Why does state building sometimes promote economic growth and in other cases impede it? Through an analysis of political and economic development in four countries--Turkey, Syria, Korea, and Taiwan--this book explores the origins of political-economic institutions and the mechanisms connecting them to economic outcomes. David Waldner extends our understanding of the political underpinnings of economic development by examining the origins of political coalitions on which states and their institutions depend. He first provides a political model of institutional change to analyze how elites...