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Article: History matters: an institutional approach examination of the U.S. constitution.
- Article from:
- Social Education
- Article date:
- March 1, 2007
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 2007 National Council for the Social Studies. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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History matters. It matters not only because we can learn from the past, but because the present and the future are connected to the past by the continuity of a society's institutions. Today and tomorrow's choices are shaped by the past. And the past can be made intelligible only as a story of institutional evolution.
This story focuses on the problem of human cooperation--specifically, the cooperation that permits economies to capture gains from trade. Economic growth depends upon the evolution of institutions that create a hospitable environment for cooperative solutions to problems associated with trade. Not all human cooperation is socially productive, of ...