A while back I wondered what Chris Coyne would say in response to Daron Acemoglu’s paper showing institutional improvement in areas the French Revolution spread to. Oddly enough, I found Yglesias citing the Austrian-anarchist’s essay on recent books from the more left-anarchist’s James Scott and applying those ideas to modern counter-insurgency. His paper (with Adam Pellillo, who I’ve never heard of before) has a footnote referencing Acemoglu’s paper. Since it’s short, I’ll just quote the whole thing here:
In a recent article, Acemoglu et al. (2009) argue against this position. They contend that the impact of the French Revolution on European institutions proves that good institutions can be imposed from outside. Specifically, after 1792, French forces invaded numerous countries and imposed a civil code while abolishing guilds and the remnants of feudalism. They argue that the countries invaded performed better economically than those that didn’t. This, however, misses the point. The use of the guillotine is a means of raising the cost of enforcement. Demand curves do indeed slope downward and if you raise the cost of certain behaviors high enough people will respond. Stated simply, if the gun is big enough outsiders can get insiders to behave differently. Putting aside the issue of ethics, this is an extremely costly means of changing behaviors.
So I guess Coyne would agree with Daniel Klein that drug prohibition reduces drug use and gun laws reduce gun possession.
November 14, 2011 at 10:17 pm
I agree with your point, but I also think that decisions to invade places aren’t made in a vacuum. A strong incentive to invade is seeing the proverbial money-being-left-on-the-table due to poor management. You think you can extract better rents and furthermore that these rents will cover the cost of invasion. To what degree war in these times was economically rational is something I have a hard time answering, but Clausewitz and Jouvenal certainly seem to indicate that they were far from stupid in this dimension.
November 15, 2011 at 12:10 am
Bonaparte was extremely competent, both as a general and as a civil servant. Countries that lost to him either got his system imposed on them or they had to get better fast to keep him out (e.g., Prussia).
November 15, 2011 at 12:44 pm
Is it really correct to call those countries conquered by Buonaparte “areas the French revolution spread to”?
Buonapartism is a very far cry from Jacobinism, which was the moving spirit of the French revolution. While it is true that Buonaparte rose in the post-revolutionary French army and eventually came to power as First Consul of the Republic, it was as an emperor that he spread his system to Spain, the Low Countries, parts of the old Holy Roman Empire, Italy, and even Scandinavia.
It is hard today to appreciate the way in which the French revolution was influenced by the knowledge of the Greek and Latin classics, which was then so widespread and is now so diminished. The Jacobins thought of themselves as reviving the republican forms of antiquity, and regarded the execution of Louis XVI as parallel to the overthrow of the Tarquins. In the ensuing chaos, Buonaparte eventually came to fill the role of Octavian, and became emperor as if he were another Augustus Caesar.
What persisted in the countries once ruled by Buonaparte’s empire long after he was safely packed off to St. Helena were the changes wrought by the Napoleonic principate, not the principles of Jacobinism.
November 17, 2011 at 6:58 pm
nazgulnarsil, that’s a good point. There’s less selection for warfighting capability among regimes these days. I believe Edward Luttwak made a point like that in “Give War a Chance”.
Michael, you’re right. I was being lazy and just grabbed for a phrase.