Abstract
In stateless societies, coercion is privately provided; violence is employed to engage in, and to defend against, predation. At best, violence results in mere redistribution; being destructive, it more often results in a loss of social welfare. When organized, however, violence can be socially productive; it can be employed to defend property rights, thereby strengthening the incentives to engage in productive activity. To explore how violence can be rendered a source of welfare, the authors develop a model of a stateless society in which people's rights to the product of their labor are secure only if they possess coercive capabilities. Using case materials and formal logic, the authors then compare this outcome with that obtained when private agents reward specialists in violence for defending property rights. In doing so, we plumb the role of the state.
Highlights
The premise of this paper is that coercion is as normal a part of life as is exchange; what matters is not its presence or magnitude but rather its structure and form.1 In stateless societies, coercion is privately provided; violence is employed to engage in, and to defend against, predation
We incorporate into the model a specialist in violence and pose the following questions: Under what conditions will such a specialist utilize her coercive power only against those who have inflicted violence upon others? Under what conditions can the specialist in violence enhance the welfare of the economic agents by providing protection for property rights? When, in other words, can specialists in violence render coercion socially productive?
We demonstrate that there is a price at which specialists in violence will deploy coercion productively and protect property rights, eliciting the movement of resources from unproductive leisure and predation to productive labor
Summary
The premise of this paper is that coercion is as normal a part of life as is exchange; what matters is not its presence or magnitude but rather its structure and form. In stateless societies, coercion is privately provided; violence is employed to engage in, and to defend against, predation. We demonstrate that there is a price at which specialists in violence will deploy coercion productively and protect property rights, eliciting the movement of resources from unproductive leisure and predation to productive labor This reorganization of coercion, we argue, transforms violence into governance and, under conditions that we specify below, renders coercion welfare enhancing. In response to the increased value of real property, people began to “raid” the holdings of others They employed litigation, contesting the land rights of others in order to expand their own. An increase in the value of land coincided with the channeling of resources into coercive action: litigation, initially, but later deadly violence.6 Both the rise of conflict in 13th Century England and 20th Century Kenya suggest that when private parties provide their own defenses, wealth and violence go hand-in-hand.
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