IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/erg/wpaper/634.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Politics, Economics, and Violence: the Organization of Societies and Third-Party Enforcement

Author

Listed:
  • John Wallis

    (University of Maryland and NBER)

Abstract

The question “Who will guard the guardians?” is at the heart of a set of questions about how politics and economics interact. If government provision of justice and protection to societies is an integral part of how well societies perform in economic and political terms, how is it that governments are constrained to perform their functions as agreed in the explicit or implicit social contract? This short essay uses the conceptual framework developed by North, Wallis, and Weingast in Violence and Social Orders (2009, hereafter NWW) to think about the nexus between governments and economies and the nature of their interaction, particularly the ability of governments to enforce rules by serving as an unbiased third-party enforcer of public laws as well as contracts entered into by private individuals.

Suggested Citation

  • John Wallis, 2011. "Politics, Economics, and Violence: the Organization of Societies and Third-Party Enforcement," Working Papers 634, Economic Research Forum, revised 09 Jan 2011.
    • Handle: RePEc:erg:wpaper:634
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://erf.org.eg/wp-content/uploads/2014/08/634.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: http://bit.ly/2mEPW2e
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Greif,Avner, 2006. "Institutions and the Path to the Modern Economy," Cambridge Books, Cambridge University Press, number 9780521480444, September.
    2. North, Douglass C. & Weingast, Barry R., 1989. "Constitutions and Commitment: The Evolution of Institutions Governing Public Choice in Seventeenth-Century England," The Journal of Economic History, Cambridge University Press, vol. 49(4), pages 803-832, December.
    3. Wallis, John Joseph, 2011. "Institutions, organizations, impersonality, and interests: The dynamics of institutions," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 79(1), pages 48-64.
    4. North,Douglass C. & Wallis,John Joseph & Weingast,Barry R., 2013. "Violence and Social Orders," Cambridge Books, Cambridge University Press, number 9781107646995.
    5. Wallis, John Joseph, 2011. "Institutions, organizations, impersonality, and interests: The dynamics of institutions," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 79(1-2), pages 48-64, June.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    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. Broadberry, Stephen & Wallis, John, 2017. "Growing, Shrinking and Long Run Economic Performance: Historical Perspectives on Economic Development," CEPR Discussion Papers 11973, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    2. John Wallis, 2015. "Rules, Organizations, and Governments," Atlantic Economic Journal, Springer;International Atlantic Economic Society, vol. 43(1), pages 69-86, March.
    3. Brousseau, Eric & Garrouste, Pierre & Raynaud, Emmanuel, 2011. "Institutional changes: Alternative theories and consequences for institutional design," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 79(1-2), pages 3-19, June.
    4. Lee J. Alston & Marcus André Melo & Bernardo Mueller & Carlos Pereira, 2016. "A Conceptual Framework for Understanding Critical Transitions," NBER Working Papers 22144, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    5. Eric Hilt, 2016. "Corporation Law and the Shift toward Open Access in the Antebellum United States," NBER Chapters, in: Organizations, Civil Society, and the Roots of Development, pages 147-177, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    6. repec:hal:spmain:info:hdl:2441/4vc7skecu3q7u7s984pgpg64m is not listed on IDEAS
    7. Ashok Chakravarti, 2012. "Institutions, Economic Performance and the Visible Hand," Books, Edward Elgar Publishing, number 14751.
    8. Brousseau, Eric & Schemeil, Yves & Sgard, Jérôme, 2010. "Bargaining on law and bureaucracies: A constitutional theory of development," Journal of Comparative Economics, Elsevier, vol. 38(3), pages 253-266, September.
    9. Carl Mildenberger, 2013. "The constitutional political economy of virtual worlds," Constitutional Political Economy, Springer, vol. 24(3), pages 239-264, September.
    10. repec:hal:wpspec:info:hdl:2441/4vc7skecu3q7u7s984pgpg64m is not listed on IDEAS
    11. Benito Arruñada, 2012. "Property as an economic concept: reconciling legal and economic conceptions of property rights in a Coasean framework," International Review of Economics, Springer;Happiness Economics and Interpersonal Relations (HEIRS), vol. 59(2), pages 121-144, July.
    12. Mike, Károly, 2016. "Merre vezessen a magyar kapitalizmus útja?. Látkép Ronald Coase világítótornyából [Which course for Hungary s capitalism?. A view from Ronald Coase s lighthouse]," Közgazdasági Szemle (Economic Review - monthly of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences), Közgazdasági Szemle Alapítvány (Economic Review Foundation), vol. 0(6), pages 597-614.
    13. Chilosi, David, 2014. "Risky Institutions: Political Regimes and the Cost of Public Borrowing in Early Modern Italy," The Journal of Economic History, Cambridge University Press, vol. 74(3), pages 887-915, September.
    14. Rubin, Amir & Rubin, Eran & Segal, Dan, 2023. "Editor home bias?," Research Policy, Elsevier, vol. 52(6).
    15. Johnson, Noel D. & Koyama, Mark, 2017. "States and economic growth: Capacity and constraints," Explorations in Economic History, Elsevier, vol. 64(C), pages 1-20.
    16. Bénédicte Coestier, 2015. "Jordan and the Middle-Income Growth Trap: Arab Springs and Institutional Changes," EconomiX Working Papers 2015-8, University of Paris Nanterre, EconomiX.
    17. Alexander William Salter & Andrew T. Young, 2018. "Medieval representative assemblies: collective action and antecedents of limited government," Constitutional Political Economy, Springer, vol. 29(2), pages 171-192, June.
    18. Ogilvie, Sheilagh & Carus, A.W., 2014. "Institutions and Economic Growth in Historical Perspective," Handbook of Economic Growth, in: Philippe Aghion & Steven Durlauf (ed.), Handbook of Economic Growth, edition 1, volume 2, chapter 8, pages 403-513, Elsevier.
    19. Gwendoline Promsopha & Antoine Vion, 2017. "Thailand's 'limited order trap' : a critical application of North, Wallis and Weingast," Post-Print hal-01612052, HAL.
    20. Ma, Debin, 2011. "Rock, scissors, paper: the problem of incentives and information in traditional Chinese state and the origin of Great Divergence," Economic History Working Papers 37569, London School of Economics and Political Science, Department of Economic History.
    21. repec:spo:wpmain:info:hdl:2441/4vc7skecu3q7u7s984pgpg64m is not listed on IDEAS
    22. Sarah Guilland Carmichael & Alexandra de Pleijt & Jan Luiten van Zanden & Tine De Moor, 2015. "Reply to Tracy Dennison and Sheilagh Ogilvie: The European Marriage pattern and the Little Divergence," Working Papers 0070, Utrecht University, Centre for Global Economic History.
    23. Benito Arruñada, 2009. "The law of impersonal transactions," Economics Working Papers 1187, Department of Economics and Business, Universitat Pompeu Fabra, revised Sep 2010.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    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:erg:wpaper:634. 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: Sherine Ghoneim (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/erfaceg.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.