Download Medieval Representative Assemblies

Medieval Representative Assemblies:
Collective Action and Antecedents of Western Prosperity
Alexander William Salter
Rawls College of Business
Texas Tech University
Lubbock, TX USA 79409
ph: 806 834 8186
em: [email protected]
Andrew T. Young
Rawls College of Business
Texas Tech University
Lubbock, TX USA 79409
ph: 806 834 1374
em: [email protected]
This version: February 2017
Abstract: Medieval monarchs in Western Europe responded to financial and military pressures
by instituting representative assemblies. Three estates (classes; orders) were represented in these
assemblies: clergy, nobility, and burghers. In the late medieval and early modern periods, some
states tended towards absolutism (e.g., France); others towards constitutional monarchy (e.g.,
England). The German historian Otto Hintze conjectured that territorially based assemblies were
more likely to resist monarchical encroachments on their political authority than estate-based
assemblies. We argue that Hintze’s conjecture can be made intelligible by a comparative
institutional analysis emphasizing political bargaining and the costs of special versus common
interests. Having established that territorially based assemblies provided a stronger check on
absolutism than their estate-based counterparts, we then provide historical case studies of how
France and England instituted, respectively, estate-based and territorially based assemblies.
Keywords: medieval economic history, comparative economic development, medieval
constitution, polycentric governance, political property rights, polycentric sovereignty, marketpreserving federalism
JEL codes: N44, O10, O52, P50, K00
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1.
Introduction
Medieval Western Europe is exceptional in having served as the cradle for enduring traditions of
limited and relatively non-predatory government. Similar traditions failed to arise spontaneously
in other regions of the world and recreating them after the fact has proven exceedingly difficult
as a matter of policy. What were the foundations for Western European traditions of liberty?
Numerous scholars have deemed this question fundamental to understanding why sustained
economic growth occurred first in the West (e.g., Anderson 1991; Baechler 1975; Benson 1989;
Berman 1983; Raico 1994; Weber 1978 [1922]; Hintze 1975 [1931]).
In recent years, however, an increasing number of scholars have shifted their focus away
from limited, non-predatory government and towards investments in state capacity (e.g., Besley
and Persson 2009, 2010, 2011; Acemoglu et al. 2011; Acemoglu et al. 2015; Acemoglu et al.
2016; Gennaioli and Voth 2015).1 This literature begins with the observation that sustained
economic growth occurred only subsequent to the rise of the modern (post-Westphalian) state.
From this perspective, when a state builds up the capacity to suppress internal conflict, enforce
the rule of law, and provide common-interest public goods, then a critical (if not necessary)
condition for sustained growth is met.
The limited government and state capacity perspectives are not necessarily in opposition
to one another. The idea of limited government is that it is limited to functions such as the
enforcement of the rule of law. Alternatively, few would suggest that substantial state capacity in
Charles Tilly (1990) linked the growth in medieval and early-modern European state capacity to monarchs’ needs
to finance military spending, something which Besley and Persson (2009, p. 1218) characterize as “an archetypal
public good representing broadly common interests for citizens.” (Alternatively, Gennaioli and Voth (2015) note
that war was often the “sport of kings” and more aptly characterized as a private good.) Ertman (1997) emphasizes
the relative ability of different early-modern European nation states to develop merit-based bureaucracies; Charron
et al. (2012) subsequently argue the early development of such bureaucracies is more fundamental to accounting for
variation in modern-day governance quality in OECD countries than are countries’ legal origins (La Porta et al.
2008). Regarding recent history, Johnson (1982), Amsden (1989), Wade (1990), and Evans (1995) attribute the
economic growth successes in East Asia to governments with high state capacity; Herbst (2000) and Centeno (2002)
argue that low state capacity is a source of development failure in Africa and Latin America, respectively.
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the hands of a tyrannical despot is desirable. Besley and Persson (2009, p. 1219) pose the
following question: “Why are rich countries also high-tax countries with good enforcement of
contracts and property rights?” Besely and Persson’s (2009; 2010) answer is that a state’s
investments in fiscal capacity (to raise taxes) and legal capacity (to support markets) are
complementary. In other words, rich countries are ones with states that have the capacity to raise
substantial revenues and then limit their use to the provision of common interest public goods
and enforcement of property rights. To wit: rich countries have large but limited governments.
But while state capacity can be used towards public goods and the rule of law, it can also
be a means of predation.2 Whether or not state capacity is relatively limited to the former rather
than the latter use matters. Returning to the context of Western European history, few would
argue that the only difference between the eighteenth century constitutional monarchy of
England and the absolutist one of France was their relative levels of state capacity. Clearly it
mattered how their respective state capacities were being used vis-à-vis one another. In
particular, the English state was able to make a more credible commitment to enforcing property
rights and supporting markets relative to its continental counterpart (North and Weingast 1989).
While Western Europe generally fostered traditions of limited government, the
establishments of those traditions were uneven across countries. Why did the seventeenth
century witness the entrenchment of absolutism in some countries (e.g., France and Spain) while
others developed into limited monarchies (e.g., England and Sweden)? In other words, following
the Peace of Westphalia in 1644-8, why were some countries better able to place limits on the
use of modern state capacity?
2
Admitting this is not to deny that investments in fiscal and legal capacity can be complementary. For example, a
state that provides rule of law and opportunities for wealth creation to its citizens (high legal capacity) will likely
face less resistance to/avoidance of its efforts to collect taxes; hence higher returns to its existing fiscal capacity.
3
In this paper we contribute to an understanding of these differing experiences with state
capacity. In particular, we explore a conjecture made by the early twentieth century German
historian, Otto Hintze (1970 [1930]): that two-chamber (or territorially based) representative
assemblies were more effective at resisting absolutist tendencies than three-chamber (or estatebased) assemblies. The English Parliament is an example of the former; the French Estates
General of the latter. Relative to estate-based assemblies, we argue that territorially based
assemblies tended to yield constitutional constraints on political agents that were self-enforcing
(de Lara et al. 2008; Leeson 2011; Mittal and Weingast 2011). Territorially based assemblies,
therefore, were more likely to prevent devolution of powers to the monarch.
We begin from the premise that asking how state capacity will be used involves two
fundamental questions regarding agents with political authority. First, do those agents have the
incentives to pursue policies to provide common-interest public goods and abstain from
predatory behavior? Second, do they have the information necessary to identify the policies that
are consistent with their incentives? Only if agents with political authority have the appropriate
incentives and information can we expect growth-promoting use of state capacity.
Working from this premise we argue that agents in territorially based assemblies had
incentives to pursue common-interest public goods. This was true to the extent that it was costly
in the assembly to achieve corporate expression of anything but common-interests. Alternatively,
agents in estate-based assemblies had incentives to pursue the special interests of their particular
estate (class; order). Achieving corporate expression of those special interests in estate-based
assemblies was relatively cheap. In exchange, additional powers would be conceded to the
monarch. The costs of these exchanges would be in part imposed onto members of the other
estates.
4
To the extent that territorially based assemblies were a more effective check on the
absolutist ambitions of monarchs that their estate-based counterparts, it raises the question of
why estate-based assemblies arose in certain parts of Europe while territorially based assemblies
arose in other parts. A second contribution of this paper is to, for the particular cases of France
and England, examine their histories and make intelligible the former’s institution of a estatebased Estates General and the latter’s institution of a territorially based Parliament.
We proceed as follows. In section 2 we provide a discussion of some important features
of the medieval Western European constitution and the politically powerful estates that formed
well-defined interest groups within it. Against that backdrop, in section 3 we provide an
overview of medieval representative assemblies and the distinction between those that were
estate-based versus territorially based. Then in section 4 we then discuss in Hintze’s conjecture
and provide a comparative institutional analysis that makes it intelligible. We then turn to a
historical discussion of the institution of different assembly types in France versus England. In
section 5 we describe how legacy of the Carolingian dynasty in the eighth and ninth centuries
was favorable to the institution of estate-based representative assemblies. Alternatively, in
section 6 we elaborate on eleventh century Norman efforts to superimpose Carolingian-type
governance structures upon already established Anglo-Saxon local governance structures; the
result being favorable to the institution of a territorially based assembly. Section 7 concludes.
2.
The Medieval Constitution
Elsewhere we have argued that the polycentric governance hierarchy of medieval Western
Europe had desirable incentive and information generating characteristics (Salter 2015a &
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2015b; Salter and Young 2016).3 Governance providers within the hierarchy were ‘shareholders’
in their jurisdictions. To use the terminology of Salter (2015a), their political property rights of
were bundled with their economic property rights. By a political property right we refer to a
claim on returns that are associated with the exercise of political authority over specific
resources. Medieval governance providers, then, were residual claimants to the returns on their
governance. 4
Residual claimancy creates incentives to govern well and also informational feedback on
whether one has actually governed well (in the form of higher or lower returns). The hierarchy
also resembled a federalist system where lower-level governance providers had better access
local knowledge while upper-level authorities could orchestrate broader collective action when
desirable (Weingast 1993, 1995; Qian and Weingast 1997; de Figueiredo and Weingast 2005).5
Informational feedback on governance was strengthened by jurisdictional competition (Tiebout
1956). This was true both in the sense that individuals could attempt to “vote with their feet” and
in the sense that jurisdictions overlapped, giving individuals recourse to multiple authorities.6
3
We use the term polycentric in the sense of Ostrom et al. (1961) and Ostrom (2010): a system of governance with
multiple decision-making centers that are formally independent of each other but, together, may function in an
interdependent system of relationships. See also Aligica and Tarko (2014).
4
E.g., a noble lorded over a realm constituted by his demesnes (personally held lands) and benefices bestowed upon
his vassals. The lord was a governance provider for his vassals. Those vassals, in return, owed military service and a
share of the produce from their benefices to the lord. Providing security and justice to the overall realm, then,
generated returns for the lord and vassals alike. (The same can also be said for the Church hierarchy where bishops
and other ranking clergy often lorded over vassals.)
5
The feudal hierarchy emanated down from monarchs in a cascade of overlapping jurisdictions. A monarch was
lord over a broad realm consisting of his demesnes and the benefices bestowed upon his vassals; his vassals were
principle lords (magnates) spread over the broader realm who lorded over realms consisting of their demesnes and
the benefices bestowed upon their vassals; etc. This was analogously the case for the Church hierarchy and the
feudal and Church hierarchies also overlapped. (Ranking clergy members sometimes did homage to monarchs
and/or had vassals of their own.)
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For example, a lord was a governance provider to his vassals. However, if the lord attempted to expropriate
resources from his vassals above and beyond their feudal obligations – what was known in the Middle Ages was
imposing “bad customs” – the vassal could appeal to the lord’s lord (e.g., a magnate or monarch) who was an
overarching governance provider. Also, a given realm might be covered by overlapping lay and ecclesiastical
jurisdictions.
6
An important feature of the medieval governance hierarchy that contributed to a stable
distribution of political authority throughout was what we have termed polycentric sovereignty
(Salter and Young 2016). Sovereignty is here used in the specific sense of Salter (2015b): when
an agent with political authority can defend that authority against encroachments by other agents.
The nobility was a landed warrior class; their obligations to greater lords and monarchs to whom
they did homage were first and foremost military services (both their own and in the form of
levies of their own vassals). For example, then, nobles collectively commanded the military
might with which a monarch might try to encroach upon their authorities. The clergy, for their
part, wielded the threat of damnation – or the promise of salvation! – and nobles and monarchs
alike took that seriously (Asbridge 2004, pp. 5-11).
An important aspect of the polycentric sovereignty of medieval Western Europe was that
particular groups of individuals – the clergy, the nobility, and (starting in the twelfth century) the
burghers of cities – self-consciously identified as members of a particular estate (order; class)
(Duby 1980 [1978]).7 These three estates, respectively, were able to affect corporate expression
of their interests and provide important checks on monarchs. The first and second estates
successfully bargained for various de jure rights, privileges, and immunities (Hintze 1975
[1931]; Weber 1978 [1922]; Downing 1988, 1989, 1992). The High Middle Ages, then, gave rise
to commercially focused cities whose burghers would come to represent a politically powerful
third estate (Young 2017).8
7
Literary references to a tripartite system of estates can be found dating back to at least the eleventh century:
“Triple then is the house of God which is thought to be one: on Earth, some pray, others fight, still others work;
which three are joined together and may not be torn asunder; so that on the function of each the works of the others
rest, each in turn assisting all.” The preceding was written circa 1020-1030 by Adalbero, bishop of Laon. These
were the three estates of the West, to wit, those who pray; those who fight; those who labor. (The quote is found on
Duby (1980 [1978], p. 5).)
8
Medeival cities were important sources of wealth and administrative human capital to both monarchs and the
nobility. As such, they “were able to negotiate crucial freedoms from external authority by playing off noble and
7
The role of these political powerful estates in representative assemblies will be
fundamental to our discussion of the Hintze conjecture that follows below.
3.
Medieval Representative Assemblies
A number of scholars have emphasized the rough balance of power between medieval monarchs
and political powerful estates.9 These political powerful estates sought corporate expression of
their interests through the representative assemblies that arose throughout medieval Western
Europe. In the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, monarchs responded to financial and military
pressures by instituting assemblies that drew their representation from the estates (Russell 1982;
North and Weingast 1989; van Zanden et al. 2012, pp. 844-877). Monarchs leveraged these
assemblies towards political and financial support for their policies.10 In exchange for their
consent to additional taxes and/or military levies, the estates received various rights and
immunities.
It may seem surprising that monarchs would take the lead in providing their subjects with
a forum for collective bargaining. However, this fact is made intelligible by Congelton’s (2007,
2011) theory of constitutional bargaining within the “King and Council” template. Medieval
monarchs desired the estates to commit to military resources (both manpower and financial).
Insisting on too burdensome obligations would have led to low effort, shirking, and avoidance.
king[;] [f]ixed sums of money [...], artisanal weaponry, and administrative specialists were exchanged for clearly
stipulated rights, freedoms, and immunities” (Downing 1989, p. 217; see also Rörig 1967, ch. 3).
9
Examples include Weber 1978 [1922]; Hintze 1975 [1931]; Baechler 1975; Berman 1983; Downing 1988, 1989,
1992; Anderson 1991; Raico 1994; Finer 1997; Stark 2011, chs. 14-16; Salter 2015a; Young 2015a; Salter and
Young 2016. Weber (1978 [1922], p. 283) argues that: “Historically, the separation of powers in Europe developed
out of the old system of estates.” Hintze (1975 [1931], p. 305) states likewise: “The representative system of
government that today gives the political life of the whole civilized world its distinctive character traces its historical
origins to the system of Estates of the Middle Ages.”
10
These assemblies had antecedents in the tribal customs of Germanic barbarian groups that succeeded the Western
Roman Empire (Downing 1989; Barnwell and Mostert 2003; van Zanden et al. 2012). See Young (2015a) for a
discussion of these early Germanic institutions circa 50 BC-50 AD and how they were influenced by Julius Caesar’s
conquest of Gaul.
8
Alternatively, committing to lower burdens was not credible since, ex post, monarchs had
incentives to renege. By providing the estates with representation in an assembly, monarchs
established a forum that allowed them to credibly concede some authority in exchange for the
desired obligations.
These assemblies can be broadly divided into assemblies that were estate-based and those
that were territorially based. The territorially versus estate-based typology was introduced by the
German historian Otto Hintze (1970 [1930]).11 Generally, estate-based assemblies had three
distinct chambers, each one of which drew its representation from one of the estates (clergy,
nobility, or burghers). Alternatively, territorially based assemblies typically had two chambers
where the representation of one or both of the chambers was drawn from multiple estates.
The empirical examples of estate-based and territorially based assemblies include,
respectively, the French Estates General and the English Parliament. The French Estates-General
was composed of three chambers with representation drawn from the clergy, nobility, and
burghers (commoners) respectively. Alternatively, the English Parliament was (and still is)
composed of two chambers. The House of Lords drew its representatives from both the nobility
and clergy. The House of Commons was a later development, beginning with invitations to the
burghers of major town to attend Montfort’s Parliament of 1265; it met as a distinct chamber for
the first time in 1341. However, by the end of the medieval period the members of the nobility
factored prominently in its representation (Wasson 1998).12 While representatives from different
estates intermingled in both the Lords and Commons, each member represented a particular
To our knowledge an English translation of Hintze’s 1930 essay is not available. Our characterization of the
Hintze typology is based on Ertman (1997).
12
“During the medieval period plebian butchers, bakers, and tallow chandlers were elected as representatives of the
boroughs. [...] [But] roughly from the accession of Elizabeth I to the early years of Victoria’s reign, four out of five
MPs and most peers were patricians or the founders of landed families, and Parliament was the framework on which
the national elite was structured” (Wasson 1998, p. 27).
11
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county or borough. Unlike the French Estates-General, then, representation in the English
Parliament ran first and foremost along territorial lines.
The French Estates General and the English Parliament will motivate our historical
backgrounds and explanations in sections 5 and 6 below. Also, the basic structural details
provided above will serve to anchor our theoretical arguments in section 4 below. However,
those arguments generally apply to other territorially based (e.g., the Dutch Republic and
Sweden) and estate-based (e.g., the German principalities and Spanish kingdoms) medieval
representative assemblies.
4.
The Hintze Conjecture
Otto Hintze conjectured that estate-based assemblies, relative to their territorially based
counterparts, were more likely to concede powers to a monarch and promote ‘constitutional drift’
towards absolutism. For example, in his view the two-chamber English Parliament was
“structurally stronger, and hence better able to resist the blandishments of ambitious rulers” than
the three-chamber structure of the French Estates-General.13 This is not a conjecture for which
Hintze himself provided a defense.
In this section we provide a comparative analysis of estate-based versus territorially
based assemblies. In doing so, we emphasize, first, the common interests that existed amongst
representatives of those assemblies based on the political property rights that they each held in
relation to one another. Second, we emphasize how the structure of an assembly (estate- or
territorially based) helped to determine the extent to which those common interests would find
corporate expression vis-à-vis estate-specific (special) interests. In particular, members of
different estates were “intermingled” in a territorially based assembly. This intermingling made
13
Quoted and translated by Ertman (1997, p. 21).
10
it relatively costly for a monarch to strike bargains with one estate as the expense of the others; it
also meant that corporate expression of inter-estate (common) interests was more likely than that
of estate-specific (special) interests. Alternatively, in estate-based assemblies special interests
were more likely to be expressed; bilateral deals between a monarch and a particular estate were
more likely to be struck.
In relating the expression of estate-based interests versus common interests to tendencies
towards absolutism, the expression of the latter tended to check such tendencies. Representatives
in medieval assemblies were important governance providers of the realm: high ranking nobles
and clergy (and, later on, the leading burghers of towns). These governance providers had
political property rights that were bundled with economic property rights; they were shareholders
in the realms for which they provided governance and, therefore, residual claimants to returns
associated with that governance (Salter 2015a; Salter and Young 2016). They benefited when
their governance benefited the governed. When the jurisdictions of governance providers from
different estates overlapped, their common interests would be defined by their being
shareholders in the same assets. Furthermore, in relation to a monarch providing overarching
governance, the common interests of lower-level governance providers would be in the monarch
providing common-interest public goods to the broader realm. In medieval Western Europe, that
essentially amounted to the provision of security and justice (Southern 1992 [1953], pp. 145146).
The corporate expression of common interests in a representative assembly would tend to
check expansion of a monarch’s powers and limit his activities to governance provision
consistent with a generality norm (Buchanan and Congleton 2003 [1998]). In this context, a
generality norm refers to a representative assembly’s likelihood of promoting collective action
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that is welfare-enhancing. Collective action can be aimed towards the provision of public goods
or the protection of property rights: what Buchanan and Congleton (2003 [1998]) refer to as
‘non-discriminatory’ collective action. But collective action can also be predatory; aimed
towards special rather than common interests (Buchanan 1975). Whether or not a representative
assembly tends to promote common interests and welfare-enhancing collective action – as
opposed to special interests and predation – will depend on its institutional structure.
An assembly that promotes non-discriminatory collective action would advise a monarch
to limit his internal activities to the provision of justice and security in a way that generated
broadly shared benefits without imposing undue costs in terms of encroachments on lower-level
governance. (Providers of the latter, all else equal, would have better access to and ability to
utilize local-level knowledge.) The assembly would also advise a monarch to pursue military
campaigns only when there was a credible external threat to the realm.14 And, of course, the
assembly would not grant its consent to a monarch proposing to act against this advice.
But assemblies were not automatically non-predatory. In addition to common interests
were also well-defined estate-specific special interests in medieval Western Europe. Feudal
bonds were based on the principle of voluntary contract (Bloch 1968a [1939], pp. 145-162;
Vinogradoff 1968 [1922]). Vassals and lords agreed to arrangements of reciprocal obligations,
typically involving the former promising military support in exchange for a grant of land (a fief
or benefice) from the latter. The military support consisted primarily of the vassal’s own service,
a levy of their vassals, or scutage (i.e., a tax that served as a buyout of the feudal obligations).
14
While aggressive military campaigning could generate benefits in the form of plunder and new lands it is unlikely
that those benefits would be enjoyed broadly. Members of the second estate, as the military elite of any medieval
monarch’s campaign, would have captured most of the benefits. They expected to be able to keep what they
plundered as compensation for their military services; they also expected to have newly conquered lands allocated to
them as benefices after the fact.
12
Given the standard form of these arrangements and the obligations that they entailed, members
of the second estate had special interests in relation to their monarchs.
Members of the first estate also had special interests. These were, of course, bound up in
the overarching institution of the Church. A well-known example of the first estate’s interests
coming into conflict with those of both the second estate and monarchs is the Gregorian reform
and investiture controversy episodes of the late eleventh century. The Gregorian reform called
for a clear distinction between ecclesiastical and worldly matters, including forbidding clergy to
do homage to laymen and provide military services.15 This further distinguished first estate
special interests from those of the noble warrior class.
Furthermore, in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries prosperous cities were able to
leverage their wealth to bargain with monarchs, nobility, and Church for rights of selfgovernance (Young 2017). The third estate’s special interests were decidedly different from
those of the first and second since burghers’ livelihood was commerce.16 Nobles and clergy
tended to look upon commerce with disdain. Also, commerce raised legal problems that neither
lay nor ecclesiastical judicial procedures could deal with efficaciously and expeditiously: the
“multiplicity of authorities governing the town itself offended [the burgher] as obstacles to the
proper control of business transactions [...]” (Bloch 1968b [1940], p. 354).
Each estate’s special interests were also linked to the governance of the other estates’
resources. This created opportunities for inter-estate rent-seeking. For example, in the eighth
century Frankish nobility were able to increase their land holdings through Charles Martel’s
15
See Fukuyama (2011, ch. 13) for an overview; also Bisson (2009, pp. 197-212), Southern (1992 [1953], ch. 3),
and Wickham (2016, pp. 113-117). Whereas members of the nobility would prefer that their lord monarchs be able
to appoint bishops for their territories, the first estate stood to benefit from that power being wielded exclusively by
the papacy.
16
Bloch (1968b [1940], p. 353) notes that feudal-era European languages did not even have words to clearly
distinguish between towns and rural villages. However, as early as the eleventh century the French word bourgeois
was being adopted, in various forms, across Europe to indicate individuals living by commerce. Towns were
essentially defined by the fact that burghers inhabited them.
13
expropriation of Church properties. Alternatively, under the rules of Charles’ son and grandson
(Pippin III and Charlemagne) the Church was able to utilize the military services of nobility
towards establishing the Papal States in northern Italy. In these cases, one estate gained at the
expense of another and in exchange for granting greater powers to the monarch. Charles Martel,
who effectively ruled for puppet monarchs, gained enough support from the second estate to
continue ruling with an empty throne after the death of King Theuderic IV. Pippin III
subsequently assumed the Frankish throne and had the move legitimized by Pope Zacharias.
Charlemagne was then crowned “emperor of the Romans” by Pope Leo III. (See section 5
below.)
Whether or not a representative assembly tended to check or promote the expansion of
monarchical powers would seem to depend on whether common interests or estate-specific
special interests were more likely to find corporate expression. We argue special interests were
more likely to find corporate expression in estate-based assemblies. In discussing Hintze’s
conjecture, Ertman (1997, p. 21) offers the following insight that is relevant to our argument:
“the overriding concern of the individual chambers [in an estate-based assembly] was to protect
and, if possible, extend group-specific [estate-specific] privileges” (p. 21). Of course,
representatives of a particular estate had special interests regardless of whether they were all in
one chamber or spread across chambers. However, having all representatives of a particular
estate were in single chamber reduced the costs associated with achieving corporate expression
of those special interests. Representatives of that estate met together in a single dedicated forum
within which to formulate those interests and representatives from other estates were not present
to provide contrary discussion and/or disruption. Since the costs of expressing those special
14
interests were reduced it also followed that collective bargaining over those special interests with
a monarch was cheaper.
Figure 1a illustrates the sort of inter-estate rent-seeking and political bargaining to which
an estate-based assembly was conducive. The king, bishop, and rook chess pieces represent,
respectively, a monarch and the first and second estates. (The third estate is omitted for
simplicity.) Either estate could affect corporate expression of its special interests and bargain
with the monarch over those special interests at (relative to a territorially based assembly) low
costs. Affecting those special interests typically involved obtaining estate-based privileges
(dashed lines) that allowed them to extract rents from the other estate (dotted lines). In exchange
for these privileges/rents, an estate would be willing to concede additional powers to the
monarch (solid lines).
Note that a particular estate could, taking the collective strategy of the other estate as
given, find exchanging privileges for additional monarchical powers to be desirable despite the
fact that a tendency towards absolutism was ultimately bad for both estates. An estate-based
assembly reduced the costs of corporate expression of estate-specific special interests.
Conversely, placing each estate in a separate chamber raised the costs of inter-estate
coordination; potentially leading to a classic prisoner dilemma type of problem. Despite the fact
that coordination would make both estates better off by checking tendencies towards absolutism,
high costs of coordination could imply that even rational collective action on the part of each
estate promotes those tendencies.
Alternatively, in a territorially based assembly the costs for a particular estate to affect
corporate expression of its special interests were higher. Representatives of each estate were
intermingled in one or more of the assembly chambers; formulation and discussion of special
15
interests could encounter disagreement and disruption from representatives of other estates. (In
the absence of a dedicated forum for representatives of a particular estate, a monarch would find
it costlier to engage that estate in collective bargaining.) Conversely, the intermingling of estates
would have promoted inter-estate communication and coordination. As illustrated in figure 1b,
in a territorially based assembly representatives from different estates were more likely to
express common interests and insist on a monarch providing common interest public good
(dashed lines). Insisting on common-interest public goods would have amounted to checking the
expansion of monarchical powers (solid lines) to limit a monarch to providing desirable levels of
security and justice internally and protecting the realm from credible threats from without.
But given that territorially based assemblies were more likely to check the absolutist
ambitions of monarchs than their estate-based counterparts, why in the first place did territorially
based assemblies arise in some places (e.g., England) while estate-based assemblies were
instituted in others (e.g., France)? The next two sections provide case historical case studies that
lend some insights into this question.
5.
The Carolingian Legacy of Estate-Based Assemblies
In the vacuum created by the fifth century disintegration of the Western Roman Empire, a
number of barbarian groups migrated and settled within the imperial frontiers. Roman
governance institutions faded away while Roma elites faced a world where their status was no
longer secure. Alternatively, barbarian elites found themselves in a position to govern while not
necessarily having the experience and resources to do so effectively. As Romans and barbarians
alike adapted to this brave new world they laid the foundations for the de facto politically
powerful first and second estates of medieval Europe.
16
In response to barbarian migrations and settlements many Roman nobles sought offices in
the hierarchy of the Catholic Church (Mathisen 1993). As expressed by the fifth century senator
and prolific letter writer Sidonius Apollinaris: “our nobility has decided [...] to give up either its
homeland or its hair” (p. 89). Imperial office holding was characteristic of the senatorial class;
something in terms of which the nobility defined itself. The Church offered senators the
opportunity to hold the sort of offices that had the Empire could no longer offer (pp. 93-94).17
With the influx of senators came wealth and patronage networks; “the cathedral church by 500
was often the largest local landowner (and therefore patron), and, unlike in the case of private
family wealth, its stability could be guaranteed – bishops were not allowed to alienate church
property” (Wickham 2009, p. 59). 18
While Church offices offered an escape route to members of the Roman elite, most
individuals were not so lucky. Violent force was no longer concentrated in a military that was, at
least in principle, centrally controlled and directed. Individuals increasingly relied on reciprocal
ties of protection and service to provide them with security: “the lone, unaided individual was
virtually condemned. There was no choice but to enter the service of a magnate and thereby gain
his protection” (Riché 1993 [1983], p. 37). Being on the protection-providing end of such
relationships brought status and power. Nobility came to be defined, first and foremost, by one’s
ability to offer security and justice to one’s vassals; and that ability was a function of one’s
Since the conversion of Constantine the Great in the early fourth century, the Church had come “to mirror the
Empire’s administrative and social structures. Episcopal dioceses reflected the boundaries of city territories [...].
Further up the scale, the bishops of provincial capitals were turned into metropolitan archbishops, enjoying powers
of intervention in the new, subordinate sees. [...] From 370s onwards bishops were increasingly drawn from the
landowning classes, and controlled episcopal successions by discussion amongst themselves” (Heather 2006, p.
126).
18
This stability was enhanced by the increasing de facto (though official impermissible) heritability of ecclesiastical
offices. An episcopal dynasty could consolidate a substantial amount of patronage and power (Mathisen 1993, pp.
91-92).
17
17
wealth and prowess in violence. The medieval nobility was a landed warrior class (Bloch 1968a
[1939], pp. 145-146); Bloch 1968b [1940], pp. 288-292; Southern 1992 [1953], pp. 110-117).
During the seventh and eight centuries, an ambitious Frankish family rose to power in the
region of modern France, Belgium, and western Germany; eventually supplanting the
Merovingian dynasty that had dominated Frankish politics since the late fifth century.19
Beginning with Pippin I (of Landen; c. 580-640) a number of this family’s members served as
Mayors of the Palace for Merovingian kings and, over time, increasingly gained political
power.20 By around 731, Charles Martel (“The Hammer”; d. 741) had consolidated this political
power and was in effect, though never in title, king of the entire Frankish realm.21 Today we
refer to Charles and his descendants at the Carolingians.
The Carolingians took impressive steps towards reuniting Western Europe as a single
empire; most notably under Charlemagne, crowned “emperor of the Romans” by Pope Leo III on
Christmas day 800.22 In pursuing their imperial aspirations the Carolingians attempted to
leverage the first and second estates towards legitimizing their authority and building state
capacity. Doing so involved striking bargains with each of the estates, both explicit and implicit;
often placing them in opposition to one another. It is not surprising, then, that the Carolingian
legacy fostered representative assemblies that were estate-based.
19
When not referenced otherwise specifically, many factual details regarding the Carolingians are drawn from Riché
(1993 [1983]). Before Charles Martel it may be more accurate to speak of the rise to power to two allied families,
the Pippinids and Arnulfings.
20
Mayor of the Palace was the most powerful, non-royal position in Frankish courts. In particular, Mayors wielded
substantial political power when monarchs who were in their minority or otherwise weak sat on the throne. In many
cases, Mayors were the effective rulers of their realms, as in the cases of both Charles Martel and his son Pippin III
(until the latter officially assumed the throne). See Wickham (2009, pp. 116-119), Wickham (2016, pp. 36-38), and
the discussion below.
21
Indeed, when the ineffectual Merovingian King Theuderic IV died in 737, no new king was elected during the last
four years of Charles’ life.
22
He styled himself as “Augustus and emperor governing the Roman Empire”. The distinction between the title
conferred by Leo III and that used by Charlemagne was not inconsequential. See Riché (1993 [1983], pp. 120-123):
“[T]here remained two conceptions of the empire, and this variance foreordained the conflicts between popes and
emperor that later marked the history of medieval Europe” (p. 123).
18
After consolidating his political power, Charles Martel set about investing in state
capacity. To do so he leveraged the institution of vassalage, strategically granting benefices of
land to nobles throughout Gaul and Germany in exchange for their faithful service as agents of
local governance and revenue collection. To carry out this sort of endeavor without unacceptably
depleting his and his family’s landholdings, Charles undertook extensive confiscations of Church
properties, a practice that was continued by his sons Carloman and Pippin III (“The Short”;
Mayor of the Palace 741-751; r. 751-768).23 The Carolingian project in building state capacity
was foundational to medieval feudalism.24 It also represented a substantial transfer of wealth
from the clergy to the nobility. Contemporaries would have perceived the Carolingian project in
terms of a conflict between the collective interests of the nobility versus those of the clergy.
But all else was not equal. First, one notes that Church authorities were not helpless in the
face of such encroachments. Bishops and other high-ranking clergy were often also great lords
with the ability to raise armies. Second, the Church in Rome was threatened by Lombard kings in
northern Italy: first King Liutprand (r. 712-744) and then King Aistulf (r. 749-756).25 Thus the
Church sought protection from the Carolingians. Third, the Carolingians wanted to both expand
their realm and be accepted as legitimate within the realm they already controlled. (Recall that
23
The most solidly controlled realm of the Merovingians was divided into two primary territories: Neustria in the
west and Austrasia in the east. When Charles Martel died Carloman became Mayor of the Palace in Neustria; Pippin
III in Austrasia. In 747 Carloman decided (whether voluntarily or not we will never know) to withdraw from secular
politics and join the clergy in Rome.
24
As Innes (2005, p. 74) notes: “[T]he rising dominance of the Carolingian family at the court […] fractured
allegiances and broke the ties which normally bound court and localities together, particularly around the fringes of
the Merovingian world.” The Carolingian project was therefore one of building “bonds of association and loyalty
which entrenched their dominance of the political community” (p. 75). In regards to shaping medieval European
feudalism, Innes discusses how Carolingian territorial expansions led to a vertical differentiation of the feudal
hierarchy (pp. 75-76) and, under Charlemagne, the norms that, first, obligations of service at all levels of the feudal
hierarchy were ultimately in reference to obligations to the king/emperor and, second, that horizontal bonds of fealty
could not create obligations that superseded those between an individual and his king/emperor (pp. 80-82).
25
The Lombard threat receded temporarily upon the death of Liutprand who briefly shared the throne with and then
was succeeded by his nephew Hildeprand “The Useless” who as a leader was considered, well, useless.
19
the Merovingian dynasty still held formal claim to the throne.) As the overarching spiritual
authority of Latin Christendom, then, the Church had something to offer the Carolingians.
These three factors came together in in political bargaining between Pippin III and Pope
Zacharias (r. 741-752). Charles Martel had died in 741 and by 747 Pippin was by himself the
effective ruler of Gaul and eastern Germany. (In 743 Pippin and his brother Carloman identified
a young man believed to carry Merovingian blood in a St. Bertin monastery and installed him as
a puppet on the throne as Childeric III.) Pippin sent envoys to Rome with instructions to question
the pope “concerning the kings in Francia, whether it was good or not that they then had no royal
power.” Zacharias was savvy enough to recognize a softball when it was lobbed his way: he
replied: “it is better to call him a king who had royal power rather him who did not” (Riché 1993
[1983], p. 67). Upon the return of his envoys with Zacharias’ response, Pippin duly called the
leading men of Francia to an assembly in November of 751 during which he was elected king.26
Pope Zacharius died within months of Pippin III’s election but his successor Stephen II
(r. 752-757) had not forgotten the papal quid and was eager to cash in the Carolingian quo. He
travelled to Paris to personally remind Pippin of his obligations and to plead for Frankish
assistance in Italy. Pippin traveled to Rome in 754 where Stephen consecrated him as king. Over
the next couple of years, Pippin attacked the Lombards and secured the territory between Rome
and Ravenna for the papacy. The former capital of the Western Roman Empire and then the
Ostrogothic Kingdom, Ravenna had been under Eastern Roman Empire (Byzantine) control
since 540 until the Lombards had put the exarch of Ravenna to death in 751. Pippin not only
secured a substantial buffer zone between Rome and the Lombard Kingdom; he also “donated”
the Ravenna exarchate to papacy in 756. In doing so he not only strengthened the Catholic
26
Poor Childeric was tonsured and sent back to his monastery in St. Bertin; he died a few years later. At the time of
Pippin III’s election, Childeric had already bore a son, Theuderic. He was sent of to a different monastery in
Fontanelle.
20
Church’s position in Italy; he made the pope a secular ruler and also ensured that the Lombard
displacement of the Eastern Church, a competing spiritual authority, was not undone. As Pirenne
(2001 [1937], p. 227) notes: “[T]he Pope felt that he was protected from his enemies, and that the
orthodox faith was safe, but also that he was obliged to rely absolutely on Pippin’s protection.”27
When Pippin III died in 768 the Frankish kingdom was left under the rule of his sons,
Charles and his younger brother Carloman. The latter died in 771 leaving Charles (“The Great”;
Charlemagne) as the sole king. Charlemagne expanded his kingdom substantially, including
securing Aquitaine Gaul, expanding into Bavaria and Saxony, and conquering the Lombards in
northern Italy. He visited Rome in 774 to celebrate Easter, insisting that he and Pope Hadrian I
(r. 772-795) swear oaths of mutual fidelity and protection before he entered the city walls.
Charlemagne then had his father’s “donation” read and affirmed; then Charlemagne additionally
granted the papacy Corsica and the duchies of Benevento and Spoleto.
On the part of Charlemagne this was more than a simple affirmation of his father’s
donation. The papacy could not defend its frontiers as defined by Pippin III in 756. Furthermore,
those frontiers were a source of tension with the Lombards, at that time ruled by the formidable
King Desiderius (r. 756-774). Charlemagne had married the Lombard king’s daughter Desiderata
in 768. Given the hostile intentions of Desiderius and other Lombard princes towards the
fledgling Papal States, Charlemagne found himself in a difficult position. Ultimately,
Charlemagne chose to send Desiderata back to her father, affirm himself as “patrician of the
Romans and the guardian of the papacy (Riché 1993 [1983], p. 97), and march his army across
the Alps in 773. His Easter visit to Rome coincided with the nineteen-month siege of the Pavia,
27
The Great Schism between the Western and Eastern Churches would not occur until 1054. However, even in the
early medieval period the competition between the Roman papacy and patriarchy of Constantinople for spiritual
authority was an important one. On the relationships between early Carolingians and the Church see Riché (1993
[1983], pp. 293-295), Pirenne (2001 [1937], pp. 221-224), and Wickham (2009, pp. 376-377).
21
the Lombard capital. When the siege ended Charlemagne had himself crowned King of the
Lombards, insisting on all princes and magnates doing him homage.
Six years later, the Church would again, as in the case of his father, legitimize
Charlemagne’s (now much broader) authority in Europe. On Christmas day 800, Pope Leo III (r.
795-816) crowned Charlemagne emperor of the Romans.
The legacy of Carolingian rule in modern France and other areas on the continent, then,
was one of state capacity built upon bonds of homage and fidelity. These bonds came in
exchange for benefices granted to nobles, and those benefices came in part from Carolingian
secularization (expropriation) of Church properties. However, the Carolingians employed their
new vassals and state capacity towards securing the Church’s authority, in part through the
establishment of Papal States in northern Italy. This created complex relationships between the
interests of the Church (first estate), the nobility (second estate), and the Carolingian monarchs.
Given this backdrop it is unsurprising that when monarchs called representative assemblies
to seek advice and consent that those assemblies were organized to facilitate each estate’s
corporate expression of interests. Indeed this was the case at least as far back as Charlemagne:
Each year before the summer campaigns, he convened the conventus generalis, or
“general assembly,” where great matters of state were discussed in common. […] A
prearranged agenda was proposed for debate and approval by separate lay and cleric
blocs that made up the assembly (Riché 1993 [1983], p. 125).
As a specific example from an 811 capitulary, Charlemagne specifically implored members of
the nobility and clergy to “meet at the palace in separate groups, to discuss complaints about
counts having trespassed on episcopal territory and vice versa (de Jong 2005, p. 110; Riché 1993
[1983], pp. 125-126). (These complaints were proving disruptive to Charlemagne’s campaigns.)
22
6.
England: The Local Governance Legacy of the Norman Invasions
While Carolingian governance institutions eventually made a mark on England, they did not do
so until the eleventh century when the Normans attempted to superimpose them on already welldeveloped Anglo Saxon institutions of local governance. These institutions of local governance
became fundamental to the rule of English monarchs. Given these institutions and the
prominence of local (non-noble; non-ecclesiastic) personages in the administration and judicial
system, residents of English counties were less likely to perceive their collective interests along
the lines of particular estates. Furthermore, since they needed these local personages to
effectively govern it behooved monarchs to grant them representation in the assembly.
England’s institutions of local governance can be traced back to the unique circumstances
of its barbarian settlements during the decline of the Western Roman Empire. In Roman Britain,
the imperial military presence had effectively disappeared by the beginning of the fifth century
(Heather 2009, p. 278). Unlike on the continent where large barbarian confederacies such as the
Visigoths, Ostrogoths and combined Vandals-Alans formed to face imperial armies, relatively
small barbarian retinues could effectively plunder the island (Young 2016). Abandoned by the
imperial military and threatened by raids by Picts (from modern Scottland) and Scotti (from
modern England) Roman elites sought to bargain for protection with the Anglo-Saxons in
exchange for land and food subsidies (Heather 2009, pp. 277-278). But the Anglo-Saxons were
not a cohesive group with which meaningful bargains could be struck. As the Anglo-Saxons
migrated across the North Sea, Romans soon found themselves overrun by numerous armed
retinues, the result being the establishment of a number of small Anglo-Saxon kingdoms.
23
Some scholars characterize the Anglo-Saxon migration in terms of “elite transfer”: the
Anglo-Saxon elites co-opted existing local institutions and governed with the aid of local leaders
(Heather 2009, ch.6 and the works cited therein). Other scholars argue that the Anglo-Saxons
decimated the Romano-British sociopolitical infrastructure to the extent that the emergence of a
large-scale successor state was impossible (Ertman 1997, p. 159 and the works cited therein).
Either way, the result was a predominance of local-level governance institutions that would
survive into the thirteenth century and fundamentally affect the structure of English Parliament.
Given the backdrop of numerous Anglo-Saxon kingdoms, England would experience
centuries without a dominant polity. Such a dominant polity finally arose with King Egbert’s
Wessex in the early ninth century. Over the next century England suffered Viking invasions, but
the Wessex kings halted and then reversed the Vikings’ progress; in doing so they established a
single overarching English polity in the mid-tenth century. In doing so, the Wessex kings
superimposed Carolingian models of royal county-level administration upon existing shire-level
local governance structures (Campbell 1986a, 1986b; Ertman 1997, p. 162).
Following William the Conqueror’s invasion (1066) the Normans moved to install
members of their own elite into governance positions, such as those of county sheriffs. Being
familiar with the Carolingian–type royal governance, however, the Normans preserved the local
governance structures upon which it had been superimposed (Ertman 1997 pp. 163-164 and the
references cited therein). The Normans and Plantagenet kings that followed made important
innovations to central governance (most notably the chancery, the Exchequer, and royal circuit
justices) (Hollister and Baldwin 1978). However, in doing so they always maintained the
cooperative relationship between central and local governance: “Whatever improvements were
24
made at the center, the key to the effective operation of English government lay in the shires, or
counties [...]” (Ertman 1997, p. 165).
The Wessex kings formulated their policies in the forum of a royal council (witan).
Important matters such as legislation were vetted in a larger version of this council (witangemot)
that included high-ranking nobility and clergy (Loyn 1984, pp. 140-154). Following the
unpopular taxes of the Plantagenet kings Richard and John, Magna Carta (1215) built upon the
tradition of the witangemot and stipulated that the king would levy extraordinary taxes only with
the consent of a Magnum Concilium that included the ecclesiastical and lay magnates. However,
local governance structures remained fundamental to the administration and adjudication of the
realm. Relative to on the continent, then, the claim that an assembly of the first and second
estates spoke for the general community seemed tenuous (Cam 1953). As early as 1254, King
Henry III had set a precedent by inviting each shire to send two knights as additional
representatives. His successor King Edmund I (1272-1307) additionally invited two
representatives from each borough (Brown 1989, pp. 156-157, 161-169).
These Great Councils – referred to as Parliaments by the end of the thirteenth century
century – had, by the 1330s, settled upon a structure consisting of a House of Lords containing
between 40 and 100 lay magnates and about 50 ecclesiastical magnets; a House of Commons
containing 74 shire representatives and about 150 representatives from the boroughs (Brown
1989, pp. 169, 173-174, 178-179, 182-183, 188, 202).28 The territorially based English
Parliament provided, relative to its estate-based continental counterparts, a strong check on
monarchical encroachments. By no means was the check always effective; in particular, the early
Stuarts (James I and Charles I; ruled 1603-1649) moved towards absolutism. However, that
28
See Richardson and Sayles (1961) for the argument that the overall structure of Parliament was set by the end of
the thirteenth century.
25
absolutism proved transient, halted by the English Civil War. Following the Restoration, a
reinvigorated and Whig-led Parliament pressed its constitutional claims, resulting in the Glorious
Revolution and the permanent establishment of a constitutional monarchy.
7.
Concluding Thoughts
We began this paper by briefly surveying how scholars shifted their attention from protoliberalism (divided government, checks and balances, etc.) to state capacity as an explanation for
the West’s material prosperity. The mechanisms highlighted by scholars of state capacity, such
as fiscal and legal capacity, are important, and deserve serious attention both in terms of how
they arose and how they function. Because any acceptable social scientific explanation must
specify the incentives agents face and the information agents possess as they contribute to the
development of, or act within already established, institutions, economic analyses of the
constitutional bargaining processes that resulted in modern states will be crucial to a persuasive
story. It is in this sense that we claimed our analysis was complementary to the existing
literature on state capacity.
But in a broader sense, there are also significant tensions between our project and the
state capacity project. The state capacity literature implicitly treats the rise of Western liberalism
and Western economic enrichment as separate problems. If modern growth and development is
due to state building and its associated rise of merit-based bureaucracies, then the mystery of
what McCloskey (2007, 2011, 2016) calls the ‘Great Enrichment’ can be answered separately
from the question of why political liberalism rose in the West. The latter may still be an
interesting question for scholarly research, but it is not intrinsically related to the former. This is
our point of departure. Without disputing the empirical claims of the state capacity literature, we
26
interpret these findings as a consequence of features of governance institutions that resulted in
the antecedents of political liberalism. In fact, we contend our perspective is necessary for state
capacity to make any sense as an explanation for the wealth and poverty of nations that is
acceptable to social scientists.
Comparative institutional analysis gives us powerful explanations for what institutional
features take self-interested and bounded rational agents and channel their behavior into
beneficial social outcomes. Constitutional political economy adds insight into the consequences
of constitutional exchange for the makeup of institutions. Applied historically, these fields can
point to specific incentive- and information-aligning features of institutions that resulted in
Western prosperity. Without specifying these, theories of development that single out state
capacity are limiting themselves to mere institutional morphology, rather than economics or
political economy.
We answered the questions of general Western prosperity, and variation in prosperity
across particular Western polities, by pointing to specific features of medieval representative
assemblies that were sufficiently ingrained as to persist into early modernity and the statebuilding era. Since the features of institutions that align incentives and generate information are
conceptually separable from historical institutions that performed (or failed to perform) these
functions, our analysis may suggest institutional mechanisms that can result in wealth-producing
governance more generally. These mechanisms are not sufficiently abstract as to be the province
of pure rational choice, nor so concrete as to qualify solely as history. Outward political change,
such as state building, may or may not change the mechanisms that determine whether wealth
will be created or destroyed within the polity. Discovering the conditions under which the
27
determinants of prosperity are durable will be crucial to understanding historical episodes of
state building, and to the antecedents of Western liberalism more generally.
28
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FIGURE 1a.
Poli cal Bargaining in the Context of an Estate-Based Assembly
CONCESSION
OF POWERS
CONCESSION
OF POWERS
PRIVILEGES
(SPECIAL INTERESTS)
RENTS
FIGURE 1b.
Poli cal Bargaining in the Context of a Territorially Based Assembly
CHECK
ON POWERS
CHECK
ON POWERS
COMMON INTEREST
PUBLIC GOODS
36