Organizing a Kingdom

Charles Angelucci, Simone Meraglia and Nico Voigtländer

No 32542, NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc

Abstract: We develop a framework to examine the organizational challenges faced by central rulers whose large territories require delegating administrative power to distant rural or urban elites. These elites have distinct policy preferences and vary in their economic importance. The ruler’s organizational choices balance a trade-off: allowing elites to adapt to local and common shocks while maintaining coordination across the realm. We show that as urban economic potential grows, the ruler transfers administrative control over towns from landed to urban elites, particularly when all players’ preferences are aligned. When towns are administratively autonomous, the ruler summons them to central assemblies to ensure effective communication and coordination. This mechanism can explain how, during the Commercial Revolution, European merchant elites gained nationwide political clout in parliament by first obtaining control over urban administrations. We provide empirical evidence for our core mechanisms and discuss how the model applies to other historical dynamics (ancient Rome and Spanish America), as well as to contemporary organizational problems.

JEL-codes: D02 D72 D73 N43 N93 O43 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2024-06
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-gro and nep-his
Note: DAE POL
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.nber.org/papers/w32542.pdf (application/pdf)
Access to the full text is generally limited to series subscribers, however if the top level domain of the client browser is in a developing country or transition economy free access is provided. More information about subscriptions and free access is available at http://www.nber.org/wwphelp.html. Free access is also available to older working papers.

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:32542

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
http://www.nber.org/papers/w32542
The price is Paper copy available by mail.

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 ().