In ‘Violence and Social Orders’, North, Wallis and Weingast highlight the need of societies to control large-scale violence. In response to this need, a variety of social orders has emerged with differing institutional, political and economic characteristics. One of these social orders is the limited access order that was prevalent in most of history and still is nowadays. Taking the conceptual framework of Northet al.as a starting point, we make three advances to their analysis of limited access orders. First, we analyse the incentive structure of actors involved, using a formal model of the main interactions in a limited access order. Second, we decompose organizations into two types and analyse their respective roles. Third, we use insights from historical research to scrutinize the chronology of the rise of organizations. Jointly, this allows us to refine and substantiate the insights gained by Northet al., highlight the role of organizations and place the start of relevant developments earlier in time.

No abstract

No abstract

The Prince-Bishopric of Liège was a small and peculiar state. As a Reichskirche of the Holy Roman Empire, Liégeois politics were dominated by the local Estates and Chapter that managed to limit the authority of the elected Prince-Bishops. As a result, the Prince-Bishopric functioned as a semi-independent state within the Empire, allowing the Liégeois to ignore Imperial fiscal, diplomatic and military policies. Liège adopted a longstanding policy

No abstract