In Latin America as elsewhere, politicians routinely face a painful dilemma: whether to use state resources for national purposes, especially those that foster economic development, or to channel resources to people and projects that will help insure political survival and reelection. While politicians may believe that a competent state bureaucracy is intrinsic to the national ...(展开全部)

A major contribution to the field of comparative state formation and the scholarship on long-term political development of Latin America Latin American governments systematically fail to provide the key public goods for their societies to prosper. Sebastián Mazzuca argues this is because nineteenth-century Latin American state formation occurred in a period when commerce, rathe...(展开全部)

Review "This book does a masterful job of clarifying the centrality of taxation as a means to build both states and societies. Its analytic contribution is significant. It also offers an excellent set of case studies that demonstrate how government can improve revenue raising while also promoting the general welfare of the polity. The neat combination of theory and cases ensure...(展开全部)

There is a widespread concern that, in some parts of the world, governments are unable to exercise effective authority. When governments fail, more sinister forces thrive: warlords, arms smugglers, narcotics enterprises, kidnap gangs, terrorist networks, armed militias. Why do governments fail? This book explores an old idea that has returned to prominence: that authority, effe...(展开全部)

Few milestones in human history are as dramatic and momentous as the meeting of three great civilizations on American soil in the sixteenth century. Latin America in Colonial Times presents that story in an engaging but scholarly new package, revealing how a new civilization - Latin America - emerged from that encounter. The authors give equal attention to the Spanish and Portu...(展开全部)

Description Contents Resources Courses About the Authors The growth of institutional capacity in the developing world has become a central theme in twenty-first-century social science. Many studies have shown that public institutions are an important (some would argue the most important) determinant of long-run rates of economic growth. This book argues that to understand the d...(展开全部)

Now available in paperback, Tongues of Fire deals with one of the most extraordinary developments in the world today - the rapid spread of Evangelical Protestantism in vast areas of the underdeveloped societies, notable Latin America. The growth of Evangelical Protestantism since the 1960's from its epicentre in the United States has been a religious and social phenomenon of ex...(展开全部)

State capacity - the government's ability to accomplish its intended policy goals - plays an important role in market-oriented economic development today. Yet state capacity improvements are often difficult to achieve. This Element analyzes the historical origins of state capacity. It evaluates long-run state development in Western Europe - the birthplace of both the modern sta...(展开全部)

This book depicts the Early Modern book markets in Europe and colonial Latin America. The nature of book production and distribution in this period resulted in the development of a truly international market. The integration of the book market was facilitated by networks of printers and booksellers, who were responsible for the connection of distant places, as well as local pro...(展开全部)