The unanimity rule and religious fractionalisation in the Polish-Lithuanian Republic

Roháč, Dalibor

doi:10.1007/s10602-008-9037-5

“…65 What makes the example of Poland consistent with our framework is that the Polish state did not go through the same process of state centralization which accompanied religious prosecution in England, France, and the Netherlands. The Polish monarchy under Sigismund I (1506-1558) passed edicts against heresy, but, unlike the actions of the kings of France, these were ineffective because the Polish state was decentralized and the monarchy-circumscribed by the liberum veto which enabled the nobility to veto royal policy-comparatively weak (see Roháč, 2008). 66 Religious policy remained the responsibility of ecclesiastical courts with limited jurisdiction-there was no Polish equivalent to the Edicts of Paris and Fontainebleau.…”

Section: The Theory Applied To Other Statesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Legal centralization and the birth of the secular state

Johnson

¹

,

Koyama

²

2013

Journal of Comparative Economics

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This paper investigates the relationship between the historical process of legal centralization and increased religious toleration by the state. We develop a model in which legal centralization leads to the criminalization of the religious beliefs of a large proportion of the population. This process initially leads to increased persecution, but, because these persecutions are costly, it eventually causes the state to broaden the standards of orthodox belief and move toward religious toleration. We compare the results of the model with historical evidence drawn from two important cases in which religious diversity and state centralization collided in France: the Albigensian crusades of the thirteenth century and the rise of Protestant belief in the sixteenth century. Both instances support our central claim that the secularization of western European state institutions during the early-modern period was driven by the costs of imposing a common set of legal standards on religiously diverse populations.

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“…What makes the example of Poland consistent with our framework is that the Polish state did not go through the same process of state centralization which accompanied religious prosecution in England, France, and the Netherlands. The Polish monarchy under Sigismund I (1506-1558) passed edicts against heresy, but, unlike the actions of the kings of France, these were ineffective because the Polish state was decentralized and the monarchy-circumscribed by the liberum veto which enabled the nobility to veto royal policy-comparatively weak (see Roháč, 2008). 66 Religious policy remained the responsibility of ecclesiastical courts with limited jurisdiction-there was no Polish equivalent to the Edicts of Paris and Fontainebleau.…”

Section: The Theory Applied To Other Statesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Legal Centralization and the Birth of the Secular State

Johnson

¹

,

Koyama

²

2012

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

This paper investigates the relationship between the historical process of legal centralization and increased religious toleration by the state. We develop a model in which legal centralization leads to the criminalization of the religious beliefs of a large proportion of the population. This process initially leads to increased persecution, but, because these persecutions are costly, it eventually causes the state to broaden the standards of orthodox belief and move toward religious toleration. We compare the results of the model with historical evidence drawn from two important cases in which religious diversity and state centralization collided in France: the Albigensian crusades of the thirteenth century and the rise of Protestant belief in the sixteenth century. Both instances support our central claim that the secularization of western European state institutions during the early-modern period was driven by the costs of imposing a common set of legal standards on religiously diverse populations.

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“…In addition to the Lebanese case, the structure of the Sejm (parliament) of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, which required unanimity for making decisions, illustrates this problem. This unanimity rule made the oligarchic regime of Poland-Lithuania highly stable, but also generated a severe political gridlock (Roháč, 2008). Even in less extreme circumstances, the trade-off between flexibility and stability could be a complex one.…”

Section: Designing Persistencementioning

confidence: 99%

Institutional Change and Institutional Persistence

Acemoğlu¹,

Egorov²,

Sonin³

2020

SSRN Journal

0

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In this essay, we provide a simple conceptual framework to elucidate the forces that lead to institutional persistence and change. Our framework is based on a dynamic game between different groups, who care both about current policies and institutions and future policies, which are themselves determined by current institutional choices, and clarifies the forces that lead to the most extreme form of institutional persistence ("institutional stasis") and the potential drivers of institutional change. We further study the strategic stability of institutions, which arises when institutions persist because of fear of subsequent, less beneficial changes that would follow initial reforms. More importantly, we emphasize that, despite the popularity of ideas based on institutional stasis in the economics and political science literatures, most institutions are in a constant state of flux, but their trajectory may still be shaped by past institutional choices, thus exhibiting "path-dependent change", so that initial conditions determine both the subsequent trajectories of institutions and how they respond to shocks. We conclude the essay by discussing how institutions can be designed to bolster stability, the relationship between social mobility and institutions, and the interplay between culture and institutions.

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The unanimity rule and religious fractionalisation in the Polish-Lithuanian Republic

Abstract: Polish-Lithuanian Republic, Voting rules, Unanimity, Religious fractionalisation, D72, N43,

Cited by 14 publications

References 22 publications

Legal centralization and the birth of the secular state

Legal centralization and the birth of the secular state

Legal Centralization and the Birth of the Secular State

Institutional Change and Institutional Persistence

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