Rethinking The Rise Of Early Modern European States

This article reexamines the divergent political change and economic development of early modem Europe countries before Glory Revolution (1580-1680).With the emerging of the Atlantic trade after 1580s, a divergence between the countries involved in this new trade and countries not-involved in appeared, and within the group of countries which involved in the Atlantic trade, a second divergence between absolute counties and non-absolute counties appeared, because different regimes adopted different trading mode.And the article argues that the mechanism of interests binding drive institutional change which bright about the third and final divergence of political and economic consequences among early modern Europe.The article makes two primary contributions to existing understanding of the rise of early modern Europe, more broadly, the rise of modern world.First, it provides a more specific mechanism to explain the institution change of early modern Europe:interests binding, interest binding is the key mechanism which stimulates the regime change of some states (for instance, the British) or prevent institution change of other countries (for example, the France).Secondly, it provides a comparative cases analysis (QCA) rather than one case study to ravel the riddle of early modern Europe divergence in economic growth. And the use of QCA is a highlight for similar studies.