The sharing of power between popes and kings was a longstanding feature of Western European politics. Professor Bruce Bueno de Mesquita delves into this history to present a novel argument for why Western countries are more likely to experience prosperity and democracy.

The roots of Western success are told to be found in the profound changes that took place in Europe in the twelfth century. In the short period between 1122 and 1207, three separate treaties were signed between the Papacy on the one side, and France, England, and the Holy Roman Empire on the other. The agreements, respectively known as the Concordats of Paris, London, and Worms, established a new framework for the relations between the Pope of Rome and some of the most powerful temporal rulers of the period.

Under the influence of the Concordats, the church would continue to have the right to nominate bishops but was subjected to the veto power of the kings, who could reject nominees. In a significant change, when a bishop’s see was vacant, the considerable revenue that flowed to the bishoprics in virtue of their earthly possessions would be retained by the king. Theoretically speaking, kings could reject any candidate put forward by the church, enriching themselves and their kingdoms. But Rome was not powerless. The Pope could excommunicate emperors or deny the essential sacraments to the subjects of unruly kings.

However, in an age where the means of transportation were rudimentary, the power to enforce the church’s will was not geographically uniform. The further a territory was from Rome, the more complicated it was for the Pope to impose severe penalties on those rulers who chose to confront the Papacy. Thus, when choosing a bishop for sees that were relatively well off, the Pope was more likely to appoint a candidate of the king’s liking so that the ruler would accept him and revenue would keep flowing to Rome.

In The Invention of Power: Popes, Kings, and the Birth of the West, Bueno de Mesquita’s key argument is that the Concordats put in place a specific set of incentives that would have long-lasting consequences. Whereas temporal authorities were interested in increasing the wealth of their territories to augment their bargaining power over the church and eventually break off with Rome, the Pope had a stake in keeping economic development at bay. In pursuit of its interests, the Papacy resorted to new strategies. It created monastic orders to divert income from the local bishop to the Pope and forbade usury to stymie economic growth.

Over time, however, the dynamics set in motion by the Concordats could not be stopped from Rome. A point was reached “when there was so much wealth that kings were no longer interested in trading it for political power.” A case-in-point is the Protestant Reformation, when some monarchs in Europe “rejected even the idea of appointing Catholic bishops and used the establishment of a new religious order to keep more money for themselves.”

Bueno de Mesquita’s argument is not purely theoretical. He resorts to ingenious methods to overcome the dearth of data on changes that took place almost a millennium ago, such as the information collected by the Old World Trade Routes Project, which provides a glimpse into which regions of Europe enriched themselves through trade during the late Middle Ages. The data is then presented in numerous graphs that make complex ideas more intelligible. Overall, however, Bueno de Mesquita struggles to strike the right balance between crafting a book that will be accessible to the lay reader while keeping his work up to academic standards.

Throughout the book, Bueno de Mesquita compares the territories covered by the Concordats with those in Southern and Eastern Europe that were not affected by them. The lands covered by the Concordats went on to be wealthier and generally saw the emergence of representative institutions at an earlier point in time. Wealth made it possible for kings to break away from the church, but it was a double-edged sword because it also empowered the recently enriched sectors of the population.

The territories covered by the Concordats were roughly the lands we now know as France, England, Switzerland, Austria, Belgium, and Germany. Bueno de Mesquita argues that the incentives, put in motion by the Concordats, help explain inequalities in wealth and democracy levels across Europe up to the present day. Although he does not make this point, his argument appears to hold even when drawing within country comparisons. For instance, the Concordats covered the areas of Italy north of Rome, and these regions are currently much richer than those in the south.

Bueno de Mesquita could well have written a book on how the Concordats are the key drivers of inequalities across Europe. If this had been the case, his work would have only been assailable by the most well articulated critiques. However, Bueno de Mesquita does not stop at Europe’s borders. Instead, he contends that these changes brought about wealth and parliaments in Europe, leading to a broader “Western exceptionalism” through the settlers that departed the Old Continent and created the United States, Canada, or Australia.

When Bueno de Mesquita takes this huge argumentative leap, the two elephants in the room throughout the book can no longer be ignored. Firstly, his statement that it is incontrovertible that “people in the West are freer, richer, more tolerant, more innovative, and happier than people anywhere else in the world.” Bueno de Mesquita might have been able to convince the reader that this is the case. The problem is that such a strong assertion is not reached after careful consideration but constitutes the departing point of the book – the sentence is found on the fifth page.

Secondly, if the West remained exceptional in terms of wealth and representative institutions, this was, to an important extent, the result of the West’s own efforts to stay “exceptional.” This process, which Bueno de Mesquita does not touch upon, reached its high-water mark during the decades preceding the First World War, a historical period tellingly referred to by British historian Eric Hobsbawm as “The Age of Empire.” During this period, Europe siphoned off resources from its colonies while cooperating with local elites to thwart efforts to erect indigenous representative institutions.

The Invention of Power does not depart from the mainstream in its approach towards the realities of non-Western countries. Nonetheless, Bueno de Mesquita challenges two totems in the field of social sciences: Charles Tilly and Max Weber. Tilly’s most famous dictum, “war made the state, and the state made war,” explains only part of the story, Bueno de Mesquita tells us. “War may indeed have made some states, but diplomacy probably made many more,” we read. By diplomacy, he means the bargaining game between the king and the well-off citizens that demanded to be consulted in the affairs of government.

Bueno de Mesquita also takes aim at Weber’s famous thesis on the ethic of Protestantism being a decisive element in the economic success of Protestant groups in the early stages of European capitalism. Bueno de Mesquita does not disavow the existence of such Protestant ethics but understands them as being the consequence of the incentives established in the Concordats.

It is complicated to reach a definitive judgement on The Invention of Power, and more so because the author himself seems to be undecided on the explanatory power of his findings. We find caution in his assertion that “it may be too bold to claim that the concordats caused Europe’s exceptionalism.” These reservations are nowhere to be found eight pages later, when he writes that “we will be amazed by just how evident a legacy Holy Roman Emperor Henry V and Pope Calixtus II left when they signed their names to the concordat of Worms.”

Bueno de Mesquita’s arguments will probably leave many readers unconvinced, especially when the author departs from the European context in which the book is born. What is sure is that the book will spark a meaningful debate. The Invention of Power does not resolve the perennial discussion on the roots of Western economic development and democracy, but it would be unfair to ask any single volume to do so.

This is a review of Bruce Bueno de Mesquita, The Invention of Power: Popes, Kings, and the Birth of the West (Public Affairs, 2022), ISBN: 9781541774407

Marc Martorell Junyent is pursuing a master’s degree in Comparative Middle East Politics and Society at the Eberhard Karls University of Tübingen and the American University in Cairo. His main interests are the politics and history of the Middle East, with area interests in Iran, Turkey, Yemen, Tunisia and Israel/Palestine.

This article is published under a Creative Commons Licence and may be republished with attribution.