Marketing Sovereign Promises: Monopoly Brokerage and the Growth of the English State [Paperback]

This book offers a new theory of state growth, based on the creation of credible and prudent state budgets.Democracies extract more tax revenue per capita than autocracies. This book addresses the origins of taxation, examining how it can be made compatible with political liberty and economic growth. This study speaks to readers of political economy of development and comparative institutions, and historians of state formation in Europe.Democracies extract more tax revenue per capita than autocracies. This book addresses the origins of taxation, examining how it can be made compatible with political liberty and economic growth. This study speaks to readers of political economy of development and comparative institutions, and historians of state formation in Europe.How did England, once a minor regional power, become a global hegemon between 1689 and 1815? Why, over the same period, did she become the world's first industrial nation? Gary W. Cox addresses these questions in Marketing Sovereign Promises. The book examines two central issues: the origins of the great taxing power of the modern state and how that power is made compatible with economic growth. Part I considers England's rise after the revolution of 1689, highlighting the establishment of annual budgets with shutdown reversions. This core reform effected a great increase in per capita tax extraction. Part II investigates the regional and global spread of British budgeting ideas. Cox argues that states grew only if they addressed a central credibility problem afflicting the Ancien R?gime - that rulers were legally entitled to spend public revenue however they deemed fit.1. Sovereign credibility and public revenue; Part I. The Glorious Revolution and the English State: 2. The market for taxes and platforms; 3. More credible platforms, more taxes; 4. Pricing sovereign debts; 5. Establishing monopoly brokerage of sovereign debts; 6. The consequences of monopoly brokerage of debt; 7. Property rights; 8. From clÓ!