as the coalition continues to expand, a wedge is eventually driven between what a king wants and what his court needs. When that wedge gets big enough we have an explanation for the emergence of a mature democracy that is so stable it will almost certainly remain democratic and not backslide into autocratic rule. The switch in the coalition’s desires for institutional change results from tradeoffs between declines in private goods as the coalition expands, and the increase in public goods and societal productivity that accompanies such enlargement.
