Gifts as governance: Church Welfare and the Samaritan's dilemma

Abstract

How do gifts relate to formal and informal institutions? Giving gifts, especially in the form of anti-poverty aid, opens the givers to a serious social dilemma: the Samaritan's dilemma. We explain how the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints uses a mixture of formal and informal governance to provide sustainable social welfare programs that avoid this dilemma. These institutions not only govern aid arrangements, but also provide governance across the entire Church community, encouraging religious adherence and broad-based participation.

Institutional analysis and the gift: an introduction to the symposium

“…Reflecting on the methodological implications of these three empirical contributions to the symposium, one may ask: what kind of empirical research of gift giving is most fruitful in demonstrating the institutional framework underlying such behaviour? The first empirical study by Goodman and Herzberg (2019) is founded on interpreting texts issued by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and a historical study, the second inquiry by Taylor and Goodman (2019) is based on interpreting historical studies and archival documents on the role of Edward Filene in his support of cooperatives. The third study is based on a survey.…”

“…Ostrom (1990) has championed the use of anthropological field work to inform institutional economic theory, but there are also industry and problem specific ethnographic studies which illustrate such fruitful interdisciplinary collaboration (Graeber, 2011;Zaloom, 2006). As suggested by Goodman and Herzberg (2019) at the end of their article, one may ask whether employing ethnographic studies may not further enhance our institutional understanding of the gift.…”

“…There is an institutional analysis of gift-giving in the articles in this symposium by Goodman and Herzberg (2019) and Keith Taylor and Goodman (2019). They are also carefully executed empirical institutional analyses of two very relevant case studies of gift giving, based on dense case descriptions and the interpretation of contemporary and historical documents.…”

“…Goodman and Herzberg (2019) – ‘Gifts as governance: Church Welfare and the Samaritan's Dilemma’ – scrutinise the welfare programme of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in the USA and focuses on how the church devised institutions to deal with the Samaritan's dilemma (Buchanan, 1975; Gibson et al ., 2005; Schmidtchen, 2002; Skarbek, 2016) of never ending and growing financial demands by claimants who have come to the conclusion that the church administrators will under no circumstances withdraw their assistance. The authors argue on the basis of a consequentialist, rational choice, game-theoretic framework and they consider the best enabling and constraining incentive structure for welfare recipients by the church, while the mechanisms described are actually strict social monitoring and control accompanied by a strong set of shared values and religious ideology which would suggest at least in part a deontological interpretation.…”

“…In particular, two major institutions of modernity are at the heart of these tensions: the welfare state and the third sector. It is no surprise that two contributions to this symposium focus on case studies from the third sector: Goodman and Herzberg (2019) as well as Taylor and Goodman (2019).…”