Can Colonial Institutions Be Good for Democracy? A Review of Sean Gailmard's Agents of Empire”

Abstract

Sean Gailmard's Agents of Empire is a fascinating argument about imperial institutional legacies and a major contribution to the flourishing literature in historical political economy. Gailmard argues that British strategies of colonial governance in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries in what would become the United States had lasting and counterintuitive consequences. Colonial autonomy and legislative independence fused in a self-reinforcing bundle, even if British colonial rule itself consisted of a hodgepodge of imperfect institutions and various workarounds and patches layered on top of these institutions. Agents of Empire both contributes to and challenges the burgeoning new literature in historical political economy (HPE). Although much of the scholarship in historical political economy skates over causal mechanisms, Gailmard's analytical move is to emphasize these processes and mechanisms. This is a provocative and powerful argument that points out both the challenges of colonial rule and its surprising institutional consequences.