The Success of the Embedded State in England

Leander Heldring, Davis Kedrosky, James A. Robinson and Matthias Weigand
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Leander Heldring: Northwestern University, Kellogg School of Management and NBER
Davis Kedrosky: Northwestern University, Economics
James A. Robinson: The University of Chicago, Harris School of Public Policy, Department of Political Science and NBER
Matthias Weigand: Harvard University

No 2026-60, Working Papers from Becker Friedman Institute for Research In Economics

Abstract: Many states exhibit high degrees of capacity without the fiscal resources necessary to fund a modern bureaucracy. We argue that they achieve this by exploiting features of the social structure of the societies they govern to motivate individuals to engage in bureaucratic and governance tasks without pay. We develop and illustrate the concept of the “Embedded State†using a unique survey of British urban government from 1835. Since British local authorities had few resources, only two-thirds of positions were paid. We first show that unpaid positions were significantly more productive than paid ones. We then show that unpaid positions conveyed prestige and were ‘stepping stone’ positions, provided different on-the-job incentives, and were taken up by the socio-economic elite. We also show that the successful Embedded State featured patronage and corruption and could not fully motivate unpaid bureaucrats to implement onerous tasks.

JEL-codes: D73 H11 H41 H50 N13 N43 N44 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 121 pages
Date: 2026
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-his
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