BackgroundDouglass North and Barry Weingast’s seminal article on ‘credible commitment’ has proven the most influential explanation of the economic and financial significance of the Glorious Revolution of 1688/89. They argued that the establishment of parliamentary supremacy over public finance created an environment in which investors could rely upon the state to meet its financial promises. The Financial Revolution, upon which Britain’s rise to great power status was founded, followed from this development. While North and Weingast’s arguments have enjoyed wide acceptance among historians, economists, and political and legal theorists, their work has also attracted much criticism. This lacuna in our knowledge is not only problematic for scholars of the European financial revolutions. The recent global financial crisis has renewed the spectre of sovereign debt default and thus made it essential that we fully understand the mechanisms by which states successfully foster public trust. Moreover, many Western politicians and public commentators see the North & Weingast thesis as vindication of the widely held belief that successful financial capitalism can only emerge in democratic societies with professional bureaucracies. This has fostered complacency about the economic potentials of states like Russia, India and China. But if North & Weingast’s explanation of ‘credible commitment’ has not withstood close scrutiny, then the applications of their hypotheses to new contexts may also be flawed. The goal of this conference, therefore, is not only to draw together the revisionist scholarship on the ‘credible commitment’ thesis, but also to formulate a new understanding of the factors contributing to the successful adoption of financial capitalism in Britain. Dr D'Maris D. Coffman, Newnham College |