John Wallis
University of Maryland

Wallis

Homepage

(Monday, 18th May 2009)

Title : Violence and Social Orders

Download the presentation - 156.00 KB

The problem of social order is often approached as a problem of credible commitment between a protector, i.e. the state, and a group of citizens. What happens to this analysis when we consider that the protectors are always a group, never an individual, and ask how the organization of violence within the coalition of protectors affects how societies work? The answers give us a new perspective on the problems of economic development and suggest a new way to think about how modern societies emerged two hundred years ago.

Bibliographical references :

Douglass North, John Wallis, and Barry Weingast, Violence and Social Orders: A Conceptual Framework for Interpreting Recorded Human History. Cambridge University Press, 2009.

North, Wallis, and Weingast, “Violence and the Rise of Open-Access Orders.” Journal of Democracy, 20(1), January 2009, pp. 55-68.

North, Wallis, Webb, and Weingast. “Limited Access Orders: Rethinking the Problems of Development and Violence.” Manuscript, 2009.

Download - 73.56 KB