Nationbuilding 101: Property, Liberty, and Corporate Governance

Abstract

Nationbuilders in less developed countries need to understand how Western legal systems with "property" at their center have materially accounted for Western prosperity and liberty, but legal definitions of property are so abstruse that explication of this vital concept is made difficult. This paper finds an historical definitional essence to property in the right to exclude and maintains that liberty and property both share this essential meaning. The problems of corporate governance are then placed in the context of the exclusionary concept of property/liberty.