IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/spr/ecogov/v1y2000i1p25-51.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Property rights and the evolution of the state

Author

Listed:
  • Yoram Barzel

Abstract

Using property-rights tools, this paper develops a theory of the transition from despotic to rule-of-law regimes, relying on the notion that rulers and subjects are interested in maximizing wealth. Keeping subjects in check enhances despots' internal security, but at the cost of lower output, and of less wealth for the despots. Enhanced wealth is especially valuable for protection against outside threat. Subjects will increase output only if provided with rights to, for example, ownership, movement, and voting. Despots can guarantee them these rights by relinquishing some of their own power. Copyright Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2000

Suggested Citation

  • Yoram Barzel, 2000. "Property rights and the evolution of the state," Economics of Governance, Springer, vol. 1(1), pages 25-51, March.
  • Handle: RePEc:spr:ecogov:v:1:y:2000:i:1:p:25-51
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    To our knowledge, this item is not available for download. To find whether it is available, there are three options:
    1. Check below whether another version of this item is available online.
    2. Check on the provider's web page whether it is in fact available.
    3. Perform a search for a similarly titled item that would be available.

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Yoram Barzel & Edgar Kiser, 2002. "Taxation and Voting Rights in Medieval England and France," Rationality and Society, , vol. 14(4), pages 473-507, November.
    2. Elert, Niklas & Henrekson, Magnus, 2017. "Entrepreneurship and Institutions: A Bidirectional Relationship," Working Paper Series 1153, Research Institute of Industrial Economics, revised 05 May 2017.
    3. Clive E. Coetzee & Ewert P. J. Kleynhans, 2017. "Economic Freedom and Economic Growth in South Africa," Managing Global Transitions, University of Primorska, Faculty of Management Koper, vol. 15(2 (Summer), pages 169-185.
    4. Robert Fleck & F. Hanssen, 2009. "“Rulers ruled by women”: an economic analysis of the rise and fall of women’s rights in ancient Sparta," Economics of Governance, Springer, vol. 10(3), pages 221-245, July.
    5. Jeremy Horpedahl, 2011. "Political exchange and the voting franchise: universal democracy as an emergent process," Constitutional Political Economy, Springer, vol. 22(3), pages 203-220, September.
    6. Allen, Douglas W., 2009. "A theory of the pre-modern British aristocracy," Explorations in Economic History, Elsevier, vol. 46(3), pages 299-313, July.
    7. Kai Konrad & Wolfgang Leininger, 2011. "Self-enforcing norms and efficient non-cooperative collective action in the provision of public goods," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 146(3), pages 501-520, March.
    8. Carl Lyttkens, 2006. "Reflections on the Origins of the Polis," Constitutional Political Economy, Springer, vol. 17(1), pages 31-48, March.
    9. Mark Koyama, 2010. "The political economy of expulsion: the regulation of Jewish moneylending in medieval England," Constitutional Political Economy, Springer, vol. 21(4), pages 374-406, December.
    10. Peter J. Boettke & Rosolino A. Candela, 2020. "Productive specialization, peaceful cooperation and the problem of the predatory state: lessons from comparative historical political economy," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 182(3), pages 331-352, March.
    11. Nagase, Yoko & Uehara, Takuro, 2011. "Evolution of population-resource dynamics models," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 72(C), pages 9-17.
    12. Judit Kapás & Pál Czeglédi, 2007. "Economic Freedom: Theory First, Empiricism After," ICER Working Papers 10-2007, ICER - International Centre for Economic Research.
    13. Stefan Voigt, 2011. "Positive constitutional economics II—a survey of recent developments," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 146(1), pages 205-256, January.
    14. Elert, Niklas & Henrekson, Magnus, 2016. "Status Quo Institutions and the Benefits of Institutional Deviations," Working Paper Series 1144, Research Institute of Industrial Economics, revised 15 Mar 2017.
    15. Jamie Bologna Pavlik & Andrew T. Young, 2020. "Medieval European traditions in representation and state capacity today," Economics of Governance, Springer, vol. 21(2), pages 133-186, June.
    16. Byungwon Woo & Daniel Verdier, 2020. "A unifying theory of positive and negative incentives in international relations: sanctions, rewards, regime types, and compliance," Economics of Governance, Springer, vol. 21(3), pages 215-236, September.
    17. Peter J. Boettke & Henry A. Thompson, 2022. "Identity and off-diagonals: how permanent winning coalitions destroy democratic governance," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 191(3), pages 483-499, June.
    18. Robert K. Fleck & F. Andrew Hanssen, 2013. "How Tyranny Paved the Way to Democracy: The Democratic Transition in Ancient Greece," Journal of Law and Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 56(2), pages 389-416.
    19. Casey B. Mulligan & Kevin K. Tsui, 2006. "Political Competitiveness," NBER Working Papers 12653, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    20. Rosolino A. Candela & Vincent J. Geloso, 2021. "Trade or raid: Acadian settlers and native Americans before 1755," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 188(3), pages 549-575, September.
    21. Gregory W. Caskey & Ilia Murtazashvili, 2022. "The predatory state and coercive assimilation: The case of the Uyghurs in Xinjiang," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 191(1), pages 217-235, April.
    22. Óscar Gutiérrez & Marco Martínez-Esteller, 2022. "Tax collection in the Roman Empire: a new institutional economics approach," Constitutional Political Economy, Springer, vol. 33(3), pages 378-401, September.
    23. Grossman, Herschel I., 2002. ""Make us a king": anarchy, predation, and the state," European Journal of Political Economy, Elsevier, vol. 18(1), pages 31-46, March.
    24. F. Andrew Hanssen, 2004. "Is There a Politically Optimal Level of Judicial Independence?," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 94(3), pages 712-729, June.
    25. Kapas Judit & Czegledi Pal, 2010. "Economic Freedom and Government: A Conceptual Framework," Journal des Economistes et des Etudes Humaines, De Gruyter, vol. 16(1), pages 1-26, October.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:spr:ecogov:v:1:y:2000:i:1:p:25-51. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Sonal Shukla or Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.springer.com .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.