IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/cdl/ucscec/qt0r38m12v.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Strategic Behavior and Organizational Structure in Religions

Author

Listed:
  • Wittman, Donald

Abstract

Religions are organized in a variety of ways. They may resemble an elected autocracy, aparliamentary democracy, or something akin to a monarchy, where heredity plays aprimary role. This variation allows for a comparative study of their organization.These differing power arrangements call for different types of strategic behavior in thefight for control over church doctrine and finance. And they also induce different institutional responses. I show where screening is highly institutionalized and when the age of a person may be an important strategic factor in choosing a leader. I am thus able to explain what otherwise would be very puzzling differences in the age of appointment across religions and within a particular religion, overtime. In a nutshell, this paper is about politics and strategic behavior in the large (democracyversus autocracy) within the context of the small (religious institutions).

Suggested Citation

  • Wittman, Donald, 2012. "Strategic Behavior and Organizational Structure in Religions," Santa Cruz Department of Economics, Working Paper Series qt0r38m12v, Department of Economics, UC Santa Cruz.
    • Handle: RePEc:cdl:ucscec:qt0r38m12v
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.escholarship.org/uc/item/0r38m12v.pdf;origin=repeccitec
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Wintrobe,Ronald, 2000. "The Political Economy of Dictatorship," Cambridge Books, Cambridge University Press, number 9780521794497, October.
    2. Mao, Wen & Zech, Charles, 2002. "Choices of organizational structures in religious organizations: a game theoretic approach," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 47(1), pages 55-70, January.
    3. Jensen, Michael C. & Meckling, William H., 1976. "Theory of the firm: Managerial behavior, agency costs and ownership structure," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 3(4), pages 305-360, October.
    4. Anthony Downs, 1957. "An Economic Theory of Political Action in a Democracy," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 65(2), pages 135-135.
    5. Ansolabehere, Stephen & Snyder, James M, Jr, 2000. "Valence Politics and Equilibrium in Spatial Election Models," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 103(3-4), pages 327-336, June.
    6. Allen, Douglas W., 1995. "Order in the church: A property rights approach," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 27(1), pages 97-117, June.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Raul Magni Berton & Sophie Panel, 2017. "Strategic gerontocracy: why nondemocratic systems produce older leaders," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 171(3), pages 409-427, June.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Alan E. Wiseman, 2006. "A Theory of Partisan Support and Entry Deterrence in Electoral Competition," Journal of Theoretical Politics, , vol. 18(2), pages 123-158, April.
    2. Dendi Ramdani & Arjen Witteloostuijn, 2012. "The Shareholder–Manager Relationship and Its Impact on the Likelihood of Firm Bribery," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 108(4), pages 495-507, July.
    3. Kenneth Shepsle, 1986. "The positive theory of legislative institutions: an enrichment of social choice and spatial models," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 50(1), pages 135-178, January.
    4. Fabian Gouret & Guillaume Hollard & Stéphane Rossignol, 2011. "An empirical analysis of valence in electoral competition," Social Choice and Welfare, Springer;The Society for Social Choice and Welfare, vol. 37(2), pages 309-340, July.
    5. Michael K Miller, 2011. "Seizing the mantle of change: Modeling candidate quality as effectiveness instead of valence," Journal of Theoretical Politics, , vol. 23(1), pages 52-68, January.
    6. Guillaume Hollard & Stéphane Rossignol, 2008. "An Alternative Approach to Valence Advantage in Spatial Competition," Journal of Public Economic Theory, Association for Public Economic Theory, vol. 10(3), pages 441-454, June.
    7. Enriqueta Aragonès & Dimitrios Xefteris, 2017. "Imperfectly Informed Voters And Strategic Extremism," International Economic Review, Department of Economics, University of Pennsylvania and Osaka University Institute of Social and Economic Research Association, vol. 58(2), pages 439-471, May.
    8. Bekkouche, Yasmine & Cagé, Julia & Dewitte, Edgard, 2022. "The heterogeneous price of a vote: Evidence from multiparty systems, 1993–2017," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 206(C).
    9. Matthias Benz & Bruno S. Frey, "undated". "Corporate Governance: What can we Learn from Public Governance?," IEW - Working Papers 166, Institute for Empirical Research in Economics - University of Zurich.
    10. Pies Ingo & Wockenfuß Christof, 2008. "Armutsbekämpfung versus Demokratieförderung: Wie lässt sich der entwicklungspolitische Trade-Off überwinden? / Poverty reduction versus democracy promotion? How to overcome the trade-off in developmen," ORDO. Jahrbuch für die Ordnung von Wirtschaft und Gesellschaft, De Gruyter, vol. 59(1), pages 405-440, January.
    11. Roger Congleton, 2014. "The contractarian constitutional political economy of James Buchanan," Constitutional Political Economy, Springer, vol. 25(1), pages 39-67, March.
    12. Li Han & Tao Li, 2021. "Marketing Communist Party membership in China," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 188(1), pages 241-268, July.
    13. Caselli, Francesco & Morelli, Massimo & Moreno de Barreda, Inés & Cunningham, Tom, 2012. "Signalling, Incumbency Advantage, and Optimal Reelection Thresholds," CEPR Discussion Papers 8832, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    14. Martínez-Mora, Francisco & Puy, M. Socorro, 2014. "The determinants and electoral consequences of asymmetric preferences," European Journal of Political Economy, Elsevier, vol. 33(C), pages 85-97.
    15. Marc Essen & J. Oosterhout & Michael Carney, 2012. "Corporate boards and the performance of Asian firms: A meta-analysis," Asia Pacific Journal of Management, Springer, vol. 29(4), pages 873-905, December.
    16. Drouvelis, Michalis & Saporiti, Alejandro & Vriend, Nicolaas J., 2014. "Political motivations and electoral competition: Equilibrium analysis and experimental evidence," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 83(C), pages 86-115.
    17. Bierbrauer, Felix J. & Boyer, Pierre C., 2013. "Political competition and Mirrleesian income taxation: A first pass," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 103(C), pages 1-14.
    18. van Lent, L.A.G.M., 1999. "Incomplete contracting theory in empirical accounting research," Other publications TiSEM 088f797d-9fa4-4081-98f4-1, Tilburg University, School of Economics and Management.
    19. Jason Y Wu, 2019. "A spatial valence model of political participation in China," Journal of Theoretical Politics, , vol. 31(2), pages 244-259, April.
    20. Marek Loužek, 2007. "Ekonomie náboženství - je hypotéza sekularizace opodstatněná? [Economics of religion - is the secularization hypothesis tenable?]," Politická ekonomie, Prague University of Economics and Business, vol. 2007(5), pages 659-680.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:cdl:ucscec:qt0r38m12v. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Lisa Schiff (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/ecucsus.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.