Culture, Institutions and the Long Divergence

Abstract : Recent theories of the Long Divergence between Middle Eastern and Western European economies focus on Middle Eastern (over-)reliance on religious legitimacy, use of slave soldiers, and persistence of restrictive proscriptions of religious (Islamic) law. These theories take as exogenous the cultural values that complement the prevailing institutions. As a result, they miss the role of cultural values in either supporting the persistence of or inducing change in the economic and institutional environment. In this paper, we address these issues by modeling the joint evolution of institutions and culture. In doing so, we place the various hypotheses of economic divergence into one, unifying framework. We highlight the role that cultural transmission plays in reinforcing institutional evolution toward either theocratic or secular states. We extend the model to shed light on political decentralization and technological change in the two regions.

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Fundamentals As Drivers of Moral Change: the British Abolitionist Movement

Abstract : What drives change in a society's values? From Marx to modernization theory, scholars have often highlighted a connection between structural transformation and value change, yet the links connecting the two processes are not always precisely identified. We argue that one of the ways through which changes in fundamentals lead to change in social values is by altering the distribution of economic power, and, by extension, the relative influence of values held by different groups in society. We study the case of the movement for the abolition of slavery in late 18th and early 19th century England, one of history’s most well-known campaigns for social change, and an instance of massive shift in public opinion on a morally charged topic over only a few decades. Using geocoded data on anti-slavery petitions, MP voting behavior in Parliament and economic activity, we show that support for abolition was strongly connected to the rise of the industrial class. We rely on a large corpus of newspaper articles and the analysis of parliamentary speeches to understand the relative contribution of economic and ideological factors in the anti-abolitionist stance of the new industrial bourgeoisie.

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Elite Kinship Networks and State-building Preferences in Imperial China

Abstract : A long tradition in social sciences scholarship has established that kinship-based institutions undermine state building. I argue that kinship networks, when geographically dispersed, cross-cut local cleavages and allow elites to internalize the gains to others from regions far from their own. Dispersed kinship networks, therefore, align the incentives of self-interested elites in favor of state building. I evaluate my argument by examining elite preferences during a state-building reform in 11th century China. I map politicians’ kinship networks using their tomb epitaphs and collect data on their political allegiances from archival materials. Statistical analysis and narrative evidence demonstrate that dispersed kinship networks align elites’ family interests with state interests and incentivize elites to support building a strong central state. My findings highlight the importance of elite social structure in facilitating state development and help understand state building in China – a useful, yet understudied, counterpoint to the Euro-centric literature.

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