Why can some governments credibly commit to the rule of law and protection of property rights while others cannot? A potential answer involves deep historical traditions of institutions that constrain rulers. We explore whether experiences with representative assemblies in medieval/early modern Europe have left their mark on incomes and institutions today. We employ Stasavage's (2010) data on representative assembly activity in 30 medieval/early modern European polities and the Putterman and Weil (2010) data on descendancy shares from circa 1500 populations to construct country-level measures of historical assembly experience. We find that assembly experience is positively correlated with a measure of the rule of law and property rights and the Polity IV index that emphasizes constraint. Our estimates imply an important advantage for countries with assembly experience – an increase in experience from zero to that of an average Stasavage country would improve the country's property rights score by nearly 1.5 points.

中文翻译：

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中世纪欧洲代表今天的收入和制度的遗产

为什么有的政府能够信守法治和保护产权，而有的政府却不能？一个潜在的答案涉及约束统治者的制度的深厚历史传统。我们探讨中世纪/早期现代欧洲的代表大会的经验是否在今天的收入和制度上留下了印记。我们采用 Stasavage (2010) 关于 30 个中世纪/早期现代欧洲政体中代表性集会活动的数据以及 Putterman 和 Weil (2010) 关于来自大约 1500 个人口的后代份额的数据来构建历史集会经验的国家级测量。我们发现集会经验与法治和财产权的衡量标准以及强调约束的政体 IV 指数呈正相关。