ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses two theoretical frameworks: the North et al. and North et al. framework that characterizes the state in developing countries as an limited access order (LAO) and the Levy and Fukuyama framework on the sequencing of institutional governance patterns in the face of development constraints in poor countries. It focuses on some of the current issues of development to the historical parallels in Western Europe pre-their transition to open access orders (OAOs). The thread developing here, mentioned in North, Wallis, Weingast and Webb, is that institutional development in developing countries does not have the equivalent agenda as the Western trajectory had. The chapter then provides comparison to the settlement of the United States, which was also a colonial settlement, and assesses the argument made by Acemoglu, Johnson and Robinson that it was those colonies being settled with imported institutions that led to their successful adoption of capitalism and growth along European capitalist lines.
