Дарон Аджемоглу - Why Nations Fail

Charles’s increasingly absolutist behavior and extractive policies created resentment and resistance throughout the country. In 1640 he faced conflict with Scotland and, without enough money to put a proper army into the field, was forced to call Parliament to ask for more taxes. The so-called Short Parliament sat for only three weeks. The parliamentarians who came to London refused to talk about taxes, but aired many grievances, until Charles dismissed them. The Scots realized that Charles did not have the support of the nation and invaded England, occupying the city of Newcastle. Charles opened negotiations, and the Scots demanded that Parliament be involved. This induced Charles to call what then became known as the Long Parliament, because it continued to sit until 1648, refusing to dissolve even when Charles demanded it do so.

In 1642 the Civil War broke out between Charles and Parliament, even though there were many in Parliament who sided with the Crown. The pattern of conflicts reflected the struggle over economic and political institutions. Parliament wanted an end to absolutist political institutions; the king wanted them strengthened. These conflicts were rooted in economics. Many supported the Crown because they had been granted lucrative monopolies. For example, the local monopolies controlled by the rich and powerful merchants of Shrewsbury and Oswestry were protected by the Crown from competition by London merchants. These merchants sided with Charles I. On the other side, the metallurgical industry had flourished around Birmingham because monopolies were weak there and newcomers to the industry did not have to serve a seven-year apprenticeship, as they did in other parts of the country. During the Civil War, they made swords and produced volunteers for the parliamentary side. Similarly, the lack of guild regulation in the county of Lancashire allowed for the development before 1640 of the “New Draperies,” a new style of lighter cloth. The area where the production of these cloths was concentrated was the only part of Lancashire to support Parliament.

Under the leadership of Oliver Cromwell, the Parliamentarians—known as the Roundheads after the style in which their hair was cropped—defeated the royalists, known as Cavaliers. Charles was tried and executed in 1649. His defeat and the abolition of the monarchy did not, however, result in inclusive institutions. Instead, monarchy was replaced by the dictatorship of Oliver Cromwell. Following Cromwell’s death, the monarchy was restored in 1660 and clawed back many of the privileges that had been stripped from it in 1649. Charles’s son, Charles II, then set about the same program of creating absolutism in England. These attempts were only intensified by his brother James II, who ascended to the throne after Charles’s death in 1685. In 1688 James’s attempt to reestablish absolutism created another crisis and another civil war. Parliament this time was more united and organized. They invited the Dutch Statholder , William of Orange, and his wife, Mary, James’s Protestant daughter, to replace James. William would bring an army and claim the throne, to rule not as an absolutist monarch but under a constitutional monarchy forged by Parliament. Two months after William’s landing in the British Isles at Brixham in Devon (see Map 9, this page), James’s army disintegrated and he fled to France.

THE GLORIOUS REVOLUTION

After victory in the Glorious Revolution, Parliament and William negotiated a new constitution. The changes were foreshadowed by William’s “Declaration,” made shortly prior to his invasion. They were further enshrined in the Declaration of Rights, produced by Parliament in February 1689. The Declaration was read out to William at the same session where he was offered the crown. In many ways the Declaration, which would be called the Bill of Rights after its signing into law, was vague. Crucially, however, it did establish some central constitutional principles. It determined the succession to the throne, and did so in a way that departed significantly from the then-received hereditary principles. If Parliament could remove a monarch and replace him with one more to their liking once, then why not again? The Declaration of Rights also asserted that the monarch could not suspend or dispense with laws, and it reiterated the illegality of taxation without parliamentary consent. In addition, it stated that there could be no standing army in England without parliamentary consent. Vagueness entered into such clauses as number 8, which stated, “The election of members of Parliament ought to be free,” but did not specify how “free” was to be determined. Even vaguer was clause 13, whose main point was that Parliaments ought to be held frequently. Since when and whether Parliament would be held had been such a contentious issue for the entire century, one might have expected much more specificity in this clause. Nevertheless, the reason for this vague wording is clear. Clauses have to be enforced. During the reign of Charles II, a Triennial Act had been in place that asserted that Parliaments had to be called at least once every three years. But Charles ignored it, and nothing happened, because there was no method of enforcing it. After 1688, Parliament could have tried to introduce a method for enforcing this clause, as the barons had done with their council after King John signed the Magna Carta. They did not do so because they did not need to. This was because authority and decision-making power switched to Parliament after 1688. Even without specific constitutional rules or laws, William simply gave up on many of the practices of previous kings. He stopped interfering in legal decisions and gave up previous “rights,” such as getting the customs revenues for life. Taken together, these changes in political institutions represented the triumph of Parliament over the king, and thus the end of absolutism in England and subsequently Great Britain—as England and Scotland were united by the Act of Union in 1707. From then on Parliament was firmly in control of state policy. This made a huge difference, because the interests of Parliament were very different from those of the Stuart kings. Since many of those in Parliament had important investments in trade and industry, they had a strong stake in enforcing property rights. The Stuarts had frequently infringed on property rights; now they would be upheld. Moreover, when the Stuarts controlled how the government spent money, Parliament opposed greater taxes and balked at strengthening the power of the state. Now that Parliament itself controlled spending, it was happy to raise taxes and spend the money on activities that it deemed valuable. Chief among them was the strengthening of the navy, which would protect the overseas mercantile interests of many of the members of Parliament.

Even more important than the interest of parliamentarians was the emerging pluralistic nature of political institutions. The English people now had access to Parliament, and the policy and economic institutions made in Parliament, in a way they never had when policy was driven by the king. This was partially, of course, because members of Parliament were elected. But since England was far from being a democracy in this period, this access provided only a modest amount of responsiveness. Among its many inequities was that less than 2 percent of the population could vote in the eighteenth century, and these had to be men. The cities where the Industrial Revolution took place, Birmingham, Leeds, Manchester, and Sheffield, had no independent representation in Parliament. Instead, rural areas were overrepresented. Just as bad, the right to vote in the rural areas, the “counties,” was based on ownership of land, and many urban areas, the “boroughs,” were controlled by a small elite who did not allow the new industrialists to vote or run for office. In the borough of Buckingham, for instance, thirteen burgesses had the exclusive right to vote. On top of this there were the “rotten boroughs,” which had historically had the right to vote but had “rotted away,” either because their population had moved over time or, in the case on Dunwich on the east coast of England, had actually fallen into the ocean as a result of coastal erosion. In each of these rotten boroughs, a small number of voters elected two members of Parliament. Old Sarum had seven voters, Dunwich thirty-two, and each elected two members of Parliament.