Why Not Taxation and Representation? A Note on the American Revolution

Sebastian Galiani and Gustavo Torrens

No 22724, NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc

Abstract: Why did the most prosperous colonies in the British Empire mount a rebellion? Even more puzzling, why didn’t the British agree to have American representation in Parliament and quickly settle the dispute peacefully? At first glance, it would appear that a deal could have been reached to share the costs of the global public goods provided by the Empire in exchange for more political autonomy and/or formal representation for the colonies. (At least, this was the view of men of the time such as Lord Chapman, Thomas Pownall and Adam Smith.) We argue, however, that the incumbent government in Great Britain, controlled by the landed gentry, feared that giving political concessions to the colonies would undermine the position of the dominant coalition, strengthen the incipient democratic movement, and intensify social pressures for the reform of a political system based on land ownership. In particular, allowing Americans to be represented in Parliament was problematic because American elites could not credibly commit to refuse to form a coalition with the British opposition. Consequently, the only realistic options were to maintain the original colonial status or fight a full-scale war of independence.

JEL-codes: D74 N41 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2016-10
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-his, nep-hpe and nep-pol
Note: DEV
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Published as "Why not taxation and representation? A note on the American Revolution." Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization, Volume 166, 2019, pages 28-52

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.nber.org/papers/w22724.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:nbr:nberwo:22724

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
http://www.nber.org/papers/w22724

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc National Bureau of Economic Research, 1050 Massachusetts Avenue Cambridge, MA 02138, U.S.A.. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by ().