Elite Self-Interest and Economic Decline in Early Modern Europe
通过比较佛罗伦萨城邦、西班牙帝国、荷兰和英国四个案例，检验了领先经济强国为何丧失优势的理论，发现制度环境决定精英应对国际竞争的能力。
Why does the leading economic power of its time lose its dominance? Competing theories are tested through a comparison of four historical cases—the Florentine city-state, the Spanish empire, and the Dutch and British nation-states. Institutional context determined social actors’ capacities to apply their polities’ human and material resources to foreign economic competition. Specifically, the dominant elites in each polity established the social relations and institutions that protected them from domestic challenges from rival elites and classes. But these relations and institutions had the effect of limiting elites’ capacities to adapt to foreign economic rivals: Elites acting locally determined their capacities to act globally.