Sovereign entrepreneurship

Abstract

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to develop a theory of sovereign entrepreneurship, which is a special kind of political entrepreneurship. Design/methodology/approach This paper uses qualitative methods/historical survey. Findings Sovereignty is rooted in self-enforced exchange of political property rights. Sovereign entrepreneurship is the creative employment of political property rights to advance a plan. Research limitations/implications Because a polity’s constitution is determined by its distribution of political property rights, sovereign entrepreneurship and constitutional change are necessarily linked. The author illustrated how sovereign entrepreneurship can be applied by using it to explain the rise of modern states. Practical implications In addition to studying instances of sovereign entrepreneurship in distant history, scholars can apply it to recent history. Sovereign entrepreneurship can be especially helpful as a tool for doing analytic narratives of low-n cases of political-economic development, especially when those polities attract interests for being “development miracles.” Originality/value This paper uses treats sovereignty as a political property right.