The Origins of Political Order

The parliaments of PNG and the Solomons have no coherent political parties; they are full of individual leaders, each striving to bring back as much pork as possible to his or her narrow base of supporters.

Liberal democracy is more than majority voting in elections; it is a complex set of institutions that restrain and regularize the exercise of power through law and a system of checks and balances. In many countries, official acceptance of democratic legitimacy was accompanied by the systematic removal of checks on executive power and the erosion of... See more

Melanesian society is organized tribally, into what anthropologists call segmentary lineages, groups of people who trace their descent to a common ancestor. Numbering anywhere from a few dozen to a few thousand kinsmen, these tribes are locally known as wantoks, a pidgin corruption of the English words “one talk,” or people who speak the same langu... See more

On further reflection, however, it seemed to me that it was perhaps a conceit to think that modern societies had progressed so far beyond Melanesia, since Big Men—that is, politicians who distribute resources to their relatives and supporters—are ubiquitous in the contemporary world, including the U.S. Congress.

In 1973, only 45 of the world’s 151 countries were counted as “free” by Freedom House, a nongovernmental organization that produces quantitative measures of civil and political rights for countries around the world.1 That year, Spain, Portugal, and Greece were dictatorships; the Soviet Union and its Eastern European satellites looked like strong an... See more

Countries are not trapped by their pasts. But in many cases, things that happened hundreds or even thousands of years ago continue to exert major influence on the nature of politics. If we are seeking to understand the functioning of contemporary institutions, it is necessary to look at their origins and the often accidental and contingent forces t... See more