Barry R. Weingast

Civil War Project

This manuscript is intended as a discussion draft to solicit comments, criticism, and suggestions. Because the project remains far from complete, some of the arguments are tentative, and a large number of crucial topics have yet to be discussed or adequately cosidered. The most complete aspects of the manuscript concern the role of political institutions and their pivotal influence on politics and policy choice during the antebellum era. (Indeed, my 1998 paper, listed below, summarizes this argument.) As this material provides the kernel of my contribution, I have begun to circulate the manuscript, incomplete as it is.

The manuscript was largely written in the late 1980s, with chapters 1-8 completed by 1991. Chapters 9-10 were written in 1994-96. I had intended to complete and publish the manuscript, but becoming chair of the department in 1996 took me away from the project. I have revised the manuscript for exposition in the intervening years, but have not been able to complete it.

Under the "Note to the Reader," I explain the ways in which this manuscript remains incomplete and how I intend to revise it.

•  Institutions and Political Commitment: A New Political Economy of the American Civil War Era (Unpublished book manuscript, 2002.)
  
  

Selected Papers on American Political History and Civil War
"Stacking the Senate, Changing the Mation: Republican Rotten Borough and American Political Development in the Late 19th Century" (with Charled Stewart III), Studies in American Political Development (1992) 6: 223-71.

"Political Stability and Civil War: Institutions, Commitment, and American Democrary," in Analytic Narratives, Robert Bates, Avner Greif, Margaret Levi, Jean- Laurent Resenthal, and Barry R. Weingast, eds. (Princeton University Press, 1998).

"Agenda Manipulation, Strategic Voting, and Legislative Details in the Compromise of 1850" (with Sean M. Theriault) in David Brady and Mathew D. McCubbins, Theoretical Explorations on the History of Congress. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2002.

"Ideas, Interest, and Credible Commitments in the American Revolution," (with Jack Rakove and Andrew R. Rutten), Working Paper, Hoover Institution, Stanford University, August 2004.

"Federal Impotence: Why the States and Not the American National Government Financed Infrastructure Investment in the Antebellum Era," (with John Joesph Wallis). Working Paper, Hoover Institution, Stanford University, October 2005.

"Self-Enforcing Consititutions: With An Application to Democratic Stability in America's First Century," Working Paper, Hoover Institution, Stanford University, November 2005.

"The Fugitive Slave Act of 1850: Symbolic Gesture or Rational Guarantee?" (with Jeffrey Rogers Hummel), Working Paper, Hoover Institution, Stanford University, January 2006.

"Rationality, Inaccurate Mental Models, and Self-Confirming Equilibrium: A New Understanding of the American Revolution" (with Rui J.P. de Figueiredo, Jr., and Jack Rakove) Journal of Theoretical Politics (forthcoming).

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