Political Order and Economic Development: Reflections on Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations
| Date | 01 December 1975 |
| Published date | 01 December 1975 |
| Author | L. Billet |
| DOI | 10.1111/j.1467-9248.1975.tb00081.x |
| Subject Matter | Article |
POLITICAL ORDER AND ECONOMIC
DEVELOPMENT: REFLECTIONS ON
ADAM
SMITH’S
WEALTH
OF
NATIONS
L.
BILLET
University
of
California
It
is
the great multiplication
of
all
the different arts, in consequence
of
the division
of
labour, which occasions, in a well governed society, that universal opulence which
extends
itself
to
the
lowest
ranks of the people.’
Commerce and manufactures.
.
.
can seldom flourish
in
any state
in
which there is
not
a
certain degree
of
confidence
in
the justice
of
government.2
INTRODUCTION:
LOOKING
BACKWARD
FROM
the opening pages of the first great treatise of political economy,
An
Inquiry into the Nature and Causes
of
the Wealth
of
Nations,
to the very last chapter
on public debts, one is struck by the idea, crucial to Adam Smith’s thought, that
the character of a nation’s political institutions and practices decisively affects its
capacity for sustained economic development. Although this assumption of a close
political-economic interconnection is a part
of
the tradition of classical political
economy after Smith,3 the work of
no
other early economist elaborates this con-
nection and illustrates it with historical evidence and comparative analysis of the
political economies
of
many important nations: not only England, Scotland and
Ireland, but France, Holland, Spain, Portugal, China, India and colonial America.
Scholars interested in economic thought sometimes recognize that Smith dis-
cusses the market economy as necessarily operating within a broader social con-
text, including a ‘suitable framework of law and order’4
or
‘laws and
institution^';^
that ‘stable and responsible government’6 has an important bearing
on
economic
enterprise, and that government as well as institutions such as religion and educa-
tion have an important role in the theories of the classical political economists.’
However, although an emphasis
on
the relationship between the character of
political order itself and the possibilities for economic development pervades the
’
Adam Smith,
An Inquiry Into the Nature and Causes
of
the Wealth
of
Nations
ed. Edwh
Cannan (New York, 1937), p. 11.
*
Ibid., p. 862. Page references to all further quotations from
The Wealth
of
Nations
will be
given in brackets after the quotation
in
the text.
For example, T. R. Malthus,
Principles
of
Political Ecorwmy,
Bk.
11,
Chap. 1,
Sect.
1;
J.
S.
Mill,
PrinciplesofPoliticalEconomy,
Bk.
I,
Chap.
7,
Sect.
6,
Chap. 12, Sect. 3,Chap. 13, Sect.
1;
D.
Ricardo,
The Principles
of
Political Economy and Taxation,
Chap.
V.
L.
Robbins,
The ‘Theory
of
Economic Policy
(London, 1952). p.
190.
A. Small,
Adam Smith and Modern Sociology
(Chicago, 1907), pp. 186-7.
J.
M.
Letiche, ‘Adam Smith and David Ricardo
on
Economic Growth’
in
Bert
F.
Hoselitz
(ed.),
Theories
of
Economic Growth
(New York, 1960),
p.
71.
See
especially, in addition to Robbins, W.
J.
Samuels,
The
Classical Theory
of
Economic
Policy
(Cleveland, 1966);
N.
Rosenberg, ‘Some Institutional Aspects of the
Wealth
of
Nations’,
Journal
of
Political Economy,
Dec.
1960, pp. 557-70; A. Salomon, ‘Adam Smith
as
Sociologist’,
Social Research,
Feb. 1945, pp. 2242;
G.
R. Morrow,
The
Ethical and Economic Theories
of
Adam Smith
(New York, 1933).
Political
Studiss.
Val.
Xxm,
No. 4
(430-441)
To continue reading
Request your trial