Since the dawn of their prolific collaboration in 1998, Daron Acemoglu and James A. Robinson have confronted a plethora of cardinal questions in social sciences: Which institutions support long-term growth (Acemoglu et al., 2005)? What economic conditions facilitate the consolidation of...

"A crucial new big-picture framework that answers the question of how liberty flourishes in some states but falls to authoritarianism or anarchy in others--and explains how it can continue to thrive despite new threats"--

This chapter on the political thought of Edmund Burke (1729-1797) will mainly focus on British politics and history in the context and in contrast to the French Revolution of 1789. Writing at the height of the Enlightenment period and alongside great thinkers, such as David Hume (1711-1776),...