罗马帝国崩溃 韦森：近代西方世界兴起原因的再思考(13)

[26] Weber， Max， 1983， Max Weber on Capitalism， Bureaucracy and Religion: A Selection of Texts， ed. by Stanislav Andreski， London: George Allen & Unwin.

[Abstract] This paper provides a literature review of multi-disciplines on the causes of the western world in the modern time。 While these classical scholars like Hegel and Marx believe that the main causes of the rise of the western world are relies upon the improvement of productivity which come from the division of labor and free-market competition， Sombart， Weber and Schumpeter attribute the historical phenomenon to the capitalist spirit of those entrepreneurs to unlimitedly grow their business。

The institutionalist economist Douglass North deems that the fundamental causes of the rise of western world are due to the formation of the private property rights system and the modern industrial organization， a political scientist of Paul Kennedy thinks that the rise of the western world come from political competition of the nation-states of the western Europe， and the historian Wallerstein believes that the collapse of the Roman Empire and the conflict between the Vatican and the secular monarchs in pre-modern Europe have create some rare opportunities for the economic growth in the western Europe in the modern time。

An overview of the relevant literature on the issue shows the fact that despite of many conjectures on the causes of the rise of the western world in the modern time， there are some consensus that the formation of the well-functioned legal systems and their underlining constitutional democracy are major contributors of the historical phenomenon。