This book offers a new theory of state growth, based on the creation of credible and prudent state budgets.

Gary W. Cox is the William Bennett Munro Professor of Political Science at Stanford University, California. Cox has written numerous articles and is author of The Efficient Secret (winner of the 1983 Samuel H. Beer Dissertation Prize and the 2003 George H. Hallett Award), coauthor of Legislative Leviathan (winner of the 1993 Richard F. Fenno Prize), author of Making Votes Count (winner of the 1998 Woodrow Wilson Foundation Award, the 1998 Luebbert Prize, and the 2007 George H. Hallett Award), and coauthor of Setting the Agenda (winner of the 2006 Leon D. Epstein Book Award). Cox was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1996 and the National Academy of Sciences in 2005.

1. Sovereign credibility and public revenue; Part I. The Glorious Revolution and the English State: 2. The market for taxes and platforms; 3. More credible platforms, more taxes; 4. Pricing sovereign debts; 5. Establishing monopoly brokerage of sovereign debts; 6. The consequences of monopoly brokerage of debt; 7. Property rights; 8. From constitutional commitment to Industrial Revolution; 9. Summarizing the Revolution; Part II. The English Constitutional Diaspora: 10. Exporting the Revolution - the early adopters; 11. Exporting the Revolution - the late adopters; 12. Good political institutions.