Violence and Social Orders

1. Violence and Social Orders John Wallis University of Maryland & NBER

2. Violence and Social Orders:A Conceptual Framework for Interpreting Recorded Human History Douglass C. North, John Joseph Wallis, and Barry R. Weingast

3. Two Revolutions • The scale, complexity, and organization of human societies made decisive leaps forward in two revolutions: • The neolithic: 10,000 years ago with the discovery of agriculture, the emergence of larger social units, urbanization, and hierarchical societies. • The industrial: 200 years ago with the development of new technologies in energy use and materials fabrication, nation states, impersonal exchange, impersonal politics, and large corporate organizations in the private and public realm.

4. Summary of the argument • Three distinct social orders • The limited access order, or natural state, is a social order in which the political system manipulates the economic system to create rents that the political system uses to sustain order. • In open access orders, political, economic, and other forms of competition sustain order.

5. The Concept of Social Orders • The concept of the social order provides: - A framework for understanding how violence is contained. - A framework within which we can simultaneously understand the operation of the political, economic, and other social systems. - An integrated social science framework.

6. The Logic of the Natural State • The Natural State political system creates economic rents through limited access and then uses the rents to sustain order. • The Natural State is a solution to endemic violence.

7. Natural States • Natural states create incentive-compatible agreements among powerful individuals and groups by recognizing the privileges of each individual to control valuable resources, activities, and organizations. • The interaction of these incentives both orders the dominant coalition and limits the use of violence. • All natural states are limited access orders.

8. Personal and Impersonal • Natural states build on personal relationships between individuals with repeated interaction. • They also build on unique personal identities of elites, • Elite identity is tied to privileges and organizations, e.g. the Duchy of Lancaster.

9. Two Fundamental Types of Organizations • Adherent Organizations: -- Organizations whose internal arrangements depend only on incentive-compatible, self-enforcing agreements. • Contractual Organizations: -- Organizations that utilize third parties to enforce some or all of their internal arrangements.

10. Adherent Organization A B a b a b a b Contractual Contractual

11. The Logic of the Open Access Order • Open access orders control violence by consolidating control of violence in a single or small number or organizations: military and police and placing control of the military in a political organization. • Then subjecting control of the political organization to political and economic competition through open access.

12. Consolidated control of the military is dangerous. • Putting the military under the control of a political process requires the ability to control the political actors and political system, • The political system is subject to constraints from the economy, • An open access political system must be matched with an open access economic system.

13. What is Open Access? • Not just neo-classical competition • Organizational tools are well developed • Organizational tools are available to a wide class of citizens. • Open access is not universal access, but open enough that systematic rent creation cannot be used to order relationships between powerful groups.

14. The Transition/Doorstep • The transition process begins in the natural state. • The early part of the process must be consistent with the logic of the natural state. • Some natural states move to positions in which moves toward open access can be sustained.

15. Doorstep Conditions • Rule of law for elites • Support for perpetual elite organizations • Political control of the military • The conditions: • Must be self-enforcing; • Create the possibility of impersonal exchange among elites.

16. Development: Economic and Political • There are two development problems • The first is development within the natural state • This involves changes in the structure of organizations • The second is the transition from limited to open access orders. • This involves changes in access to organizations

17. Political Economy • The Weberian state assumption is a real problem for understanding political dynamics in most societies. • Coalitions and organizations are the elements of a social dynamic, and we must understand the dynamic relationships.

18. Organization Theory • Support for organizations are at the heart of the framework • Organizations are rarely self-enforcing and self-sustaining sets of relationships, yet we have paid relatively little attention to external supports for organizations. • Organizations and coalitions, and social dynamics

19. Institutional Economics • Impersonality versus Anonymity • Is dealing with people you don’t know the same as treating everyone the same? • The relationship between organizations and institutions.

20. Economic History • What was the transition? • The transition versus the industrial revolution • 19th century versus the 18th century