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Political Elites, Urban Institutions And Long-Run Persistence : The King Owned Towns

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  • Elisa Borghi
  • Donato Masciandaro

Abstract

We explore the long run socio-economic impact of a medieval urban governance setting , the king-owned towns (KOTs). For a town the KOT status implies special fiscal, commercial and administrative prerogatives between the community and the Crown, where such as status could be renovated, modified or suspended. Researchers have tested the persistence effect of urban governance by comparing free city-states (communes) and feudal towns in Italy, Germany, Switzerland and the United Kingdom. This paper explores the KOTs as a third and novel category. The KOTs case is analysed using the southern Italy case, where the Kingdom of Naples delegated jurisdictional and fiscal powers to towns’ ruling classes – nobles and commoners - thereby creating a self-governance setting in which community representatives took collective decisions, including the systematic implementation of rights negotiations with the Crown, that shaped the evolution of their towns’ municipal statutes. This peculiar collective action can strengthen the persistence effect. Empirically, we find that a town’s past king owned experience is correlated with five centuries later outcomes, in terms of both economic performance and civil capital. Our results suggest that KOT status is more similar to commune experience than to fief experience, being a device to develop collective decision skills; at the same time, the unstable nature of the KOT status inhibited the strengthening of these capacities in the local communities.

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  • Elisa Borghi & Donato Masciandaro, 2023. "Political Elites, Urban Institutions And Long-Run Persistence : The King Owned Towns," BAFFI CAREFIN Working Papers 23193, BAFFI CAREFIN, Centre for Applied Research on International Markets Banking Finance and Regulation, Universita' Bocconi, Milano, Italy.
    • Handle: RePEc:baf:cbafwp:cbafwp23193
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    More about this item

    Keywords

    urban governance; political elites; long-run persistence; economic history; culture; economic geography; Italy;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • D72 - Microeconomics - - Analysis of Collective Decision-Making - - - Political Processes: Rent-seeking, Lobbying, Elections, Legislatures, and Voting Behavior
    • H10 - Public Economics - - Structure and Scope of Government - - - General
    • N44 - Economic History - - Government, War, Law, International Relations, and Regulation - - - Europe: 1913-
    • O43 - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth - - Economic Growth and Aggregate Productivity - - - Institutions and Growth
    • O52 - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth - - Economywide Country Studies - - - Europe
    • K00 - Law and Economics - - General - - - General (including Data Sources and Description)
    • R10 - Urban, Rural, Regional, Real Estate, and Transportation Economics - - General Regional Economics - - - General

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