American Government & British Governance

• American government definition focuses around its institutions
• Institutions are looked at to understand the governments policy ends, failures, coercive force, and influence of public opinion
• Mass parties and administrative bureaucracy were not anticipated at America's founding
• Federalism, separation of powers, and "checks and balances" were major institutional structures
• Institutions in America have changed the world standard for orderly government and protection from arbitrary action
• US Constitution and related literature are good sources for understanding design of political institutions, but not the only places to consider in your assessment
• Framers of the Constitution borrowed, reconfigured, and re-theorized their institutional inheritance from the British empire
• The deployment and evolution of institutional structures under British Administration is important

Core Argument

• America's foundational institutions emerged from problems of British governance in the New World
• Root cause was the crowns strategic response to governance challenges
• The British imperial state was not unitary
• Governing an empire required delegation, including authority to claim territory, organize colonial economy, export people and supplies, import goods, and govern subjects

Authority

• All authority came the crown
• The crown and state would benefit from colonization
• Actors exercising authority are the crowns agents
• Crown was aware agents might not act according to what was best
• Agents may encroach, prefer free trade, dominate other colonists economically, capturing rents
• Crown had limited information/ severely limited information about colonies
• Mixture of conflicting interests and information asymmetries in the non-unitary state generated a principal-agent problem
• Analysis adopts a principal-agent perspective to analyze crown's strategic dilemmas of English imperial governance

English Crown

• Crown held extensive power over colonial and imperial institutions
• Only crown could issue letters patent and governors' commissions
• Monarchs unilateral prerogative was particularly expansive
• Monarch had capacious power over the first colonial institutions

Royal Authority

• Royal authority over institutional structure does not mean that the crown exercised day-to-day control
• Seek to understand why and how the extensive control was delegated, if it was
• The institutional structure in which agents operate affects their incentives to promote their principal's interests
• Principals use their authority over institutional structure to provide beneficial incentives to agents
• Institutions of the British empire structured the nature, extent, and oversight of authority delegated from the crown to colonizing agents
• Colonial and imperial institutions affected control and oversight
• Institutions had to be implemented to manage principal agent problems for the crown to maximize gains from the empire
• The crown used its formal power to implement a consistent, highly decentralized institutional structure across the group of independent colonies
• Two major attributes of this structure were internal colonial autonomy and independence of legislatures from governors
• Colonizers were guaranteed long-term control over internal operations, sharing only a small amount of economic output with crown
• Appointed colonial council/ elected assembly would share power to legislate and tax
• Crown provided for these structures in royal letters patent, binding on the crown in English courts

Crown Structures

• Internal autonomy provided strong incentives for colonizers to figure out how to make money
• Legislative independence acted as a check on executives the crown armed with limited power could not check themselves
• The crown wished to exert greater control, but had complications
• Initial institutions generated entrenched interests
• Institutions within colonies interacted to create bundles of institutions that increased agency and the durability of said institutions
• Crown's political power less than formal power in established empire
• Mismatch resulted in persistent colonial autonomy and powerful, independent legislatures
• Structures affected the US Constitution - separation of powers between executive and legislature, assumption of states as independent units of political life
• Principal agent helps understand how colonies were governed and how structures acted on
• An overview of the first British empire helps explain

Historical Overview

• After the French and Indian War there was the British Empire
• Eastern North America and Caribbean had relatively populous political societies, governmental institutions, economic structures
• Modes of oversight and regulation of the colonial political economies occurred via the central state, bureaucracies in Britain
• Colonies had elective assemblies answerable to property-owning colonists
• Governors chosen and instructed by the crown
• Colonial assemblies initiated legislation approved by royal governors and the imperial ministry in England
• Colonists had Autonomy over production and trade, limited by the navigation system requiring external trade to be carried on British ships
• British empire thought of as one of seaborne trade, and fully compatible with white subjects

No Plan

• There was attempt for the English state to come up with an ex ante plan to create an imperial structure
• No singular act created the Empire
• The empire began as decentralized commercial ventures by private merchants
• Without stretching the concept too much, commercial ventures were public/ private partners
• Private merchants exercised state delegated power: Claim territory, subdivide land, grant land as property, and govern monarch's subjects

Crown Authorithy

• Rights obtained by explicit Crown grant
• Private actors/ merchants lobbied the crown and ministers, offering financial returns in exchange for delegation of state power
• Crown benefited from customs revenue, financial and security interests supported delegation of power
• Rich pamphlet praised the benefits of colonization: outlets for England's surplus population, a check on the dominance of foreign rivals ,sources of wealth, markets for English products
• Royal authority delegated to colonizing agents through legal letter patents

Colonization arrangements

• Literally government contractors
• English State drawn into governance of overseas ventures, as contractors pursued private gains
• State power mis-used by private contractors could waste opportunities for gain, create unrest, and create conflict with other colonizers
• Managing colonizers' use of state power required spelling out institutions of colonial and imperial government
• State in 1600 did not have any policy of establishing overseas territories
• The crown had the incentive and legal authority to structure contract in its interest

Justice Hale Summary

• King issued commission to seize continents in name of king
• Lands of the crown are part of dominions not the realm of England
• English laws not settled in territories
• Planters enjoy English liberties
• Realm of England was nation state of england
• "Dominion of England" included lands in monarch's possession outside England
• Parliament could not legislate without the monarch's approval

Imperialism and Settlement

• 16th Century Focused on Asia
• 1606 King James I authorized the "London and Plymouth Company"
• London Compant landed in Chesapeake 1607 naming thier new settlement Jamestown
• Virginia designed to make a profit for it's employees/shareholders
• After trial/error of Jamestown, colonial patents all follow the same structure: Contractual Imperialism, consisting of long term control, a form of output sharing, required council, colonists rights to self protection, but no conflict with others.

New England Politics

• From 1640-1660 England underwent seismic shifts in the structue of there politics
• Parliament executed King Charles, and proclaimed Republic.
• By 1660 the Monarchy was restored under Charles II
• However, Imperial Governance characterized by sharply changes
• Monarchs granted royal colonies to new settlements
• During 1670-1680 the crown became asseritive

The 1670-1680 Colonies

• Sought rapid shift to direct from Crown
• Attempted reform Colonial Borders and Institutions in order to suit empire's intrests.
• Moves met with the most resistance from the colonies as planter power limited crowns institutional choice.
• James II replaced with King William & Queen Mary in 1688- new Monarchs agreed to re-instate old colonies

Regulatory Imperialism

• Continued the effort to assert direct control of the colonies with limited subversion.
• Regulatory imperialism = crown recalled or sued world patent
• Meant that governors were selected at pleasure of Crown
• 1651-1696 through laws Colonial trade restricted to english ownership
• The crown established: custom service + court system
• Lords commisioner to create board. However, this control limited in a way that auditting invites circumvention.