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Building on the Hodgson–Mokyr debate in this journal (Volume 18, Issue 1, 2022), this article discusses how modern economic growth occurred in pre-Industrial Revolution Britain, with a particular focus on coalition politics and the marginalization of conservative political groups – vetoers to change. Such political marginalization was unusual before the 19th century, when monarchs had substantial political power and land-based conservative groups were their main political allies. This article finds the source of the English exceptionalism in the unique system of non-imperial personal union that Britain then had with the Dutch Republic and Hanover. Under this system, foreigner monarchs chose their local ally in Britain based on the security needs of their home states. It created a significant disadvantage to the Tories, the incumbent conservative groups, while providing a window of opportunity for the Whigs, the opposition group supported by new commercial interests, to form a coalition with the Crown. The long absence of the Tories from power resulted in the incorporation of their constituencies into the Whig-led regime, making the traditional economic interests the regime's 'junior partners', instead of formidable political competitors to the new commercial interests, which was the case before and elsewhere at that time. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Nineteenth-century Japan remains a void in the literature on institutions and growth. Developmental institutions evolved in Japan after the Meiji Restoration despite the absence of political participation. Authoritarian change agents usually face a trade-off between reform and stability: they have coercive power to remove underproductive institutions, but at the risk of inviting instability, as politically influential deprivileged elites may engage in counteraction to recover what they perceive as their entitlement. Many authoritarian regimes, thus, coopt elites by allowing them access to rent, but such buying-off inevitably compromises institutional improvement. How did Meiji Japan overcome this dilemma and liberate major fiscal and administrative spaces for productive players who generate wealth and increase the size of the economic pie for society? This article presents a model that it calls 'elite redeployment' to answer this puzzle. In lieu of elite bargains in participatory polities in Europe, the revolutionary authoritarian regime in Japan coercively deprivileged traditional elites and redeployed those with financial or human capital among them in productive institutions. By doing so, the Japanese authoritarian change agents dismantled the incumbent institutions in an irreversible manner and swiftly built new institutions such as modern administrative, educational, financial, and commercial sectors, while maintaining stability. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Can a rentier state evolve to a production state? This article attempts to answer this question by analysing how historically states evolved to production states and by comparing their experience with today's Gulf states. Although the Gulf states show some productive traits today, their mode of production largely remains 'production with rentier characteristics', that is reliant on oil-driven advantages. Their further economic diversification requires improved governance capabilities that enable their government to enhance human capital. Production states around the world acquired such governance capabilities through 'institutional upgrading', a replacement of clientelistic institutions with meritocratic ones. While clientelistic institutions tend to persist, such institutions were significantly reduced in these states through the exit of vested-interest players from major fiscal and organizational spaces. The exit appears to occur when these vested-interest players accept pain-sharing to ensure their protection in the context of the revealed vulnerability of their patron regime and when alternative productive gains are offered to them in lieu of conventional distribution. Presently neither condition is in existence in the Gulf states, which continue to be characterized by their direct and extensive distributional regimes. Without a prospect for immediate governance improvement, a realistic reform possibility lies in agency under institutional constraints. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An introduction is presented in which the guest editors discuss various reports within the issue on the changing political economy of Gulf rentier states.

The article provides an account of Saudi Arabia's "look east" trade policy. Topics discussed include strengthening of Saudi Arabia's diplomatic ties with India and China in 2006 under its previous king Abdullah, export of oil, development of renewable energy, and economic diversification, and high oil exports from Saudi Arabia in 2013.