Structure, growth, and power: three rationalist accounts

Abstract

These three ambitious works address the same broad and timely questions: why do national economies grow and contract?How is economic growth affected by, and how does it affect, the domestic structures and policies, and the international power, of states?What is the relation between economic health and political tranquillity, within and between states?All three volumes, moreover, claim to proceed from the same perspective, namely that of rational choice, applied by Olson to individual subjects, by Gilpin to state leaderships, and by North to both.Finally, all apply to their chosen subjects an impressive historical erudition, which draws as effortlessly on evidence from ancient empires and primitive tribes as on that from the present day.To the adherent of rational-choice theory, Olson's volume will be what the Jacobin Terror was to Dickens.It is an "awful" work in both the archaic and the modern senses of the word, stunning in its deductive rigor and power, calamitously wrong in many of its implications.North, while less ineluctable in his logic, less often errs: the slightly less parsimonious and precise model is justified by the greater accuracy of its implications.Gilpin's contribution, For helpful comments on an earlier draft I want to thank

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