Why Nations Fail: The Origins of Power, Prosperity, and Poverty

in England. These attempts were only intensified by his brother James II, who ascended to the throne after Charles’s death in 1685. In 1688 James’s attempt to reestablish absolutism created another crisis and another civil war. Parliament this time was more united and organized. They invited the Dutch
Statholder
, William of Orange, and his wife, Mary, James’s Protestant daughter, to replace James. William would bring an army and claim the throne, to rule not as an absolutist monarch but under a constitutional monarchy forged by Parliament. Two months after William’s landing in the British Isles at Brixham in Devon (see Map 9, this page ), James’s army disintegrated and he fled to France.
T HE G LORIOUS R EVOLUTION
    After victory in the Glorious Revolution, Parliament and William negotiated a new constitution. The changes were foreshadowed by William’s “Declaration,” made shortly prior to his invasion. They were further enshrined in the Declaration of Rights, produced by Parliament in February 1689. The Declaration was read out to William at the same session where he was offered the crown. In many ways the Declaration, which would be called the Bill of Rights after its signing into law, was vague. Crucially, however, it did establish some central constitutional principles. It determined the succession to the throne, and did so in a way that departed significantly from the then-received hereditary principles. If Parliament could remove a monarch and replace him with one more to their liking once, then why not again? The Declaration of Rights also asserted that the monarch could not suspend or dispense with laws, and it reiterated the illegality of taxation without parliamentary consent. In addition, it stated that there could be no standing army in England without parliamentary consent. Vagueness entered into such clauses as number 8, which stated, “The election of members of Parliament ought to be free,” but did not specify how “free” was to be determined. Even vaguer was clause 13, whose main point was that Parliaments ought to be held frequently. Since when and whether Parliament would be held had been such a contentious issue for the entire century, one might have expected much more specificity in this clause. Nevertheless, the reason for this vague wording is clear. Clauses have to be enforced. During the reign of Charles II, a Triennial Act had been in place that asserted that Parliaments had to be called at least once every three years. But Charles ignored it, and nothing happened, because there was no method of enforcing it. After 1688, Parliament could have tried to introduce a method for enforcing this clause, as the barons had done with their council after King John signed the Magna Carta. They did not do so because they did not need to. This was because authority and decision-making power switched to Parliament after 1688. Even without specific constitutional rules or laws, William simply gave up onmany of the practices of previous kings. He stopped interfering in legal decisions and gave up previous “rights,” such as getting the customs revenues for life. Taken together, these changes in political institutions represented the triumph of Parliament over the king, and thus the end of absolutism in England and subsequently Great Britain—as England and Scotland were united by the Act of Union in 1707. From then on Parliament was firmly in control of state policy. This made a huge difference, because the interests of Parliament were very different from those of the Stuart kings. Since many of those in Parliament had important investments in trade and industry, they had a strong stake in enforcing property rights. The Stuarts had frequently infringed on property rights; now they would be upheld. Moreover, when the Stuarts controlled how the government spent money, Parliament opposed greater taxes and balked at strengthening the power of the state. Now that Parliament itself controlled spending, it was happy to raise taxes and spend the money on activities that it deemed valuable. Chief among them was the strengthening of the navy, which would protect the overseas mercantile interests of many of the members of Parliament.
    Even more important than the interest of parliamentarians was the emerging pluralistic nature of political institutions. The English people now had access to Parliament, and the policy and economic institutions made in Parliament, in a way they never had when