Indeed, history seems to be the terrain for vigorous battles over policy. Did the World Bank misread the Asian financial crisis of 1997, and does it apply a single institutions-driven formula to a varied world ( Stiglitz 2002)? Are foreign aid and external intervention in the service of growth completely off track ( Easterly 2006)? Does the Washington consensus around neoliberalism really mark the end of history? Is China continuing the Japanese model of state-led industrial policy? These rival arguments dominate debates over policy as well as research. Or is the outcome the result of differences in human capital ( Easterlin 1981), as expressed through education, technology, research, culture, and social capital ( Solow 1956, 1957 Griliches 1957 Griliches & Jorgenson 1966 Landes 1969, 1998 Mokyr 1990, 2002 Mitch 1993 Kuznets 1966 Galor & Moav 2002)? Both arguments have strong currency among political scientists-institutions in the McNollgast (1999) tradition, culture as explored by Almond & Verba (1965), Pye & Pye (1986), and most famously in recent years Putnam's (2000) discussion of “social capital.” In the quest for an explanation of differential growth rates and levels of prosperity in the present time compared to some postulated common past of relative equality of condition, is it institutions which explain outcome.
The core dispute pits institutions against human capital. What is the role of politics in shaping economic development? Economic historians have made substantial contributions to the study of economic development in recent years, work that deserves attention from political scientists because of its implications for the study of political development.
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