Analytic Narratives

by Robert H. Bates, Avner Greif, Margaret Levi, Jean-Laurent Rosenthal, Barry R. Weingast

Overview

Students of comparative politics have long faced a vexing dilemma: how can social scientists draw broad, applicable principles of political order from specific historical examples? In Analytic Narratives, five senior scholars offer a new and ambitious methodological response to this important question. By employing rational-choice and game theory, the authors propose a way of extracting empirically testable, general hypotheses from particular cases. The result is both a methodological manifesto and an applied handbook that political scientists, economic historians, sociologists, and students of political economy will find essential.


In their jointly written introduction, the authors frame their approach to the origins and evolution of political institutions. The individual essays that follow demonstrate the concept of the analytic narrative--a rational-choice approach to explain political outcomes--in case studies. Avner Greif traces the institutional foundations of commercial expansion in twelfth-century Genoa. Jean-Laurent Rosenthal analyzes how divergent fiscal policies affected absolutist European governments, while Margaret Levi examines the transformation of nineteenth-century conscription laws in France, the United States, and Prussia. Robert Bates explores the emergence of a regulatory organization in the international coffee market. Finally, Barry Weingast studies the institutional foundations of democracy in the antebellum United States and its breakdown in the Civil War. In the process, these studies highlight the economic role of political organizations, the rise and deterioration of political communities, and the role of coercion, especially warfare, in political life. The results are both empirically relevant and theoretically sophisticated.



Analytic Narratives is an innovative and provocative work that bridges the gap between the game-theoretic and empirically driven approaches in political economy. Political historians will find the use of rational-choice models novel; theorists will discover arguments more robust and nuanced than those derived from abstract models. The book improves on earlier studies by advocating--and applying--a cross-disciplinary approach to explain strategic decision making in history.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780691216232
Publisher:	Princeton University Press
Publication date:	07/21/2020
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	264
File size:	5 MB

About the Author

Robert H. Bates is the Eaton Professor of the Science of Government and Faculty Fellow of the Institute of International Development at Harvard University. Avner Greif is Associate Professor of Economics at Stanford University. Margaret Levi is Professor of Political Science and the Harry Bridges Chair in Labor Studies at the University of Washington, Seattle. Jean-Laurent Rosenthal is Professor of Economics at the University of California, Los Angeles. Barry R. Weingast is Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution and Ward C. Krebs Family Professor of Political Science at Stanford University.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments

Introduction

1 Self-Enforcing Political Systems and Economic Growth: Late Medieval Genoa

2 The Political Economy of Absolutism Reconsidered

3 Conscription: The Price of Citizenship

4 Political Stability and Civil War: Institutions, Commitment, and American Democracy

5 The International Coffee Organization: An International Institution

Conclusion

Appendix

Index

What People are Saying About This

Mark Lichbach

Analytic Narratives showcases cutting-edge work in the comparative and historical application of rational-choice theory.
— Mark Lichbach, University of Colorado at Boulder

From the Publisher

"Analytic Narratives showcases cutting-edge work in the comparative and historical application of rational-choice theory."—Mark Lichbach, University of Colorado at Boulder

Editorial Reviews

"Analytic Narratives showcases cutting-edge work in the comparative and historical application of rational-choice theory."—Mark Lichbach, University of Colorado at Boulder

From the Publisher