About

Barry R. Weingast is the Ward C. Krebs Family Professor in the Department of Political Science at Stanford University and a Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution. He has served as Chair of the Department of Political Science from 1996 through 2001. Weingast is a member of the National Academy of Sciences and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. His research focuses on the political foundation of markets, economic reform, and regulation. He has written extensively on issues related to the political economy of development, federalism and decentralization, legal institutions and the rule of law, and democracy. Weingast is a co-author of the book 'Violence and Social Orders: A Conceptual Framework for Interpreting Recorded Human History' and 'Analytic Narratives,' and he has edited 'The Oxford Handbook of Political Economy.' His work has earned numerous awards, including the William H. Riker Prize, the Heinz Eulau Prize, the Franklin L. Burdette Pi Sigma Alpha Award, and the James L. Barr Memorial Prize in Public Economics.

Research topics

• Political Science
• Computer Science
• Law and economics
• Sociology
• Law
• Economics
• Business
• Market economy
• Geography

Selected publications

• Creating a Self-Stabilizing Constitution: The Role of the Takings Clause

  SSRN Electronic Journal · 2026-01-01

  preprintOpen accessSenior author
  PublisherDOI

• Constitutional Stability and the Deferential Court

  SSRN Electronic Journal · 2026-01-01 · 5 citations

  articleOpen accessSenior author
  PublisherDOI

• Constitutional Stability and the Role of Countermajoritarian Rules (or How We Learned to Stop Worrying and Love our Antidemocratic Constitution)

  SSRN Electronic Journal · 2025-01-01

  preprintOpen accessSenior author
  PublisherDOI

• The Performance and Stability of Federalism: An Institutional Perspective

  2025-01-01 · 1 citations

  book-chapterOpen access1st authorCorresponding

  Abstract The purpose of this chapter is to survey the literature on federalism and draw on the new institutional economics and political science to suggest aspects of an integration of the literature and hence a more complete theory of federal performance. The literatures on the performance of federal systems divide around three central questions: (1) the economic performance of federalism; (2) its political performance; and (3) the sources of stability for federal arrangements. Although these three literatures are complementary, they remain incompletely integrated, precluding a more complete theory of the performance of federal systems, one encompassing both political and economic aspects. This chapter analyzes how federalism affects the incentives and objectives of subnational government officials. It explores the conditions under which federalism is self-enforcing and applies the framework to a discussion of the evolution of federalism in the United States since inception.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Constitutional Stability and the Role of Countermajoritarian Rules (or How We Learned to Stop Worrying and Love our Anti-democratic Constitution)

  ICL Journal · 2025-09-22

  articleSenior author

  Abstract Advocates of strong versions of democracy and majoritarian decisionmaking in American politics have long expressed concern about constitutional rules that constrain majorities. That such countermajoritarian rules in constitutions are, broadly speaking, anti-democratic has been a central critique of American constitutionalism, and has flourished in recent scholarship. Many scholars have concluded that our Constitution is fundamentally flawed, while others have argued that these concerns can be ameliorated by approaches to constitutional architecture and to judicial review that are democracy-enhancing. We argue here that this debate suffers from a neglect of a key aspect of political strategy and of constitutional design. Critically, proponents of majoritarian constitutions ignore the problem of constitutional stability. To understand why some democracies survive, we stipulate a constitutional desideratum : regardless of a constitution’s normative contents, a constitution does no one any good if it quickly fails. Our positive thesis is that all successful constitutions satisfy the limit condition : to survive constitutions must limit the stakes of power. When powerful groups feel threatened by the party holding power, they are likely to support extra-constitutional action to protect themselves. Majoritarians therefore face a fundamental tradeoff: Greater responsiveness to majorities raises the stakes of politics; and yet this makes the constitution less stable. This view implies that majoritarians should embrace countermajoritarian features that limit the stakes: when countermajoritarian features protect constituencies with the power to disrupt the constitution, they increase a constitution’s stability and thus its longevity and its successful performance.

  PublisherDOI

• Gewalt und Gesellschaftsordnungen

  Mohr Siebeck eBooks · 2025-01-01

  bookSenior author

  Social orders are differentiated by their ways of dealing with the problem of violence: many states privilege powerful individuals, thus preventing general political and economic development, while some modern ones have achieved open access to both politics and the economy, thereby fostering democracy and free markets.

  PublisherDOI

• War, Trade, and Mercantilism: Reconciling Adam Smith's Three Theories of the British Empire

  Journal of Global Trade Ethics and Law · 2025-12-31

  articleOpen access1st authorCorresponding

  Adam Smith proposed two contradictory theories of the British Empire in the Wealth of Nations and suggested a third. The first view holds that the empire was created for merchants eager to establish and maintain monopolies of the colonial trade. Smith concludes that “Great Britain derives nothing but loss” from the colonies. In the second view, Smith celebrates the European discovery of the new world, opening non-incremental increases in division of labour, specialization and exchange. The empire thus fostered the economic growth of both sides of the British Atlantic, net of the costs of monopoly. Smith’s third argument holds that many mercantile restrictions improved Britain’s security given its long-term military competition with France. How do we reconcile the incompatibility of Smith’s three views of the British Empire? Smith provides no guidance. I argue that, to understand the British Empire, we must view it from the perspective of a long-term military rivalry with France. Many navigation regulations were designed to advantage Britain vis-a-vis France. Smith argues, for example, that the harm to France from prohibiting trade in military stores more than compensates the loss in wealth due to the restrictions. I demonstrate the logic of these claims using tools from modern political economics and political science.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Adam Smith’s “Industrial Organization” of Religion

  Cambridge University Press eBooks · 2023-09-14

  book-chapter1st authorCorresponding

  Adam Smith argued that, as the monopoly provider of religious services, the medieval Church represented a formidable impediment to economic development. How did the Church maintain its monopoly; and how did that monopoly break down in the Reformation? Further, given that the secular lords had a substantial comparative advantage in violence relative to the Church, how did the Church maintain its power? In addressing these questions, Smith developed a rich and systematic approach to the incentives, institutions, and competition surrounding the medieval Church.

  PublisherDOI

• The Functions of Constitutional Monarchy: Why Kings and Queens Survive in a World of Republics

  SSRN Electronic Journal · 2023-01-01 · 10 citations

  articleOpen accessSenior author
  PublisherDOI

• Interpreting Adam Smith

  Cambridge University Press eBooks · 2023-09-14 · 2 citations

  book

  2023 marks the 300th anniversary of the birth of Adam Smith. Long known as the 'father of economics', Smith also produced moral and political writings which have increasingly come to be recognised as major contributions to the Scottish, and indeed wider European, Enlightenment. In this collection of original essays, leading Smith scholars offer fresh perspectives on how to think about Smith's ideas, the nature and importance of his works, and their impact upon subsequent thinkers and ultimately the world we live in. Bringing together both leading experts and some of the most exciting new voices in the field, this collection seeks both to celebrate and deepen our appreciation of what Adam Smith has to teach us.

  PublisherDOI

Frequent coauthors

• Douglass C. North

  51 shared

• John Wallis

  University of Cambridge

  45 shared

• Gillian K. Hadfield

  39 shared

• George Mason

  Royal North Shore Hospital

  26 shared

• Maria Niles

  Rice University

  25 shared

• Michelle Boyd

  25 shared

• Kenneth A. Shepsle

  Harvard University Press

  25 shared

• Toni‐Michelle C. Travis

  25 shared

Awards & honors

• William H. Riker Prize
• Heinz Eulau Prize
• Franklin L. Burdette Pi Sigma Alpha Award
• James L. Barr Memorial Prize in Public Economics