This book integrates the problem of violence into a larger social science and historical framework, showing how economic and political behavior are closely linked.

Douglass C. North is co-recipient of the 1993 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Science. He is Spencer T. Olin Professor in Arts and Sciences at Washington University, St Louis and Bartlett Burnap Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University.

Preface; 1. The conceptual framework; 2. The natural state; 3. The natural state applied: English land law; 4. Open access orders; 5. Explaining the transition from limited to open access orders: the doorstep conditions; 6. The transition proper; 7. A new research agenda for the social sciences; Afterword.