国家为什么会失败

• [已注销]

  2013-04-26
  At the time of the Industrial Revolution, in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, the political map of Europe was quite different from how it is today. The Holy Roman Empire, a patchwork quilt of more than four hundred polities, most of which would eventually coalesce into Germany, occupied most of Central Europe. The House of Habsburg was still a major political force, and its empire, known as the Habsburg or Austro-Hungarian Empire, spread over a vast area of around 250,000 square miles, even if it no longer included Spain, after the Bourbons had taken over the Spanish throne in 1700. In terms of population, it was the third-largest state in Europe and comprised oneseventh of the population of Europe. In the late eighteenth century the Habsburg lands included, in the west, what...
• [已注销]

  2013-04-26
  The merger of the crowns of Castile and Aragon and subsequent dynastic marriages and inheritances created a European superstate. Isabella died in 1504, and her daughter Joanna was crowned queen of Castile. Joanna was married to Philip of the House of Habsburg, the son of the emperor of the Holy Roman Empire, Maximilian I. In 1516 Charles, Joanna and Philip’s son, was crowned Charles I of Castile and Aragon. When his father died, Charles inherited the Netherlands and Franche-Comté, which he added to his territories in Iberia and the Americas. In 1519, when Maximilian I died, Charles also inherited the Habsburg territories in Germany and became Emperor Charles V of the Holy Roman Empire. What had been a merger of two Spanish kingdoms in 1492 became a multicontinental empire, and Charles cont...
• [已注销]

  2013-04-26
  But there were other ways to influence Parliament and thus economic institutions. The most important was via petitioning, and this was much more significant than the limited extent of democracy for the emergence of pluralism after the Glorious Revolution. Anybody could petition Parliament, and petition they did. Significantly, when people petitioned, Parliament listened. It is this more than anything that reflects the defeat of absolutism, the empowerment of a fairly broad segment of society, and the rise of pluralism in England after 1688. The frantic petitioning activity shows that it was indeed such a broad group in society, far beyond those sitting or even being represented in Parliament, that had the power to influence the way the state worked. And they used it.Along with this new lo...
• [已注销]

  2013-04-26
  The first was increasing political centralization, put into motion by the Tudors. After 1485 Henry VII disarmed the aristocracy, in effect demilitarizing them and thereby massively expanding the power of the central state. His son, Henry VIII, then implemented through his chief minister, Thomas Cromwell, a revolution in government. In the 1530s, Cromwell introduced a nascent bureaucratic state. Instead of the government being just the private household of the king, it could become a separate set of enduring institutions. This was complemented by Henry VIII’s break with the Roman Catholic Church and the “Dissolution of the Monasteries,” in which Henry expropriated all the Church lands. The removal of the power of the Church was part of making the state more centralized. This centralization ...
• [已注销]

  2013-04-26
  Rome’s armies during the Republic consisted of citizen-soldiers who were small landowners, first in Rome and later in other parts of Italy. Traditionally they fought in the army when necessary and then returned to their plots. As Rome expanded and the campaigns got longer, this model ceased to work. Soldiers were away from their plots for years at a time, and many landholdings fell into disuse. The soldiers’ families sometimes found themselves under mountains of debt and on the brink of starvation. Many of the plots were therefore gradually abandoned, and absorbed by the estates of the senators. As the senatorial class got richer and richer, the large mass of landless citizens gathered in Rome, often after being decommissioned from the army. With no land to return to, they sought work in R...
• [已注销]

  2013-04-26
  In order for sedentary life to emerge, it therefore seems plausible that hunter-gatherers would have had to be forced to settle down, and this would have to have been preceded by an institutional innovation concentrating power in the hands of a group that would become the political elite, enforce property rights, maintain order, and also benefit from their status by extracting resources from the rest of society.Institutional changes occurred in societies quite a while before they made the transition to farming and were probably the cause both of the move to sedentarism, which reinforced the institutional changes, and subsequently of the Neolithic Revolution. This pattern is suggested not only by the evidence from the Hilly Flanks, which is the area most intensively studied, but also by th...
• [已注销]

  2013-04-25
  At the turn of the fourteenth century, Europe had a feudal order, an organization of society that first emerged in Western Europe after the collapse of the Roman Empire. It was based on a hierarchical relationship between the king and the lords beneath him, with the peasants at the bottom. The king owned the land and he granted it to the lords in exchange for military services. The lords then allocated land to peasants, in exchange for which peasants had to perform extensive unpaid labor and were subject to many fines and taxes. Peasants, who because of their “servile” status were thus called serfs, were tied to the land, unable to move elsewhere without the permission of their lord, who was not just the landlord, but also the judge, jury, and police force. It was a highly extractive syste...
• [已注销]

  2013-04-25
  Politics is the process by which a society chooses the rules that will govern it. Politics surrounds institutions for the simple reason that while inclusive institutions may be good for the economic prosperity of a nation, some people or groups, such as the elite of the Communist Party of North Korea or the sugar planters of colonial Barbados, will be much better off by setting up institutions that are extractive. When there is confliict over institutions, what happens depends on which people or group wins out in the game of politics—who can get more support, obtain additional resources, and form more effective alliances. In short, who wins depends on the distribution of political power in society.The political institutions of a society are a key determinant of the outcome of this game. T...
• [已注销]

  2013-04-25
  We call such institutions, which have opposite properties to those we call inclusive, extractive economic institutions—extractive because such institutions are designed to extract incomes and wealth from one subset of society to benefit a different subset.
• [已注销]

  2013-04-25
  Secure property rights, the law, public services, and the freedom to contract and exchange all rely on the state, the institution with the coercive capacity to impose order, prevent theft and fraud, and enforce contracts between private parties. To function well, society also needs other public services: roads and a transport network so that goods can be transported; a public infrastructure so that economic activity can flourish; and some type of basic regulation to prevent fraud and malfeasance. Though many of these public services can be provided by markets and private citizens, the degree of coordination necessary to do so on a large scale often eludes all but a central authority. The state is thus inexorably intertwined with economic institutions, as the enforcer of law and order, priv...
• [已注销]

  2013-04-25
  Inclusive economic institutions, such as those in South Korea or in the United States, are those that allow and encourage participation by the great mass of people in economic activities that make best use of their talents and skills and that enable individuals to make the choices they wish. To be inclusive, economic institutions must feature secure private property, an unbiased system of law, and a provision of public services that provides a level playing field in which people can exchange and contract; it also must permit the entry of new businesses and allow people to choose their careers.
• [已注销]

  2013-02-06
  No two societies create the same institutions; they will have distinct customs, different systems of property rights, and different ways of dividing a killed animal or loot stolen from another group. Some will recognize the authority of elders, others will not; some will achieve some degree of political centralization early on, but not others. Societies are constantly subject to economic and political conflict that is resolved in different ways because of specific historical differences, the role of individuals, or just random facts.
• [已注销]

  2012-12-21
  Pluralism, the cornerstone of inclusive political institutions, requires political power to be widely held in society, and starting from extractive institutions that vest power in a narrow elite, this requires a process of empowerment.
• 一锅脑浆粥

  2019-02-16
  辉格党政府不会放任不管。1723年5月，议会通过了《布莱克法案》，从而创造出另外50种可施绞刑的新罪行。《布莱克法案》规定携带武器甚至仅仅把脸涂黑也是犯罪。事实上，该法律不久又进行了修正，规定对脸涂黑者施以绞刑。辉格党精英们乐此不疲地实施这项法律。巴蒂斯特·纳恩在温莎森林设立了情报网以查出黑面人。很快，就有几个黑面人被捕，逮捕后便直截了当地处死。毕竟，《布莱克法案》已经实施，辉格党控制了议会，议会则掌控整个国家，黑面人的行为直接违背了有权有势的辉格党人的利益。甚至当时的国务大臣后来的首相罗伯特·沃波尔爵士（Sir Robert Walpole）也卷入其中，他与卡多根一样，是上院法官摄政委员会另一位颇有影响力的成员。他在伦敦西南的里士满庄园拥有既得利益，该庄园是查理一世在公共土地上建立起来的。这个庄园也剥夺了当地居民放牧牲畜、捕猎野兔和捡拾柴火的传统权利。但是，这些权利的剥夺似乎不那么明显，在沃波尔安排自己的儿子管理庄园之前，人们仍然可以放牧和狩猎。那时，新建了一堵墙，庄园被封闭起来，还布置了不少人工陷阱。沃波尔喜欢猎鹿，他给自己在庄园内的霍顿建了一个小屋。他的这一行为很快便激起当地黑面人的愤恨。
• 一锅脑浆粥

  2018-11-01
  就像制度影响现实生活中的行为和激励因素一样，它们会决定国家的成败。个人才能在社会的每个阶层都很重要，但是需要一个制度框架把它转化成积极的力量。比尔·盖茨，就像信息技术产业的其他优秀人物 「比如保罗·艾伦（Paul AIlen）、史蒂夫·鲍尔默（Steve Ballmer)、史蒂夫·乔布斯（Steve Jobs）、拉里·佩奇(Larry Page)，谢尔盖·布林（Sergey Brin）、杰夫·贝佐斯（Jeff Bezos）」 一样，具有很高的才能和抱负。但是，他最终是要对激励做出反应。美国的教体系能够让盖茨和其他像他一样的人，获得一系列独特的技能，实现他们的才能。美国的经济制度能够让这些人非常容易地开办公司，不会面对不可逾越的障碍。那些制度也使他们为自己的计划融资成为可能。美国的劳动力市场让他们能够雇用有资格的人才，相对而言更富竞争性的市场环境能够让他们扩大公司和产品市场。这些企业家从开始就对自己梦想的计划能够实现满怀信心：他们相信这些国家的制度和法制，无须担心财产安全。最终，政治制度确保了稳定性和持续性。一方面，他们确信不存在独裁者篡夺权力、改变游戏规则、征用财产、监禁他们或者威胁他们的生命或生活。另一方面、他们也确信，社会中没有特殊利益集团能够扭曲政府的做事方式，做出有害经济的行为，因为政治权力是既有限又足够广泛地分散，这使得创造出繁荣的激励因素的一系列经济制度能够出现。这本书将表明，尽管经济制度对决定一个国家的贫富非常重要，但是政治和政治制度决定了一个国家有什么样的经济制度。美国良好的经济制度源于1619年之后逐渐形成的政治制度。我们关于世界不平等的理论，表明了政治制度和经济制度如何相互影响，导致贫富的差距，以及世界的不同地区是如何最终形成了这些不同的制度。我们对美洲国家历史的简要回顾，让我们开始意识到政治和经济制度的力量。当前不同的制度模式深深植根于历史，因为一旦...
• 辉夜姬

  2014-04-18
  无知假说最后一个流行理论是无知假说，认为世界不平等的存在是因为我们或我们的统治者不知道如何让穷国变富裕。这是大多数经济学家抱持的看法，而他们的概念 则源自英国经济学家罗宾斯1953年提出的著名定义：“经济学是从目的与有替代用途的稀有手段间的关系，来研究人之行为的科学。”……市场经济是一个抽象概念，是用来描述一种所有个人与企业可以自由生产、购买和出售任何产品与服务的情况。…………那些经济政策之所以形成的原因是，恩克鲁玛必须用它们来收买政治支持，以维系他非民主的政权。……真正的原因是两国（美国&墨西哥）的总统与精英面对的不同制度限制。同样的，过去半世纪饱受不安全的财产权与经济制度危害而让大部分人民变穷的非洲国家，它们的领导人并非因为认为那些是好经济政策所以采用，而是因为他们可以牺牲他人图利自己并逃过制裁，或者因为他们认为那些政策是好的政治策略，可以借由收买重要精英阶层的支持而维系自己的权力。加纳总理布西亚1971年的经验，说明了无知假说会有多误导人。……和恩克鲁玛一样，他采用那些经济政策不是因为他“无知”，也不是相信那些政策对经济有好处、或者是发展国家的理想方法。选择那些政策是因为它们对政治有好处，让布西亚能够转移资源给政治权力强大的群体，例如在都会地区需要被满足的人。价格控制榨取农业，，把便宜的食物卖给都市选民，并创造收入供政府支出。…………布西亚的经验凸显一个事实，采用能减少市场失灵和鼓励经济成长的政策，最主要的障碍不是政治人物的无知，而是他们所处社会的政治与经济制度制造的诱因与限制。…………当国家打破带给它们贫穷的制度模式，努力踏上经济成长的道路时，那不是因为它们无知的领导人突然变得更有知识或比较不顾私利，也不是因为他们获得更高明的经济学家的建议。以中国为例，中国是从造成数亿人贫穷与饥饿的经济政策转向鼓励经济成长的政策，但正如我们稍后会更详细讨论到的，这个...
• f

  2013-01-07
  As we will show, poor countries are poor because those who have power make choices that create poverty. They get it wrong not by mistake or ignorance but on purpose. To understand this, you have to go beyond economics and expert advice on the best thing to do and, instead, study how decisions actually get made, who gets to make them, and why those people decide to do what they do. This is the study of politics and political processes. ... [A]chieving prosperity depends on solving some basic political problems. It is precisely because economics has assumed that political problems are solved that it has not been able to come up with a convincing explanation for world inequality. Explaining world inequality still needs economics to understand how different types of policies and social ar...
• sardine

  2013-05-31
  因为一三四六年在西欧的农民拥有的权利和自主权比起东欧农民多，黑死病造成西欧封建制度瓦解和东欧的第二次农奴制。由于东欧和西欧在十四世纪已开始分歧，十七世纪、十八世纪和十九世纪的新经济机会因此对不同部分的欧洲也有截然不同的意义。因为1600年英国的王室权利比法国和西班牙的王室弱，大西洋贸易便为英国打开了创造更多元化新制度的道路，反之却强化了法国和西班牙的王室权利。