David Stasavage

In the main portion of the book, the author provides a detailed historical account of party politics and public debt in France and England in the 18th century. In a few chapters he presents game-theoretic scenarios for the credibility of repayment of public debt when states are governed by different representative or monarchic institutions. He is particularly concerned with the presence or absence in the decision-making body of persons who are creditors to public debt. Under the assumption that the representatives of the people will act only in their narrow interest, those who have lent money to the state will favor full repayment, while those who have not will favor default. The game-theoretic model fails to account for the plausible assumption that even some representatives who don't hold public debt might recognize long-term benefits in credible debt repayment.

In any case, the historical analysis indeed indicates that the credibility of public debt repayment was problematic in the 18th century, and the author provides good explanations for why the problems were smaller in England than in France. But even though the author hints that the theories and conclusions of this book could be generalized to more modern times, in my opinion they seem quite narrowly limited to special circumstances where states owe most of their debt to their own citizens. All in all I would have liked a little less theorizing, and perhaps a bit more explication of taxation, since taxation and debt were the available alternatives for funding public spending. Nevertheless, this is an enlightening book especially for readers with some previous familiarity with French and British politics in these years.… (mer)