The Expansive Corridor: Testing Acemoglu and Robinson (2019)

Abstract

Acemoglu and Robinson (2019) create a compelling narrative concerning the relationship between the power of states, the power of societies, and economic development, illustrated with a series of historical vignettes. Using a recently constructed historical dataset of state capacity, we provide a series of formal and informal tests of their hypothesis. We first visualize the historical paths of the strength of society and the strength of the state for each country so as to operationalize the claims of Acemoglu and Robinson. We then measure whether the balance of the strength of society and the strength of the state is predictive of improvements in both. We find very little evidence in favor of Acemoglu and Robinson (2019).

Keywords: The Narrow Corridor; Civil Society; State Capacity; Social Capital; Institutional Development

JEL Classification: O43, H10, N40