Hilton Root

Hilton L. Root (born October 18, 1951) is an academic and policy specialist in international political economy and development. He is a member of the faculty at the George Mason University School of Public Policy.

Root has written and lectured extensively, publishing eight books and more than 100 articles. He is a frequent contributor to the Wall Street Journal Asia, the International Herald Tribune, Los Angeles Times and the Washington Post. His work has been translated into many languages, including French, Greek, Chinese, Korean, Japanese and Vietnamese.

Academic career and principal employment

• 2007- Current: Senior Scholar, Mercatus Center
• 2006–Current: Professor of Public Policy, School of Public Policy of George Mason University
• 2003–2006: Freeman Fellow and Visiting Professor of Economics, Pitzer College and Claremont Graduate University
• 2001–2002: Senior Advisor to Undersecretary Department of the Treasury
• 1998–2001: Director and Senior Fellow, Global Studies, Milken Institute
• 1996–1998: Director, Initiative on Economic Growth and Democracy, Hoover Institution
• 1995–1998: Associate Professor of Public Policy, Stanford University
• 1992–1998: Senior Research Fellow, Initiative on Economic Growth and Democracy, Hoover Institution, Stanford University
• 1988–1991: Janice and Julian Bers Assistant Professor in the Social Sciences, University of Pennsylvania
• 1985–1988: Assistant Professor, Department of History, University of Pennsylvania

Advising and consultancy services

• African Economic Commission of the United Nations • Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) • Asian Development Bank (ADB) • International Monetary Fund (IMF) • Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) • The World Bank (WB) • Rand Corporation • United Nations Development Program (UNDP) • United States Agency for International Development (USAID) • United States Department of State

Policy work

As a policy expert, Root advises the Asian Development Bank (ADB), International Monetary Fund (IMF), World Bank (WB), the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), the United Nations Economic Commission for African (UNECA), the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), Rand Corporation, the U.S. State Department, and the U.S. Treasury Department.

Root has been active in policy work since 1993, when his academic focus began to shift to the rise of East Asia’s high-performing economies. He authored the governance component of the World Bank’s East Asia Miracle report (1993) and the book Small Countries, Big Lessons: Governance and the Rise of East Asia, (1997). These policy studies of emerging Asia began more than two decades of advisory work as a global policy activist, advocating the role of good governance and development.

Root was tapped as governance advisor to the president of the Asian Development Bank (1994–1996), where he served as principle author of the ADB’s governance policy and initiator of ongoing governance program activities for most of the Bank’s borrowing members. He also contributed to the establishment in 2001of the Millennium Challenge Account as advisor on development finance to the undersecretary of the U.S. Treasury.

Currently Root is a team leader for the USAID-funded program “Enhancing Government Effectiveness,” or EGE, with projects on human resource management, recruitment, finance and budget, planning, interagency coordination, and evaluation that are under way in five Muslim-majority countries: the West Bank/Gaza, Yemen, Morocco, Indonesia, and Pakistan. In all of these activities, Root’s contributions address analytical tools to examine the broader context of political economy in which sector-level policies are framed.

In 2010, Root helped reengineer the Planning Commission of the Government of Pakistan, where he currently leads a USAID initiative on intergovernmental finance and devolution. He presided over a committee on governance indicators at the OECD in 1995-1996 and initiated the restructuring of the Sri Lanka civil service as an advisor to President Chandrika Bandaranaike Kumaratunga.

Current research

Root’s most current research examines three related areas: the decline of liberal internationalism and the challenge of global legitimacy; the comparative and historical dynamics of state-building; and the use of complexity models to understand the emergence and evolution of social institutions. Complexity and Evolution in the Governance of the Modern State, links all three topics and explores why two of the most powerful change mechanisms in the arsenal of contemporary social theory—the ballot box and market capitalism—have failed to have the expected transformative effect on most developing countries.

One of the great conundrums of international political economy has been the resilience of global and domestic regimes and institutions that resist optimization models that have historically performed well in the West. These same regimes, operating far from the norms of effectiveness and legitimacy shared by the incumbent industrial powers, will experience much of the world’s future economic and population growth—a shift that brings enormous implications for the evolution of global cooperation and the kinds of government interventions that can be sustained through international assistance. The novel approach of Complexity and Evolution in the Governance of Modern States is to rethink current models of institutional change by drawing lessons from studies of complex adaptive systems across a diverse range of academic disciplines.

Awards

• 1997, Charles H. Levine Memorial Prize for The Key to the East Asian Miracle: Making Shared Growth Credible, with J. Edgardo Campos), presented by the International Political Science Association for best book of the year.
• 1995, The Fountain of Privilege: Political Foundations of Markets in Old Regime France and England, presented by the Social Sciences History Association for best book in economic history.
• 1992, Finalist, Leo Gershoy Award for best book in seventeenth- or eighteenth century European history, for Peasants and King in Burgundy: Agrarian Foundations of French Absolutism.
• 1986, Chester Penn Higby Prize for the best article among those published during the previous two years, presented by the American Historical Association.

Education

Hilton Root's began his career studying the economic consequences of state building in Old Regime France and England. Root received a B.A. from the State University of New York at Buffalo in 1974 and a master’s degree in economics and history from the University of Michigan in 1977. In 1980 he was awarded a Diplôme d’etudes avancées in politics and law from the Université de Bourgogne, Dijon, France. Root received his Ph.D. in economics and history from the University of Michigan in 1983. In 1984–1985, he participated in the Mellon Postdoctoral Program in Social Sciences at the California Institute of Technology.

Bibliography

Books

• Complexity and Evolution in the Governance of Modern States (manuscript, 2011)
• Alliance Curse: How the U.S. Lost the Third World. Brookings Institution Press (2008). ISBN 0-815-775-563
• Capital & Collusion: Political Logic of Global Economic Development. Princeton University Press (November 2005). ISBN 0-691-124-078. Korean translation (2008). Best Literacy & Rights Agency. ISBN 978-89-6078-040-8
• Governing for Prosperity, edited with Bruce Bueno de Mesquita. Yale University Press (2000). ISBN 978-7-300-08083-3/D. Chinese translation (2006). Renmin Press. ISBN 978-7-300-08083
• Small Countries, Big Lessons: Governance and the Rise of East Asia. Oxford University Press (1996). ISBN 0-195-876-970
• The Key to the East Asian Miracle: Making Shared Growth Credible, with J. Edgardo Campos. Brookings Institution Press (1996). ISBN 0-815-713-606
• The Fountain of Privilege: Political Foundations of Markets in Old Regime France and England. University of California Press (1994). ISBN 0-520-084-152
• La construction de l'état moderne en Europe: Le cas de la France et de l'Angleterre. Presses Universitaires de France (1993).
• Peasants and King in Burgundy: Agrarian Foundations of French Absolutism. University of California Press (1987). ISBN 0-520-057-201

Book chapters

• "The Policy Conundrum of Financial Market Complexity." In Research Handbook on Banking and Governance, edited by James R. Barth, Clas Wihlborg and Chen Lin, Edward Elgar. Publishing Ltd. (Forthcoming 2011).
• “The US Foreign Aid Policy to the Middle East,” with Yan Li and Kanishka Balasuriy. In Handbook of US-Middle East Relations: Formative Factors and Regional Perspectives, edited by R. E. Looney. Routledge (2009). ISBN 978-1-85743-499-6
• “What Latin America Can Learn From East Asia’s Development Experience,” with William Ratliff and Amanda Morgan. In Critical Issues for Mexico and the Developing World, edited by Kenneth Judd. Hoover Institute Press (2009). ISBN 0-817-947-922
• “Judicial Systems and Economic Development,” with Karen May. In Rule by Law: the Politics of Courts in Authoritarian Regimes, edited by Tom Ginsburg and Tamir Moustafa. Cambridge University Press (2008). ISBN 978-0-521-89590-3
• “Korea’s Comeback: the Government’s Predicament.” In The Bridge to a Global Middle Class: Development, Trade, and International Finance, edited by Walter Russell Mead and Sherle Schwenninger. Kluwer Academic Publishers (2003). ISBN 1-4020-7329-1
• “The Sociology of the State.” In International Encyclopedia of Social and Behavioral Sciences, edited by N.J Smelser, James Wright, and P.B. Baltes (2001). Pergamon ISBN 0-08-043076-7
• “When Bad Economics is Good Politics”, with Bruce Bueno de Mesquita. In Governing for Prosperity, edited by Bruce Bueno de Mesquita and Hilton Root. Yale University Press (2000) ISBN- 0-300-08017
• “The Compulsion of Patronage: Political Sources of Information Asymmetry and Risk in Developing Country Economies”, with Nahalel Nellis. In Governing for Prosperity, edited by Bruce Bueno de Mesquita and Hilton Root. Yale University Press (2000) ISBN 0-300-08017
• “Improving the Effectiveness of Donor-Assisted Development”, with Bruce Bueno de Mesquita. In Governing for Prosperity, edited by Bruce Bueno de Mesquita and Hilton Root. Yale University Press (2000). ISBN 0-300-08017
• “Suharto’s Tax on Indonesia’s Future.” In The East Asian Development Model: Economic Growth, Institutional Failure and the Aftermath of the Crisis, edited by Frank-Jurgen Richter. Macmillan Press LTD (2000). ISBN 0-312-23305-1
• “Transparency and China’s Aspirations.” Financial Market Reform in China: Progress, Problems and Prospects, edited by Baizhu Chen, J. Kimball Dietrich and Yi Feng. Westview Press (1999). ISBN 0-813-336-198
• “Economic Crisis and the Future of Oligarchy,” with Mark A. Abdollahian and Jacek Kugler. Institutional Reform and Democratic Consolidation in Korea, edited by Larry Diamond, Doh Chull Shin, and To-Chol Sin. Hoover Institutional Press (1999). ISBN 0-817-996-923
• “Distinctive Institutions in the Rise of Industrial Asia.” In Behind East Asia Growth: the Political and Social Foundations of Prosperity, edited by Henry S. Rowen. Routledge (1998). ISBN 0-415-16519-9

Selected Articles

• (2010) “Accelerators of ‘Stateness’: Punctuated Transition or Gradual Reform in the Rise of the Modern State.” American Political Science Association, SSRN website.
• (2011) “The Hypocrisy Trap: U.S. Foreign Aid in the Middle East”, with Yan Li. The Journal of Policy Studies, No.37, (March).
• (2008) “Capitalism and Democracy.” The American Interest, Vol. 3, No. 3.
• (2007) “Walking with the Devil: The Commitment Trap in U.S. Foreign Policy.” The National Interest, Number 88, (Mar/Apr).
• (2006) “Opening the Doors of Invention: Institutions, Technology and Developing Nations.” International Public Management Review 7(1).
• (2005) “Pakistan: The Political Economy of State Failure." The Milken Institute Review, Vol. 7, No. 2.
• (1989) “Tying the King's Hands: Credible Commitments and Royal Fiscal Policy during the Old Regime.” Rationality and Society October (1).

External links

• Hilton L. Root, School of Public Policy, George Mason University
• Hilton L. Root, Milken Institute
• Hilton Root, Mercatus Center