In Violence and Social Orders: A Conceptual Framework for Interpreting Recorded Human History, Douglass C. North, John Joseph Wallis, and Barry R. Weingast probe the organizational foundations of development. Outlining the properties of the “natural” and “open entry” societies, they highlight as well the conditions under which societies can move from one to the other, thereby achieving political order and economic prosperity.

Stephen Haber et al. explore economic growth in key sectors of the Mexican economy, 1876–1929, an era of political instability and (1914–17) civil war. The authors demonstrate that economic growth continued amidst political instability and offer an explanation for their conunterintuitive finding. Reviewing the evidence advanced by the authors, Robert Bates summarizes and comments on their argument, and applies it to “out of sample” data from Africa.