Author: Barry R. Weingast | Journal of Democracy

Barry R. Weingast is Ward C. Kreps Family Professor of Political Science, Stanford University, and senior fellow, Hoover Institution. This essay draws on the authors’ book Violence and Social Orders: A Conceptual Framework for Interpreting Recorded Human History (Cambridge University Press, 2009).

January 2009, Volume 20, Issue 1

Violence and the Rise of Open-Access Orders

Douglass C. North
John Joseph Wallis
Barry R. Weingast

For most of history, a closed social order has seemed the most “natural” way to manage the problem of controlling the use of force. The rise of modern democracy can be understood only in the context of the transition to open-access orders.