studies by Dalton( 1965) and Killick( 1978) emphasize the role of politics in African development and particularly how the fear of losing political power influences economic policy. The notion of political losers was previously implicit in other theoretical work in political economy, for instance, Besley and Coate( 1998) and Bourguignon and Verdier( 2000). The role of political centralization and state institutions in development has been most heavily emphasized by historical sociologists following the work by Max Weber. Notable is the work of Mann( 1986, 1993), Migdal( 1988), and Evans( 1995). In Africa, work on the connection between the state and development is emphasized by Herbst( 2000) and Bates( 2001). Economists have recently begun to contribute to this literature; for example, Acemoglu( 2005) and Besley and Persson( 2011). Finally, Johnson( 1982), Haggard( 1990), Wade( 1990), and Amsden( 1992) emphasized how it was the particular political economy of East Asian nations that allowed them to be so economically successful. Finley( 1965) made a seminal argument that slavery was responsible for the lack of technological dynamism in the classical world.
The idea that growth under extractive institutions is possible but is also likely to run out of steam is emphasized in Acemoglu( 2008).