Research

Work in progress

I am currently working on two book projects.

Governance Archaeology: Collective Governance in Global History is the result of a multi-year data collection project with my colleague and co-PI Nathan Schneider (U of Colorado Boulder). The book describes the data and explores why humans developed collective governance institutions, and what impact they had on economic and political outcomes. The data is also out there (though still in a limited and not-particularly-user-friendly shape) for communities of designers, online and offline, who want to learn more about how to build collective governance structures.

Information and the State explores the impact of information and communication technology (ICT) shocks on state structures and performance. The book includes chapters on the digital revolution, the printing press, and the invention of writing.

Books

A Moral Political Economy: Past, Present, and Future, Elements in Political Economy Series, Cambridge University Press, 2021 (with Margaret Levi).

Creating a Constitution: Law, Democracy, and Growth in Ancient Athens, Princeton University Press, 2019.

Peer-Reviewed Articles

Governance Archaeology. Research as Ancestry. 2023. Daedalus, 152(1): 245–257 (with N. Schneider), https://doi.org/10.1162/daed_a_01985.

Judicial Review by the People Themselves: Constitutional Litigation in Ancient Athens. 2021. Journal of Law, Economics, and Organizations, 39(1): 1–26 (with Randall Calvert and Barry Weingast), https://doi.org/10.1093/jleo/ewab033.

Democratic Stability: A Long View. 2020. Annual Review of Political Science, 23: 59–75, https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev-polisci-052918-012050.

Selected for the 2024 special article collection on Democracy, Politics, and Society

Tradeoffs of Inclusion: Development in Ancient Athens. 2020. Comparative Political Studies, 53(1): 144-170, https://doi.org/10.1177/0010414019843557.

Is Development Uniquely Modern? Athens on the Doorstep. 2019. Public Choice, 181(1-2): 29-47 (with J. Ober and B.R. Weingast), https://doi.org/10.1007/s11127-018-00632-w.

Development and Political Theory in Classical Athens. 2016. Polis: Journal for Ancient Greek Political Thought, 33(1): 71-91 (with J. Ober and B.R. Weingast),

https://brill.com/view/journals/agpt/33/1/article-p71_5.xml.

Building Legal Order in Ancient Athens. 2015. Journal of Legal Analysis, 7(2): 291-324 (with G.K. Hadfield, and B.R. Weingast), https://doi.org/10.1093/jla/lav003.

Translated into Russian and reprinted in Actual Problems of Economics and Law Journal. Vol. 10(4), 2016.

What is the Rule of Law Good For? Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law in Classical Athens. 2014. Buffalo Law Review, 62(1): 119-156.

Book Chapters

Beyond New Institutional Economics: Can Ancient History Still Engage the Social Sciences? In Bernard, S. and S. Murray (eds.) Morality and Models, Palgrave Studies in Ancient Economies. Forthcoming in 2025.

The Rule of Law Through the Ages. In Sevel, M. (eds.) The Routledge Handbook of the Rule of Law. Forthcoming in 2025.

Democratic Collapse and Recovery: Athens 413-403. 2024. In Archon Fung, David Moss, and Arne Westad (eds.) When Democracy Breaks: Studies in Democratic Erosion and Collapse from Ancient Athens to the Present Day. Oxford University Press (with J. Ober).

Modern Non-Hierarchical Organizations. 2023. In Richerson, Peter J., Jenna Bednar, Thomas E. Currie, Sergey Gavrilets, and John Joseph Wallis (eds.) Institutional Dynamics and Organizational Complexity. Open Access Book, Cultural Evolution Society, institutionaldynamicsbook.culturalevolutionsociety.org (with Nathan Schneider).

Digital Repression and Cyber Peace. 2022. In Cyber Peace: Charting a path toward a sustainable, stable, and secure cyberspace. Cambridge University Press. (with Jessica Steinberg and Cyanne Loyle).

Rethinking Mass and Elite: Decision-Making in the Athenian Law-Courts. 2018. In Ancient Greek History and Contemporary Social Science. Edinburgh University Press (with B.R. Weingast).