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Building a New Imperial State: The Strategic Foundations of Separation of Powers in America

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 July 2017

SEAN GAILMARD
SEAN GAILMARD*
Affiliation:
University of California, Berkeley
*
Sean Gailmard is Professor, University of California, Berkeley ([email protected]).
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Abstract

Separation of powers existed in the British Empire of North America long before the U.S. Constitution of 1789, yet little is known about the strategic foundations of this institutional choice. In this article, I argue that separation of powers helps an imperial crown mitigate an agency problem with its colonial governor. Governors may extract more rents from colonial settlers than the imperial crown prefers. This lowers the Crown’s rents and inhibits economic development by settlers. Separation of powers within colonies allows settlers to restrain the governor’s rent extraction. If returns to settler investment are moderately high, this restraint is necessary for colonial economic development and ultimately benefits the Crown. Historical evidence from the American colonies and the first British Empire is consistent with the model. This article highlights the role of agency problems as a distinct factor in New World institutional development, and in a sovereign’s incentives to create liberal institutions.

Type
Research Article
Information
American Political Science Review , Volume 111 , Issue 4 , November 2017 , pp. 668 - 685
Copyright
Copyright © American Political Science Association 2017 

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Footnotes

A previous version was presented at Caltech, Columbia, Princeton, Stanford, UC Berkeley, UC Davis, UW Madison, and the 2016 LSE-NYU Political Economy conference. Thanks to Avi Acharya, Carles Boix, Gary Cox, Tiberiu Dragu, Stefan Eich, Lindsey Gailmard, Scott Gehlbach, Sandy Gordon, John Huber, Sam Kernell, Gabriel Leon, Nolan McCarty, Mat McCubbins, Pablo Montagnes, John Patty, Kirill Pogorelskiy, Carlo Prato, Eric Schickler, Mike Ting, Barry Weingast, and seminar participants for helpful comments.

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