Although political and legal institutions are essential to any nation's economic development, the forces that have shaped these institutions are poorly understood. Drawing on rich evidence about the development of the American states from the mid-nineteenth to the late twentieth century, this...

The political crisis of the American state: the unsustainable state in a time of unraveling / Lawrence R. Jacobs, Desmond King -- Is inequality a threat to democracy? / John Ferejohn -- The resilient power of the states across the long nineteenth century: an inquiry into a pattern of American...