This website uses cookies.

By clicking the "Accept" button or continuing to browse our site, you agree to first-party and session-only cookies being stored on your device to enhance site navigation and analyze site performance and traffic. For more information on our use of cookies, please see our Privacy Policy.

  1. Home
  2. Journals
  3. Journal of Economic Literature
  4. September 2010
  5. A Review of Douglass C. North, John Joseph Wallis, and Barry R. Weingast's Violence and Social Orders: A Conceptual Framework for Interpreting Recorded Human History

Journal of Economic Literature

ISSN 0022-0515 (Print) | ISSN 2328-8175 (Online)

A Review of Douglass C. North, John Joseph Wallis, and Barry R. Weingast's Violence and Social Orders: A Conceptual Framework for Interpreting Recorded Human History

  • Robert Bates
Journal of Economic Literature
vol. 48, no. 3, September 2010
(pp. 752–56)
Download Full Text PDF

Abstract

In Violence and Social Orders: A Conceptual Framework for Interpreting Recorded Human History, Douglass C. North, John Joseph Wallis, and Barry R. Weingast probe the organizational foundations of development. Outlining the properties of the "natural" and "open entry" societies, they highlight as well the conditions under which societies can move from one to the other, thereby achieving political order and economic prosperity.

Citation

Bates, Robert. 2010. "A Review of Douglass C. North, John Joseph Wallis, and Barry R. Weingast's Violence and Social Orders: A Conceptual Framework for Interpreting Recorded Human History." Journal of Economic Literature, 48 (3): 752–56. DOI: 10.1257/jel.48.3.752

JEL Classification

  • D72 Political Processes: Rent-seeking, Lobbying, Elections, Legislatures, and Voting Behavior
  • N40 Economic History: Government, War, Law, International Relations, and Regulation: General, International, or Comparative
  • O10 Economic Development: General
  • Z13 Economic Sociology; Economic Anthropology; Social and Economic Stratification