ABSTRACT
Attempting to explain why there are different economic or political patterns in different locations has been at the heart of much scholarly research at least since the nineteenth century and Tocqueville’s De la Démocratie en Amérique (Kagan 2004; Tocqueville [1835] 1999; Kotkin 1994). Most comparative studies have drawn from cultural factors to explain differences observed in various economic systems or, more recently, to account for dissimilarities between national attitudes toward economic power, freedom of trade, or regulatory matters (Kohler 2008; Pape 1999).
