In the Shadow of Violence Politics, Economics, and the Problems of Development [Paperback]

This book explains how political control of economic privileges is used to limit violence and coordinate coalitions of powerful organizations.This book helps explain how violence is limited by constructing social arrangements in which valuable economic privileges are used to coordinate political coalitions. The volume thus helps account for how and why it can be so difficult to implement development policies designed to raise the rate of economic growth or increase political and civil liberties. There is a logic to the social arrangements of societies that live in the shadow of violence. Until we understand that logic, we are unlikely to understand how to promote economic and political development.This book helps explain how violence is limited by constructing social arrangements in which valuable economic privileges are used to coordinate political coalitions. The volume thus helps account for how and why it can be so difficult to implement development policies designed to raise the rate of economic growth or increase political and civil liberties. There is a logic to the social arrangements of societies that live in the shadow of violence. Until we understand that logic, we are unlikely to understand how to promote economic and political development.This book applies the conceptual framework of Douglass C. North, John Joseph Wallis, and Barry R. Weingast's Violence and Social Orders (Cambridge University Press, 2009) to nine developing countries. The cases show how political control of economic privileges is used to limit violence and coordinate coalitions of powerful organizations. Rather than castigating politicians and elites as simply corrupt, the case studies illustrate why development is so difficult to achieve in societies where the role of economic organizations is manipulated to provide political balance and stability. The volume develops the idea of limited-access social order as a dynamic social system in which violence is constantly a threat, and politl#$