Medieval European traditions in representation and state capacity today

Jamie Bologna Pavlik () and Andrew T. Young ()
Additional contact information
Jamie Bologna Pavlik: Texas Tech University
Andrew T. Young: Texas Tech University

Economics of Governance, 2020, vol. 21, issue 2, No 3, 133-186

Abstract: Abstract Rich economies are characterized by the coincidence of, on the one hand, high state capacity and, on the other, well-functioning markets and the rule of law. They have states that are powerful and centralized and yet also limited. Furthermore, relatively low rates of shadow economic activity and tax evasion suggest that citizens perceive their states’ limitations to be credible. This suggests that a state’s ability to be credibly limited may facilitate its investments in state capacity. Consistent with this, we explore the potential link between historical traditions of representative governance institutions and state capacity today. We report that medieval and early modern representative assembly experiences positively correlate with higher tax revenues, smaller shadow economies, greater state control of violence and yet fewer state resources dedicated to violence. Relative to tax revenues, the evidence regarding shadow economies and violence is more robust to various controls and samples.

Keywords: Representative assemblies; State capacity; Political economy; Medieval Europe; Institutions; Property rights; Rule of law; Growth and development (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D72 O10 O43 P14 P16 P48 P50 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (9)

Downloads: (external link)
http://link.springer.com/10.1007/s10101-020-00236-5 Abstract (text/html)
Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.

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:spr:ecogov:v:21:y:2020:i:2:d:10.1007_s10101-020-00236-5

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.springer. ... cs/journal/10101/PS2

DOI: 10.1007/s10101-020-00236-5

Access Statistics for this article

Economics of Governance is currently edited by Amihai Glazer and Marko Koethenbuerger

More articles in Economics of Governance from Springer
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().