The political economy of the American West
Author(s)
Bibliographic Information
The political economy of the American West
(The political economy forum)
Rowman & Littlefield, c1994
Available at 6 libraries
  Aomori
  Iwate
  Miyagi
  Akita
  Yamagata
  Fukushima
  Ibaraki
  Tochigi
  Gunma
  Saitama
  Chiba
  Tokyo
  Kanagawa
  Niigata
  Toyama
  Ishikawa
  Fukui
  Yamanashi
  Nagano
  Gifu
  Shizuoka
  Aichi
  Mie
  Shiga
  Kyoto
  Osaka
  Hyogo
  Nara
  Wakayama
  Tottori
  Shimane
  Okayama
  Hiroshima
  Yamaguchi
  Tokushima
  Kagawa
  Ehime
  Kochi
  Fukuoka
  Saga
  Nagasaki
  Kumamoto
  Oita
  Miyazaki
  Kagoshima
  Okinawa
  Korea
  China
  Thailand
  United Kingdom
  Germany
  Switzerland
  France
  Belgium
  Netherlands
  Sweden
  Norway
  United States of America
Note
Includes bibliographical references and index
Description and Table of Contents
Description
In the American West, trappers, miners, and farmers often preceded the formal institutions of government and therefore had to invent their own institutional framework. Early historians like Frederick Jackson Turner and Walter Prescott Webb found heroes in this romantic frontier. Modern historians, however, are challenging the traditional histories, arguing that the history of the West is one of natural resource waste, minority exploitation, and political manipulation by a powerful elite. This book challenges many conclusions from both schools in a framework that considers Western history as an episode in the evolution of property rights. The authors in this volume provide a new way of thinking about the West that relies neither on heroes nor villains but argues that economics and politics shaped the institutional environment of the American West.
Table of Contents
Chapter 1 Introduction Chapter 2 The Race for Property Rights Chapter 3 Homesteading and Property Rights: Or, "How the West Was Really Won" Chapter 4 When Common Property Rights Can Be Optimal: Nineteenth-Century Cattle Grazing in the Semi-Arid American West Chapter 5 The Political Economy of Early Federal Reclamation in the West Chapter 6 The Progressive Ideal and the Columbia Basin Project Chapter 7 Rents from Amenity Resources: A Case Study of Yellowstone National Park Chapter 8 Forseeing Confiscation by the Sovereign: Lessons From the American West Chapter 9 Public Policy and the Admission of the Western States Chapter 10 About the Political Economy Forum and the Authors
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