Relatively liberal economic and political institutions emerged earlier in America than appreciated by most social scientists. They did not emerge in one great leap forward, but through a gradual process of experimentation, yardstick competition, and constitutional bargaining during the...

Constitutional democracy in the United States emerged slowly through a longer series of constitutional reforms than most lawyers, economists, and political scientists appreciate. The first major reform was adopted in 1619, and reforms continued for the next three centuries. No evolutions or...

In the late sixteenth century, the Dutch fought a successful war to secede from a major empire. They wrote a declaration of independence and adopted a federal model of Republican governance almost exactly two hundred years before the Americans. The Dutch republic and its political institutions...