England: Dominant Coalition in Transition: the Rise of the Merchant-navy Alliance After 1600
Abstract: This paper-—based on our 2014 The Long Process of Development: Building Markets and States In Pre-Industiral England, Spain, and Their Colonies--uses the 2013 In the Shadow of Violence by Douglass North and his co-authors to explain the causes of the Glorious Revolution ignored in North and Weingast’s iconic 1989 “Constitutions and Commitment.” In the Shadow of Violence argues that until the end of a multi-century process, an elite dominant coalition, including the military, produce stability by denying non-elite forces access to the political process and dividing the monopoly “rents” among themselves. The book deals with the modern developing world and does not mention Europe. We argue that English development is to be understood by combining the insight about dominant coalitions and the military in In the Shadow of Violence with North’s insights about informal institutions not discussed in “Constitutions and Commitment.” The dominant coalition of a rural society is composed of regional warlords with their own military. The dominant coalition of a modern society is composed of the urban elites-—business, financial, military, government bureaucrats, etc. etc. But North is right: the process is very long. The 1600s were transitional. The [war]lords had been disarmed, but the new coalition was only being formed-—and only first part, the alliance of the military and the merchants with their armed merchant fleet. North and Weingast did not discuss religion, but as R. H. Tawney argued, economic change produced ideologies in support (Calvin) and those against (Luther or English sects). The religious conflict exploded in civil war in 1640 when no military force existed to control it. But by 1660 the navy-merchant alliance had the force to impose the Restoration and then the Glorious Revolution. The 1700s became, in the words of John Brewer, “a military-financial state” that was stable as a new urban elite was expanded and consolidated.
