James Robinson
Biographic Data
| ID | 3719083 |
|---|---|
| NAME | James Robinson |
| GIVEN NAMES | James |
| FAMILY NAME | Robinson |
| SIGNATURE | ROBINSON J |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Chicago |
| ORCID | 0009-0006-2546-2190 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 47 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 264 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 45 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 2 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1955 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 6 |
Mental Health and Cultural Barriers in Collegiate Sport
Research on collegiate athlete mental health is overwhelmingly Western-centric, leaving a critical gap in understanding how cultural context shapes athletes’ experiences. This study addresses this gap through a cross-national comparison of the United States and South Korea. This convergent mixed-methods study integrated survey data from 400 athletes and in-depth interviews with 33 athletes, guided by the Social Ecological Model for Health Promoti…
China
Inclusive diets within planetary boundaries
Playing for Power
In the late 1930s until the early 1950s, a large Labor Sports movement existed in the United States, especially in unions under the leadership of Socialists or Communists. I argue that it is impossible to understand the Labor Sports movement outside of this wider global context, because Labor Sports in the United States were directly linked to Worker Sport via both individuals and organizations. Indeed, Americans with knowledge of Worker Sport so…
Non-Modernization
Modernization theory is a cornerstone of much of political science, despite the mounting evidence against its predictions. We outline a theory in which the distribution of political power critically combines with political culture. We call the basic components of culture “attributes” and argue that these can be combined into larger cultural configurations. These configurations interact with the distribution of power and lead to three distinct sel…
Comparison of Early Intervention Services vs Treatment as Usual for Early-Phase Psychosis
Mangahawea Bay Revisited
The Mangahawea Bay Site (Q05/682) on Moturua Island in the Bay of Islands was excavated in 1981. A single radiocarbon date from the lower levels returned an age of 1162-1439 AD (95.4% confidence) but the results of the excavation have never been fully reported. Despite some uncertainty about the age and nature of the stratigraphy, the site has long been regarded in the New Zealand archaeological community as a significant example of early occupat…
Kinship and Conflict
We test the long-standing hypothesis that ethnic groups that are organized around 'segmentary lineages' are more prone to conflict.Ethnographic accounts suggest that in segmentary lineage societies, which are characterized by strong allegiances to distant relatives, individuals are obligated to come to the aid of fellow lineage members when they become involved in conflicts.As a consequence, small disagreements often escalate to larger-scale conf…
The Politics of Hiding, Invisibility, and Silence
Joyce's Dante
Joyce's engagement with Dante is a crucial component of all of his work. This title reconsiders the responses to Dante in Joyce's work from A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man to Finnegans Wake. It presents that encounter as an historically complex and contextually determined interaction reflecting the contested development of Dante's reputation, readership and textuality throughout the nineteenth century. This process produced a 'Dante with …
The origins of New Zealand’s first government house
In 1842 the former first government house located at Okiato, New Zealand, burnt to the ground and the site was abandoned. A well on the site was excavated in 1994–95, revealing a base layer of burnt timbers, a Maori digging stick and ceramic sherds with an estimated manufacture date range of 1823–41. We argue that this deposit is derived from the 1842 destruction of the Okiato government house building. An analysis of the wood identified kauri (A…
Faire la guerre et faire l 'État
Cet article propose une critique de la pertinence de la notion d'État fiscal-militaire, en se penchant plus particulièrement sur le cas exemplaire de la Grande-Bretagne qui consacra une part significativement moindre des revenus du gouvernement au domaine militaire que tout autre État européen. En outre, il met en lumière d'autres sources de dépenses civiles importantes, notamment l'investissement massif de l'État britannique dans le développemen…
The Rise and Decline of General Laws of Capitalism
Thomas Piketty's (2014) book, Capital in the 21st Century, follows in the tradition of the great classical economists, like Marx and Ricardo, in formulating general laws of capitalism to diagnose and predict the dynamics of inequality. We argue that general economic laws are unhelpful as a guide to understand the past or predict the future, because they ignore the central role of political and economic institutions, as well as the endogenous evol…
Africa's Development in Historical Perspective
This edited volume addresses the root causes of Africa's persistent poverty through an investigation of its longue durée history. It interrogates the African past through disease and demography, institutions and governance, African economies and the impact of the export slave trade, colonialism, Africa in the world economy, and culture's influence on accumulation and investment. Several of the chapters take a comparative perspective, placing Afri…
Indirect Rule and State Weakness in Africa
A fundamental problem for economic development is that most poor countries have 'weak state' which are incapable or unwilling to provide basic public goods such as law enforcement, order, education and infrastructure.In Africa this is often attributed to the persistence of 'indirect rule' from the colonial period.In this paper we discuss the ways in which a state constructed on the basis of indirect rule is weak and the mechanisms via which this …
Political Centralization in Pre-Colonial Africa
In this paper we investigate the empirical correlates of political centralization using data from the Standard Cross-Cultural Sample. We specifically investigate the explanatory power of the standard models of Eurasian state formation which emphasize the importance of high population density, inter-state warfare and trade as factors leading to political centralization. We find that while in the whole world sample these factors are indeed positive…
Chiefs
The lowest level of government in sub-Saharan Africa is often a cadre of chiefs who raise taxes, control the judicial system and allocate the most important scarce resource -land.Chiefs, empowered by colonial indirect rule, are often accused of using their power despotically and inhibiting rural development.Yet others view them as traditional representatives of rural people, and survey evidence suggests that they maintain widespread support.We us…
Guest Editorial
What are surfaces?" So much of life occurs at the surface that, as students of the human scene, we are obliged to pay far more attention to its character (subtlety, variety, and density) than we have done.The scholar's neglect and suspicion of surface phenomena is a consequence of a dichotomy in western thought between surface and depth, sensory appreciation and intellectual understanding, with bias against the first of the two terms
James McWhirter
Reared within the fold of Ulster's Protestant fundamentalism, James Mc Whirter (1900-1990) became a member of the Elim Revival Party under George Jeffreys from 1920 to 1936. Yet, in his own words he ‘had yet a long way to go.’ The journey that ensued saw him move up the social scale, travel to many lands and meet leading statesmen and religious leaders. His involvement in the ecumenical movement preceded that of David Du Plessis with whom he is h…
Can't We All Be More Like Scandinavians? Asymmetric Growth and Institutions in an Interdependent World
Because of their more limited inequality and more comprehensive social welfare systems, many perceive average welfare to be higher in Scandinavian societies than in the United States. Why then does the United States not adopt Scandinavian-style institutions? More generally, in an interdependent world, would we expect all countries to adopt the same institutions? To provide theoretical answers to this question, we develop a simple model of economi…
Introduction. Between Absence and Presence
(2012). Introduction. Between Absence and Presence: Geographies of Hiding, Invisibility and Silence. Space and Polity: Vol. 16, BETWEEN ABSENCE AND PRESENCE: GEOGRAPHIES OF HIDING, INVISIBILITY AND SILENCE, pp. 257-263
Being observant and observed
Colonialism and Economic Development in Africa
In this paper we evaluate the impact of colonialism on development in Sub-Saharan Africa.In the world context, colonialism had very heterogeneous effects, operating through many mechanisms, sometimes encouraging development sometimes retarding it.In the African case, however, this heterogeneity is muted, making an assessment of the average effect more interesting.We emphasize that to draw conclusions it is necessary not just to know what actually…
Wittgenstein
El
Medieval literature and postcolonial studies
Medieval literature and postcolonial studies." Journal of Postcolonial Writing, 48(2), p. 232
Institutions as the Fundamental Cause of Long-Run Growth
This paper develops the empirical and theoretical case that differences in economic institutions are the fundamental cause of differences in economic development.We first document the empirical importance of institutions by focusing on two "quasi-natural experiments" in history, the division of Korea into two parts with very different economic institutions and the colonization of much of the world by European powers starting in the fifteenth cent…
Guest Editorial
What are surfaces?" So much of life occurs at the surface that, as students of the human scene, we are obliged to pay far more attention to its character (subtlety, variety, and density) than we have done.The scholar's neglect and suspicion of surface phenomena is a consequence of a dichotomy in western thought between surface and depth, sensory appreciation and intellectual understanding, with bias against the first of the two terms
Colonialism and Economic Development in Africa
In this paper we evaluate the impact of colonialism on development in Sub-Saharan Africa.In the world context, colonialism had very heterogeneous effects, operating through many mechanisms, sometimes encouraging development sometimes retarding it.In the African case, however, this heterogeneity is muted, making an assessment of the average effect more interesting.We emphasize that to draw conclusions it is necessary not just to know what actually…
Indirect Rule and State Weakness in Africa
A fundamental problem for economic development is that most poor countries have 'weak state' which are incapable or unwilling to provide basic public goods such as law enforcement, order, education and infrastructure.In Africa this is often attributed to the persistence of 'indirect rule' from the colonial period.In this paper we discuss the ways in which a state constructed on the basis of indirect rule is weak and the mechanisms via which this …
Introduction. Between Absence and Presence
(2012). Introduction. Between Absence and Presence: Geographies of Hiding, Invisibility and Silence. Space and Polity: Vol. 16, BETWEEN ABSENCE AND PRESENCE: GEOGRAPHIES OF HIDING, INVISIBILITY AND SILENCE, pp. 257-263
Chiefs
The lowest level of government in sub-Saharan Africa is often a cadre of chiefs who raise taxes, control the judicial system and allocate the most important scarce resource -land.Chiefs, empowered by colonial indirect rule, are often accused of using their power despotically and inhibiting rural development.Yet others view them as traditional representatives of rural people, and survey evidence suggests that they maintain widespread support.We us…
Non-Modernization
Modernization theory is a cornerstone of much of political science, despite the mounting evidence against its predictions. We outline a theory in which the distribution of political power critically combines with political culture. We call the basic components of culture “attributes” and argue that these can be combined into larger cultural configurations. These configurations interact with the distribution of power and lead to three distinct sel…
Kleptocracy and Divide-and-Rule
Many developing countries have suffered under the personal rule of "kleptocrats", who implement highly inefficient economic policies, expropriate the wealth of their citizens, and use the proceeds for their own glorification or consumption.We argue that the success of kleptocrats rests, in part, on their ability to use a "divide-and-rule" strategy, made possible by weaknesses in the institutions in these societies.Members of society need to coope…
Being observant and observed
The Myth of the Frontier
One of the most salient explanations for the distinctive path of economic and political development of the United States is captured by the 'Frontier (or Turner) thesis'.Turner argued that it was the presence of the open frontier which explained why the United States became democratic and, at least implicitly, prosperous.In this paper we provide a simple test of this idea.We begin with the contradictory observation that almost every Latin America…
Political Centralization in Pre-Colonial Africa
In this paper we investigate the empirical correlates of political centralization using data from the Standard Cross-Cultural Sample. We specifically investigate the explanatory power of the standard models of Eurasian state formation which emphasize the importance of high population density, inter-state warfare and trade as factors leading to political centralization. We find that while in the whole world sample these factors are indeed positive…
Kinship and Conflict
We test the long-standing hypothesis that ethnic groups that are organized around 'segmentary lineages' are more prone to conflict.Ethnographic accounts suggest that in segmentary lineage societies, which are characterized by strong allegiances to distant relatives, individuals are obligated to come to the aid of fellow lineage members when they become involved in conflicts.As a consequence, small disagreements often escalate to larger-scale conf…
Faire la guerre et faire l 'État
Cet article propose une critique de la pertinence de la notion d'État fiscal-militaire, en se penchant plus particulièrement sur le cas exemplaire de la Grande-Bretagne qui consacra une part significativement moindre des revenus du gouvernement au domaine militaire que tout autre État européen. En outre, il met en lumière d'autres sources de dépenses civiles importantes, notamment l'investissement massif de l'État britannique dans le développemen…
Wittgenstein
El
Medieval literature and postcolonial studies
Medieval literature and postcolonial studies." Journal of Postcolonial Writing, 48(2), p. 232
Lawful systems dynamics in how poets choose their words
This paper presents a quantified study of the use of words by seven famous male poets. The key measures are the waiting times between the invocation of new words and the complexity or informational entropy of word usage as the poem unfolds. The main stochastic finding is that the emergence of new words is a Poisson process. Each poet thus has a distinctive rate constant reflecting his likelihood of introducing new words. In all cases cumulative e…
Southern California
Academic freedom and the occupation of Germany and Japan
In the years 1948-54, New York University suffered an anticommunist “purge” of its faculty which was extreme even in its day. That the “McCarthyite” period at NYU was so vicious is at first puzzling. National hysteria about atomic secrets notwithstanding, it remains true that some universities with greater prestige (and hence seemingly of greater political importance) and others with more conservative administrations stopped far short of the susp…
Karl Marx
The problem of balanced economic growth in developing societies
If there is a common theme in these two works, it is the possibility of planned or balanced economic growth in “underdeveloped” societies. More exactly, they share a question: can efforts at planning effectively replace the elitist economic solutions and their attendant social costs which have typified western, capitalist-oriented development
Lawful systems dynamics in how poets choose their words
This paper presents a quantified study of the use of words by seven famous male poets. The key measures are the waiting times between the invocation of new words and the complexity or informational entropy of word usage as the poem unfolds. The main stochastic finding is that the emergence of new words is a Poisson process. Each poet thus has a distinctive rate constant reflecting his likelihood of introducing new words. In all cases cumulative e…
Arthur Booth-Clibborn
(2001). Arthur Booth-Clibborn: Pentecostal Patriarch. Journal of the European Pentecostal Theological Association: Vol. 21, No. 1, pp. 68-90
Session 1a
Differences in institutions are thought to be a key part of the explanation for large cross-country differences in per capita income. Unfortunately, recent empirical research suffers from severe endogeneity problems. In this paper we provide both a theory of why different countries have different institutions and a way of measuring this, which does not suffer from endogeneity. We focus on economies that were colonized by European countries betwee…
Lü Ji
Cui Bo
Xu Xi
Yun Shouping
Institutional causes, macroeconomic symptoms
Some Remarks on the Source of Maimonides' Plato in Guide of the Perplexed I.17
Some Remarks on the Source of Maimonides’ Plato in Guide of the Perplexed I.17 In Guide of the Perplexed I.17, Moses Maimonides (1138-1204) explains that people of the ‘religious law’, as well as ‘philosophers and learned men of the various communities’, should refrain as much as possible from teaching ‘the multitude’ not only divine science but also the ‘greater part of natural science’. 1 When forced to discuss these subjects, he continues, whe…
From Digression to Compilation
Managed Care and Prevention of Mental Health and Substance Abuse Problems
Kleptocracy and Divide-and-Rule
Many developing countries have suffered under the personal rule of "kleptocrats", who implement highly inefficient economic policies, expropriate the wealth of their citizens, and use the proceeds for their own glorification or consumption.We argue that the success of kleptocrats rests, in part, on their ability to use a "divide-and-rule" strategy, made possible by weaknesses in the institutions in these societies.Members of society need to coope…
Institutions as the Fundamental Cause of Long-Run Growth
This paper develops the empirical and theoretical case that differences in economic institutions are the fundamental cause of differences in economic development.We first document the empirical importance of institutions by focusing on two "quasi-natural experiments" in history, the division of Korea into two parts with very different economic institutions and the colonization of much of the world by European powers starting in the fifteenth cent…
The Rise of Europe
The rise of Western Europe after 1500 is due largely to growth in countries with access to the Atlantic Ocean and with substantial trade with the New World, Africa, and Asia via the Atlantic. This trade and the associated colonialism affected Europe not only directly, but also indirectly by inducing institutional change. Where “initial” political institutions (those established before 1500) placed significant checks on the monarchy, the growth of…
Crowning glory
The Cultures of Maimonideanism
© Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2009 EJJS 2.2 Also available online – brill.nl/ejjs DOI: 10.1163/187247109X454549 THE CULTURES OF MAIMONIDEANISM: NEW APPROACHES TO THE HISTORY OF JEWISH THOUGHT 8th EAJS Summer Colloquium, Wolfson College, Oxford, July 16–19, 2007 The 2007 EAJS Summer Colloquium convened at Oxford, Wolfson College, from July 16 to 19. It was organized by Gad Freudenthal (CNRS, Paris) and James Robinson (University of Chicago), and…
The Myth of the Frontier
One of the most salient explanations for the distinctive path of economic and political development of the United States is captured by the 'Frontier (or Turner) thesis'.Turner argued that it was the presence of the open frontier which explained why the United States became democratic and, at least implicitly, prosperous.In this paper we provide a simple test of this idea.We begin with the contradictory observation that almost every Latin America…
Reducing HIV-Related Risk Behaviors Among Injection Drug Users in Residential Detoxification
James McWhirter
Reared within the fold of Ulster's Protestant fundamentalism, James Mc Whirter (1900-1990) became a member of the Elim Revival Party under George Jeffreys from 1920 to 1936. Yet, in his own words he ‘had yet a long way to go.’ The journey that ensued saw him move up the social scale, travel to many lands and meet leading statesmen and religious leaders. His involvement in the ecumenical movement preceded that of David Du Plessis with whom he is h…
Can't We All Be More Like Scandinavians? Asymmetric Growth and Institutions in an Interdependent World
Because of their more limited inequality and more comprehensive social welfare systems, many perceive average welfare to be higher in Scandinavian societies than in the United States. Why then does the United States not adopt Scandinavian-style institutions? More generally, in an interdependent world, would we expect all countries to adopt the same institutions? To provide theoretical answers to this question, we develop a simple model of economi…
Introduction. Between Absence and Presence
(2012). Introduction. Between Absence and Presence: Geographies of Hiding, Invisibility and Silence. Space and Polity: Vol. 16, BETWEEN ABSENCE AND PRESENCE: GEOGRAPHIES OF HIDING, INVISIBILITY AND SILENCE, pp. 257-263
Political science (22 works) · Law (17 works) · Economics (14 works) · Geography (12 works) · Art (11 works) · Computer Science (11 works) · Politics (11 works) · Culture, Economy, and Development Studies (10 works) · Development economics (10 works) · History (10 works)