ECONOMY

chapter 37
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PATHS OF
ECONOMIC AND
POLITICAL
DEVELOPMENT
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daron acemoglu
james a. robinson
1 Introduction
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Over the last half millennium different societies have moved onto distinct paths
of political and economic development. For example, beginning in the seventeeth
century, Britain experienced a series of changes in political institutions which led to
the emergence of a constitutional monarchy and a much greater stability of property
rights. In consequence, the British economy began to develop rapidly and was at
the forefront of the industrial revolution in the nineteenth century. As Britain grew
rich it also became more democratic. Starting with the First Reform Law in 1832 and
culminating with the Representation of the People Act in 1919, British political elites
gradually created a fully democratic polity. In 2006 Britain was a rich democracy.
Other societies experienced dramatically different development paths over this
period. In the late eighteenth century Haiti, then called Saint-Domingue, was a colony
of France known as the “pearl of the Caribbean” which produced sugar cane with the
help of an army of African slaves. At the time of the slave uprising in 1794 it was
∗ We are grateful to the editors for their detailed comments on a first draft.