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Constitutional Political Economy

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01-03-2015 | Original Paper

The mature limited access order at the doorstep: Imperial Germany and contemporary China in transition

Author: Erik Grimmer-Solem

Published in: Constitutional Political Economy | Issue 1/2015

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Abstract

A basic premise of the limited/open access orders framework of North, Wallis, Webb and Weingast is a variant of the Hayek–Friedman hypothesis that economic and political freedom sustain each other. Keys to this framework are the specific “doorstep” conditions that enable a transition from limited to open access, which the authors draw from the historical experience of Britain, France and the United States. This essay analyzes the transition process of Imperial Germany to reveal that maintaining economic competition did not depend on democracy and that the middle classes became stakeholders in authoritarianism. It then explores the specific challenges posed by this large, mature limited access order as it was integrated into an international system sustained by a declining liberal hegemon, Great Britain. The refinements of the framework suggested by the case of Imperial Germany allow for a better understanding of some of the parallel transition processes in present-day China and its evolving relationship to both the United States and the current international order.

previous article On the stability of open access orders: the Federal Republic of Germany since the 1960s

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Title: The mature limited access order at the doorstep: Imperial Germany and contemporary China in transition
Author: Erik Grimmer-Solem
Publication date: 01-03-2015
Publisher: Springer US
Published in: Constitutional Political Economy / Issue 1/2015
Print ISSN: 1043-4062
Electronic ISSN: 1572-9966
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10602-014-9169-8

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Other articles of this Issue 1/2015

Introduction: a new perspective on modern German history

Becoming an open democratic capitalist society: a two-century historical perspective on Germany’s evolving political economy

Capitalist transformation without political participation: German capitalism in the first half of the nineteenth century

On the stability of open access orders: the Federal Republic of Germany since the 1960s

Weimar Germany: The first open access order that failed?

The concept of Ordnungspolitik through the lens of the theory of limited and open access orders

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