Limited Access Orders in the Developing World : A New Approach to the Problems of Development
The upper-income, advanced industrial countries of the world today all have market economies with open competition, competitive multi-party democratic political systems, and a secure government monopoly over violence. Such open access orders, howe...
| Main Authors: | , , , |
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| Format: | Policy Research Working Paper |
| Language: | English |
| Published: |
World Bank, Washington, DC
2012
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| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/2007/09/8332470/limited-access-orders-developing-world-new-approach-problems-development http://hdl.handle.net/10986/7341 |
| Summary: | The upper-income, advanced industrial
countries of the world today all have market economies with
open competition, competitive multi-party democratic
political systems, and a secure government monopoly over
violence. Such open access orders, however, are not the
only norm and equilibrium type of society. The middle and
low-income developing countries today, like all countries
before about 1800, can be understood as limited access
orders that maintain their equilibrium in a fundamentally
different way. In limited access orders, the state does not
have a secure monopoly on violence, and society organizes
itself to control violence among the elite factions. A
common feature of limited access orders is that political
elites divide up control of the economy, each getting some
share of the rents. Since outbreaks of violence reduce the
rents, the elite factions have incentives to be peaceable
most of the time. Adequate stability of the rents and thus
of the social order requires limiting access and
competition-hence a social order with a fundamentally
different logic than the open access order. This paper lays
out such a framework and explores some of its implications
for the problems of development today. |
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