reasons for the growth of representative government

1.The practice of representative government was familiar to English people. The

Magna Carta limited the power of the king by requiring the king to obey rules that
people decided should be made.
Before this the king held absolute power that came from God.
It's not surprising that English settling in America established local versions of
a parliamentary system of representatives chosen by different methods

2. The lack of a prescribed common plan of government across all English colonies.
Different areas were settled under royal charters that specified the land area but
did not permit the people living in the area to have representatives in the English
parliament. As crown colonies, jurisdiction belonged to the king, who appointed
people he favored to establish law in that area. People who emigrated from England
to a colony did not have anyone in parliament to represent them.

Harsh laws applying to crown colonies: limits on what could be made in America. And
requirements to import English goods which cost much more, taxes to raise money
that was sent to England. Americans at this time objected to being ruled when they
expected from (above) to have a representative of their own to speak in parliament.

The lack of representation was keenly felt and objected to by Americans who
attempted to gain it over a century but were denied. This motivated many people to
act to establish local forms of representative assembly

3. No existing government among white settlers forced pilgrims in New England to

write the mayflower compact establishing the rule of law for the area they settled
in. The group of people was small and adopted by common consent of leaders of each
group

AFRICA
A range of factors drive size of government: relative prices, the age-dependency
ratio, how long a country has been independent, relative political freedom, and
openness in trade. Larger governments tend to limit growth, but that tendency can
be offset by well-functioning institutions and high-quality bureaucracy. Size of
government is not the only issue that matters. Using a large cross-country data
set, Commander, Davoodi, and Lee examine the factors that cause governments to grow
and analyze how the size of government affects growth, whether measured as income
growth or other measures of well-being, such as infant mortality and life
expectancy. They find no robust link between government size and per capita income.
The factors they find to be important in explaining government size are relative
prices, the age-dependency ratio, how long a country has been independent, relative
political freedom, and openness in trade. Their results also partially support the
view that governments use consumption to buffer external risk, especially in low-
income countries. As for how government size affects growth, they find a robust and
significant negative relationship between growth and government size, as measured
by consumption. Policy distortions, predictably, also have a negative effect on
growth. But the positive effects of well-functioning institutions and high quality
in government bureaucracies can offset the negative influence of large government
size alone. Finally, they find that social-sector spending can exert a positive
influence by reducing infant mortality and raising life expectancy. Better income
distribution, higher per capita income, higher per capita income growth, and more
political freedom have the same positive effect on those two measures of well-
being. This paper - a joint product of the Office of the Senior Vice President,
Development Economics and Chief Economist, and New Products and Outreach Division,
Economic Development Institute - was prepared as a background paper for World
Development Report 1997 on the role of the state in a changing world.