30 Jul What differences might explain the different paths that the North American ex-British colonies and Latin American ex-Portuguese and ex-Spanish followed after independence?
Considering the arguments of scholars like Acemoglu, Johnson, and Robinson–in their article “Reversal of Fortune”– and North, Summerhill, and Weingast–presented in the papers “Institutions” and “Order, Disorder and Economic Change”–what differences might explain the different paths that the North American ex-British colonies and Latin American ex-Portuguese and ex-Spanish followed after independence? How does this contrast with the view that–according to John C. Chasteen–some American scholars had about the failure of political institutions in Latin America back in the early and mid-1900s?
