Where Does Economic Development Really Come From? Constitutional Rule among the Contemporary Sioux and Apache

Stephen Cornell and Joseph P Kalt

Economic Inquiry, 1995, vol. 33, issue 3, 402-26

Abstract: Governments are public goods that provide the organizational and legal structures by which societies arrange and enforce 'rules of the game' that enable divisions of labor, exchange, and collective action. The authors argue that shared, preconstitutional cultural norms of political legitimacy among rational individuals provide the foundations of effective self-government. The performance of contemporary Apache and Sioux economies on Indian reservations governed by common federally imposed constitutions is examined to test the framework. Unlike the impoverished Sioux, the relatively successful Apaches are found to have preexisting political norms that (serendipidously) match the structure of their formal constitution. Copyright 1995 by Oxford University Press.

Date: 1995
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