The same author also summarized a paper on the French revolution:
The thread that runs from Edmund Burke to James Scott and Seeing Like A State goes: systems that evolve organically are well-adapted to their purpose. Cultures, ancient traditions, and long-lasting institutions contain irreplaceable wisdom[...]
An alternative thread runs through the French Revolution, social activism, and modern complaints about vetocracy. Its thesis: entrenched interests are constantly blocking necessary change. If only there were some centralized authority powerful enough to sweep them away and do all the changes we know we need, everything would be great[...]
Into this eternal battle comes The Consequences Of Radical Reform: The French Revolution, by Daron Acemoglu, Davide Cantoni, Simon Johnson, and James Robinson (from 2009; h/t Rob B). Under Napoleon, the revolutionary French took over large swathes of Europe. They abolished their client states’ traditional systems, replacing them with the Napoleonic Code and other “modern” legal systems. Europe at the time had so many tiny duchies and principalities and so on that you can actually do a decent experiment on it—for every principality Napoleon conquered and reformed, there was another one just down the river which was basically identical but managed to escape conquest. So the authors ask: did the radically-reformed polities do better or worse than the left-to-their-traditions polities?
(admittedly, this is measured in GDP, urbanization, and other “legible” statistics—but pretty broad ones, measured over decades from a distance of centuries, in a way that seems to track very-long-term development and is hard to fake)
Take a second to make a prediction here—a real prediction, with a probability attached.
If you’re really feeling bold, post a comment with your prediction before reading further.
Are you sure you want to keep reading now? You’ll never get another chance to predict this from a position of ignorance!
...okay, fine. The study concludes:
> The evidence suggests that areas that were occupied by the French and that underwent radical institutional reform experienced more rapid urbanization and economic growth, especially after 1850. There is no evidence of a negative effect of French invasion. Our interpretation is that the Revolution destroyed (the institutional underpinnings of) the power of oligarchies and elites opposed to economic change; combined with the arrival of new economic and industrial opportunities in the second half of the 19th century, this helped pave the way for future economic growth. The evidence does not provide any support for several other views, most notably, that evolved institutions are inherently superior to those ‘designed’; that institutions must be ‘appropriate’ and cannot be ‘transplanted’; and that the civil code and other French institutions have adverse economic effects.
Notice how merciless the authors are—not only rejecting the superiority of evolved over designed institutions, but equally skeptical of the superiority of local over foreign ones. “The evidence,” they say, “does not support the thesis that institutions are efficiently adapted to the underlying characteristics of a society and that evolved institutions are superior to those that are designed or externally imposed.”
In fact, they think that when designed imposed institutions fail, it’s probably because they don’t go far enough:
> The success of the French reforms raises the question: why did they work when other externally-imposed reforms often fail? Most likely this is because the reforms were much more radical than is typically the case. The French reformed simultaneously in many dimensions and weakened the powers of local elites, making a return to the status quo ante largely impossible. Even when some pre-revolution elites returned to power after 1815, there was a permanent change in the political equilibrium. This scope and radicalism of the French reforms are common with the post-war reform experiences in Germany and Japan and stand in contrast with many other reform experiences.
Thanks, that’s great. But to be fair, this was about importing working systems to new places, after a decade of checking that they worked, not fully novel systems. So I don’t think you get to count this as evidence for mutiny, though it does provide evidence for the value of cosmopolitanism—something I don’t think was being questioned here, or is debated much in EA generally.
The same author also summarized a paper on the French revolution:
Thanks, that’s great. But to be fair, this was about importing working systems to new places, after a decade of checking that they worked, not fully novel systems. So I don’t think you get to count this as evidence for mutiny, though it does provide evidence for the value of cosmopolitanism—something I don’t think was being questioned here, or is debated much in EA generally.