Why did pre-modern states adopt Big-God religions?

Abstract

Over the past two millennia successful pre-modern states in Eurasia adopted and cultivated Big-God religions that emphasize (i) the ruler's legitimacy as divinely ordained and (ii) a morality adapted for large-scale societies that can have positive economic effects. We make sense of this development by building on previous research that has conceptualized pre-modern states as maximizing the ruler's profit. We model the interaction of rulers and subjects who have both material and psychological payoffs, the latter emanating from religious identity. Overall, religion reduces the cost of controlling subjects through the threat of violence, increases production, increases tax revenue, and reduces banditry. A Big-God ruler, who is also a believer, has greater incentives to invest in expanding the number of believers and the intensity of belief, as well as investing in state capacity. Furthermore, such investments are often complementary, mutually reinforcing one another, thus leading to an evolutionary advantage of rulers that adopted Big-God religions.

Identity, religion, and the state: The origin of theocracy

“…The model of Skaperdas and Vaidya (2020) also finds complementarity between intensity of religious belief and state capacity, though in the context of external threats to the polity rather than in terms of its internal stability. the ruler must engage in state-making, which involves not only the elimination of internal rivals but also the bribing of rivals to join forces with the ruler.…”

National Identity, Public Goods, and Modern Economic Development

“…The complementarities we document thus far across national identification and public goods provision-together with internal peace, high per capita incomes, and liberal political institutions-can be conceived as part of a politico-economic "bundle" that tends to characterize states throughout the modern world. 20 Although we do not push this interpretation too far, our framework suggests a central role for national identities-arguably only made possible after the advent of centralized education and print media-in the coalescence of these attributes in modern states, which superseded "Big God" religions and the divine right of kings as the key driving social forces underpinning the structures of political and economic organization in many pre-modern states (Skaperdas and Vaidya, 2020). In the next section, we apply our framework to the case of England, which provided one of the first examples of this politico-economic bundle.…”

What corporations can learn from the struggle in the market for souls

“…Societies that rally around monotheistic religions have a greater likelihood of aligning their populations more cohesively, allowing them to project their influence over larger territories (Perchard & MacKenzie, 2020; Skaperdas & Vaidya, 2020). Monotheistic religions develop a cadre of professional priesthoods, trained at specific schools to observe religious mandates (Basuchoudhary, Ferrero, & Lubin, 2020).…”