TY - JOUR
T1 - Rights to the Realm
T2 - Reconsidering Western Political Development
AU - Salter, Alexander William
N1 - Publisher Copyright:
© 2015 American Political Science Association.
PY - 2015/12/23
Y1 - 2015/12/23
N2 - I explore how political property rights to revenues from governance relate to generality norms in governance. I do so by examining the rise of Western constitutional liberalism from the perspective of property rights economics and political economy. While it is true that Western political development has been the result of bargains between political elites (Congleton 2011), the implications of the fact that parties to these bargains historically were owners of the realm have been underappreciated. I argue the unintended consequence of these political bargains among owners of the realm was a de facto supermajority rule, approaching conceptual unanimity for those party to the bargains. In developing this argument I elaborate on the relationship between political and economic property rights, noting that while they were and will continue to be intertwined, there was a hierarchy of rights that became inverted over the course of elites' constitutional bargains.
AB - I explore how political property rights to revenues from governance relate to generality norms in governance. I do so by examining the rise of Western constitutional liberalism from the perspective of property rights economics and political economy. While it is true that Western political development has been the result of bargains between political elites (Congleton 2011), the implications of the fact that parties to these bargains historically were owners of the realm have been underappreciated. I argue the unintended consequence of these political bargains among owners of the realm was a de facto supermajority rule, approaching conceptual unanimity for those party to the bargains. In developing this argument I elaborate on the relationship between political and economic property rights, noting that while they were and will continue to be intertwined, there was a hierarchy of rights that became inverted over the course of elites' constitutional bargains.
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=84947728706&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1017/S0003055415000477
DO - 10.1017/S0003055415000477
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:84947728706
VL - 109
SP - 725
EP - 734
JO - American Political Science Review
JF - American Political Science Review
SN - 0003-0554
IS - 4
ER -