ECONOMY

arry r. weingast & donald a. wittman 23
And while we are on the subject of democracy, what is the relationship between
democracy and capitalism? Iverson (this volume) surveys various political economy
models that try to answer this question.
Why do so many countries remain poor? And why did a handful of countries in
the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries manage to rise well above the rest of the
world? Here too we have important new political economy models that seek to
answer these questions (see, for example Acemoglu and Robinson, this volume;
and Bates, this volume).
What are the sources and circumstances of ethnic coalitions and violence? Fearon
(this volume) provides an overview of the political economy approach and an
agenda for future research.
In short, the extension of political economy methods beyond the advanced industrial
nations is rapidly developing, and this Handbook provides overviews that can
serve as building blocks for further research.
5 The Intellectual Arms Race
.............................................................................
Although we have characterized political economy as a set of agreed-upon methodological
approaches, the set is quite large; different models and empirical studies
frequently come to quite opposing conclusions. Scholarly works tend to play off each
other so that there is an ever-increasing level of sophistication. Thus, while we have
characterized political economy as a synthesis of fields, the synthesis will nonetheless
provide sparks and an exciting research agenda for decades to come.
References
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Ben-Zion,U.,andEytan,Z.1974. On money, votes and policy in a democratic society. Public
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Bolton, P.,andRoland, G.1997. The breakup of nations: a political economy analysis.
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