The political economy of the American frontier / / Ilia Murtazashvili,University of Pittsburgh.

• Author: Murtazashvili, Ilia, 1975-
• Place / Publishing House: New York : : Cambridge University Press,, 2013.
• Year of Publication: 2013
• Language: English
• Series: Political economy of institutions and decisions
• Physical Description: 1 online resource (303 pages) :; illustrations, maps.

"This book offers an analytical explanation for the origins of and change in property institutions on the American frontier during the nineteenth century. Its scope is interdisciplinary, integrating insights from political science, economics, law, and history. This book shows how claim clubs - informal governments established by squatters in each of the major frontier sectors of agriculture, mining, logging, and ranching - substituted for the state as a source of private property institutions and how they changed the course of who received a legal title, and for what price, throughout the nineteenth century. Unlike existing analytical studies of the frontier that emphasize one or two sectors, this book considers all major sectors, as well as the relationship between informal and formal property institutions, while also proposing a novel theory of emergence and change in property institutions that provides a framework to interpret the complicated history of land laws in the United States"-- Provided by publisher.

Table of Contents

Machine generated contents note: 1. Introduction; Part I. The Origins of Property Institutions: 2. A theory of claim clubs; 3. From spontaneous order to conscious choice: claim clubs on the frontier; 4. Bandits within the state: an assessment of claim clubs as property institutions; Part II. Change in Property Institutions: 5. Claim clubs, distributive conflict, and the origins of squatters' rights; 6. The political economy of homesteads; 7. The open floodgate in the far West; 8. The influence of claim clubs in the States; 9. Conclusion.