Hilton Root - Academia.edu (original) (raw)

Books by Hilton Root

Network Origins of the Global Economy: East Vs. West in a Complex Systems Perspective , 2020

The upheavals of recent decades show us that traditional models of understanding processes of soc... more The upheavals of recent decades show us that traditional models of understanding processes of social and economic change are failing to capture real-world risk and volatility. This has resulted in flawed policy that seeks to capture change in terms of the rise or decline of regimes or regions. In order to comprehend current events, understand future risks and decide how to prepare for them, we need to consider economies and social orders as open, complex networks. This highly original work uses the tools of network analysis to understand great transitions in history, particularly those concerning economic development and globalisation. Hilton L. Root shifts attention away from particular agents - whether individuals, groups, nations or policy interventions - and toward their dynamic interactions. Applying insights from complexity science to often overlooked variables across European and Chinese history, he explores the implications of China's unique trajectory and ascendency, as a competitor and counterexample to the West.

Preface
Part I. Political Economy and Complex Systems:
1. Great transitions in economic history
2. Growth, form, and self-organization in the economy
3. Human evolutionary behavior and political economy

Part II. An Analysis of Historical Regimes:
4. Network assemblage of regime stability and resilience
5. Network formation and the emergence of law: from feudalism to small-world connectivity
6. The network foundations of the Great Divergence

Part III. The Coming Instability:
7. Has the baton passed to China?
8. China's ambitions and the future of the global economy
9. Global networks over time
10. A future of diminishing returns or massive transformation?
11. Network structure and economic change: East vs. West.

Papers by Hilton Root

Cambridge University Press eBooks, Mar 19, 2020

Connections: The Quarterly Journal

This article analyzes structure and function in the network design of historical regimes of China... more This article analyzes structure and function in the network design of historical regimes of China and Western Europe to build a theory for the development of societies and states from endogenous mechanisms of social change. It shows how their respective network structures evolved independently but share a global property: both are small worlds, meaning that any node in the network can reach any other node by a small number of steps. Probing the variations in network topologies and their role in diffusion and scaling, the author accounts for differences in formal institutions, interpersonal trust, cultural norms, and moral protocols. Network structure as an independent variable moves the discussion of the divergence of East and West beyond the conventional, centralized China versus decentralized Europe debate. It allows us to identify an overlooked driver of structural change in the polity, helping to discern better what sets the development of world civilizations apart.

Network Origins of the Global Economy

Network Origins of the Global Economy, 2020

The Entrepreneurial Ecosystem

Crown and Peasantry in Burgundy is a study of the changing relationship between seigneurie, villa... more Crown and Peasantry in Burgundy is a study of the changing relationship between seigneurie, village and crown during the Old Regime. It attempts to reconstruct Burgundian peasant communities as they functioned before the Revolution, and to examine their relationship to legal, fiscal and administrative authority. In 1661, when Louis XIV began his personal reign, village communities in Burgundy were weak and had lost much of their property to creditors. Yet one hundred years later those same villages were an effective political unit--united enough to initiate, and wealthy enough to undertake, expensive legal suits against their seigneurs. The dissertation links the persistence of communal activity to royal fiscal and administrative policies. Because communities were the basic unit of royal tax collection, the crown assigned to administrators, the intendants, the responsibility to supervise and to protect village properties. The intendants' authority grew at the expense of local seigneurs, and by the late eighteenth century much of the traditional jurisdiction of seigneurs over peasants was curtailed. To establish their own administrative authority over villages, however, the intendants did not attack traditional corporate forms and practices, but reinforced them. In the eighteenth century some reformers in the King's Council did want to abolish collective rights and practices as a way to encourage agricultural improvements. A split developed within the royal administration, the intendants, fearing that reforms would disrupt tax collection at a time when the monarchy was close to bankruptcy, helped communities block agricultural reforms. In the long run, then, the crown's administrative and fiscal policies preserved the corporate traditions of the village. Those policies, responsible for protecting and preserving the community in the seventeenth century, obstructed agricultural change in the eighteenth. The peasantry's sense of political identity was strengthened by the growth of central authority; the peasant community's solidarity, resting on the preservation of its collective rights and properties, obstructed technical progress in agriculture.Ph.D.European historyUniversity of Michiganhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/159637/1/8324275.pd

Political Science, Dynamics among Nations, Nov 1, 2013

Peasants and King in Burgundy, 1987