 years of history for a fairly small group of rich countries.

The effective state is not only of historical interest. A tour of the developing world today rapidly confirms that the building of a state capable of taxing, spending effectively, and enforcing contracts remains a huge challenge. Weak and failing states are a fact of life and a source of human misery and global disorder.

These observations are especially poignant because income per head in the world's richest countries is about 200 times higher than in the poorest. This enormous income gap is certainly one of the most pressing issues facing humanity. Why some countries are rich and others poor is indeed a classic research question not only in economics, but in other social sciences such as economic history and political science as well. To better grasp the roots of wealth or poverty of nations is interesting in and of itself. But these roots are also of paramount importance for donors seeking to improve the lot of poor communities through various forms of development assistance.

It has long been understood that economic development is about much more than rising incomes. Indeed, state effectiveness is now given center stage in practical policymaking, with a greater focus on how to deal with countries hobbled by weak, fragile, or failed states. A number of national and international actors—such as the World Bank, the European Union, DFID in the United Kingdom, and SIDA in Sweden—have recently launched initiatives targeted toward such problem states.

Specific Indexes of State Weakness and Fragility Alternative attempts have been made to map the problem empirically, relying on a variety of measurable indicators. Figures 1.1 and 1.2 illustrate two specific indexes of state fragility/weakness, namely the Brookings Institution's Index of State Weakness for all but the richest countries in 2008 and the Polity IV project's State Fragility Index for all countries in 2009. Both of these maps illustrate the underlying classification on a gray scale. Specifically, the countries in the decile with the weakest or most fragile countries are colored in black, whereas deciles higher up in the classification are marked on a sliding gray scale, with white denoting the decile with the strongest states (missing countries are marked by a hatch pattern).

Although the precise classifications behind the indexes differ, both studies find that some 40–50 states suffer from serious weakness or fragility, with the strongest concentrations in Sub-Saharan Africa and South and Central Asia. Of course, there is no general agreement on exactly what defines a weak or fragile state. The State Fragility Index, e.g., is derived by aggregating indicators in eight dimensions, aimed at capturing the effectiveness and legitimacy of the state in the security, political, economic, and social spheres.

A closer look at the underlying indicators raises a number of issues. Economic legitimacy is measured by the export share in manufacturing, but exactly how to read this indicator is unclear. Leadership duration is the indicator for political effectiveness, where the direction of the relation is also opaque. Although these may seem like minor quibbles, they touch upon a deeper issue in understanding state fragility—the need to distinguish carefully between symptoms and causes. But this is next to impossible absent a properly developed conceptual framework. These questions notwithstanding, the indexes in Figures 1.1 and 1.2 clearly bring home one point on which we certainly can agree: state fragility (or state weakness) is inherently a multidimensional concept.

A Challenging Agenda This book offers an approach to studying weak or fragile states, taking a first step toward bringing them into mainstream economic analyses. It is the hallmark of mature science that existing ideas should be expanded into new domains. We proceed in this spirit by using more-or-less standard ideas and methods to study the basics of state building. A key issue is to understand what creates effective states.

Central to our approach is the idea of complementarities. As shown in what follows, almost all dimensions of state development and effectiveness are positively correlated. Moreover, historical accounts demonstrate vividly that state authority, tax systems, court systems, and democracy coevolve in a complex web of interdependent causality. Simplistic stories that try to paste in unidirectional pathways are thus bound to fail.

However, this complexity does not mean that a quantitative approach of theorizing and looking at data is hopeless. On the contrary, we argue throughout the book that building models as stripped-down representations of reality provides useful windows onto complex processes, which allow us to see particular features more clearly. Furthermore, looking at data and trying to codify empirical regularities does more than simply breathe life into the narrative. The data play a central role in developing our thinking about what is important and what can be observed. Indeed, the modeling we put forward is structured around variables and magnitudes that can be both theoretically defined and, in principle, empirically measured. This disciplines the theory and extends the domain of its applicability.

This introductory chapter lays out many of our main ideas in brief but accessible form. It is also an opportunity to review some of the historical evidence and discuss some narrative accounts of development that shape our thinking. But we do not intend our review to be exhaustive. Our primary aim is to demonstrate a strong link between our work, with its clear roots in mainstream economics, and research within...