In this article, I investigate why it was so difficult for nineteenth-century Mexico to develop the institutions necessary for a modern state. Driven by regional warlords and bandits, the country suffered from persistent violence and disorder. Challenging geography and colonial legacies...

Douglass North once emphasized that development takes centuries, but he did not have a theory of how and why change occurs. This groundbreaking book advances such a theory by examining in detail why England and Spain developed so slowly from 1000 to 1800. A colonial legacy must go back centuries...

Why did enduring traditions of economic and political liberty arise in Western Europe? An answer to this question must be sought at the constitutional level. Within the medieval constitutional order, traditions of representative and limited government developed through patterns of constitutional...