Acts of Faith: Explaining the Human Side of Religion. By Rodney Stark and Roger Finke. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2000. 343 pp. $48.00 (cloth); $18.95 (paper). At a recent American Academy of Religion meeting, after a brilliant paper was presented on God and religious experience, the speaker was asked this question by an academic: "But how can you say these things in our postmodem, anti-enlightenment, pluralistic age?" Acts of Faith secures the thesis that not just talk about, but devout belief in, God is rational, widespread, and shows no sign of abating. For a vast number of well-educated, articulate human beings talk of God is not very difficult at all. Acts of Faith is an important treatment of the sociology of religious belief and should be considered required reading by anyone interested in the social standing and assessment of religion. It overturns the conventions of a great deal of earlier sociological inquiry into religion and stands as a model of clarity and rigor. Rodney Stark and Roger Finke begin by documenting the social and intellectual history of atheism, noting how history, sociology, and psychoanalysis have been employed to exhibit the irrationality of religious belief. They underscore how many of these projects have done little more than presup- pose the credulous nature of religion. There is something darkly humorous about the many techniques employed by "intellectuals" and social scientists to explain why religion persists and even grows amidst "modernity." Stark and Finke's analysis is devastating. From the outset through to the last chapter the writing is crisp and at times quite amusing. Here is a passage from the introduction, lamenting the fact that many sociologists focus their work on fringe religious groups: A coven of nine witches in Lund, Sweden, is far more apt to be the object of a case study than is, say, the Episcopal Church, with more than two million members. Some of this merely reflects that it is rather easier to get one's work published if the details are sufficiently lurid or if the group is previously undocumented. A recitation of Episcopalian theology and excerpts from the Book of Common Prayer will not arouse nearly the interest (prurient or otherwise) than can be generated by tales of blondes upon the altar and sexual contacts with animals (p. 19). Stark and Finke have written a text that abounds in technical case studies, while at the same time giving us a book that is a pleasure to read. The introduction and first three chapters alone are a tour de force. They expose the blatant inadequacy of sociological work that reads religious belief as pathology or flagrant irrationality. They challenge the thesis of impending, virtually inevitable secularization, for instance, in part by refuting the claim that in the distant past almost everyone was religious. …

Acts of Faith: Explaining the Human Side of Religion

Max Weber attributed the higher economic prosperity of Protestant regions to a Protestant work ethic We provide an alternative theory, where Protestant economies prospered because instruction in reading the Bible generated the human capital crucial to economic prosperity County-level data from late 19th-century Prussia reveal that Protestantism was indeed associated not only with higher economic prosperity, but also with better education We find that Protestants’ higher literacy can account for the whole gap in economic prosperity Results hold when we exploit the initial concentric dispersion of the Reformation to use distance to Wittenberg as an instrument for Protestantism

Was Weber Wrong? A Human Capital Theory of Protestant Economic History

A rich array of institutional diversity makes the United States an excellent place to study the relationship between political institutions and public policy outcomes. This Paper has three main aims. First, it reviews existing empirical evidence on the relationship between institutional rules, political representation and policy outcomes. It aims to place the literature into a broader context of theoretical and empirical work in the field of political economy. Second, it develops a parallel empirical analysis that updates studies in the literature and re-examines some of the claims made, in a setting unified both in terms of policy outcomes and the period under study. Third, the paper develops some new directions for research, presenting a small number of novel exploratory results.

Political Institutions and Policy Choices: Evidence from the United States

Max Weber attributed the higher economic prosperity of Protestant regions to a Protestant work ethic. We provide an alternative theory: Protestant economies prospered because instruction in reading the Bible generated the human capital crucial to economic prosperity. We test the theory using county-level data from late-nineteenth-century Prussia, exploiting the initial concentric dispersion of the Reformation to use distance to Wittenberg as an instrument for Protestantism. We find that Protestantism indeed led to higher economic prosperity, but also to better education. Our results are consistent with Protestants' higher literacy accounting for most of the gap in economic prosperity.

/pdf/was-weber-wrong-a-human-capital-theory-of-protestant-7fblnlqzjh.pdf

A rich array of institutional diversity makes the United States an excellent place to study the relationship between political institutions and public policy outcomes. This essay has three main aims. It reviews empirical evidence on the relationship between institutional rules, political representation and policy outcomes; it aims to place the literature into a broader context of theoretical and empirical work in political economy. Second, it develops a parallel empirical analysis that updates studies in the literature and reexamines some of the claims, in a setting unified in terms of policy outcomes and period under study. Third, it develops new directions for research, presenting some novel exploratory results.

/pdf/political-institutions-and-policy-choices-evidence-from-the-pn2le0ih42.pdf

Political institutions and policy choices: evidence from the United States

According to the Leviathan-Model, fiscal federalism is seen as a binding constraint on a revenue-maximizing government. The competitive pressure of fiscal federalism is supposed to reduce public sector size as compared to unitary states. However, empirical results concerning the Leviathan hypothesis are mixed. This study uses a state and local-level panel data set of Swiss cantons from 1980 to 1998 to empirically analyze the effect of different federalist institutions on the size and structure of government revenue. Because of the considerable tax autonomy of sub-national Swiss governments, it is possible to investigate different mechanisms by which fiscal federalism may influence government size. The results indicate that tax exporting has a revenue expanding effect whereas tax competition favors a smaller size of government. Fragmentation has essentially no effect on the size of government revenue for Swiss cantons. The overall effect of revenue decentralization leads to lower tax revenue but higher user charges. Thus, revenue decentralization favors a smaller size of government revenue and shifts government revenue from taxes to user charges.

Decentralized Taxation and the Size of Government: Evidence from Swiss State and Local Governments

http://crema-research.ch/papers/2007-06.pdf

Are fiscal adjustments less successful in decentralized governments

Policymakers often propose strict enforcement strategies to fight the shadow economy and to increase tax morale. However, there is an alternative bottom-up approach that decentralises political power to those who are close to the problems. This paper analyses the relationship with local autonomy. We use data on tax morale at the individual level and macro data on the size of the shadow economy to analyse the relevance of local autonomy and compliance in Switzerland. The findings suggest that there is a positive (negative) relationship between local autonomy and tax morale (size of the shadow economy).

Local autonomy, tax morale, and the shadow economy

Do large cabinets favor large governments? Evidence on the fiscal commons problem for Swiss Cantons ☆

/pdf/local-autonomy-tax-morale-and-the-shadow-economy-spfv9nm40a.pdf

Christoph A. Schaltegger

Papers

Decentralized Taxation and the Size of Government: Evidence from Swiss State and Local Governments

Are fiscal adjustments less successful in decentralized governments

Local autonomy, tax morale, and the shadow economy

Do large cabinets favor large governments? Evidence on the fiscal commons problem for Swiss Cantons ☆

Local autonomy, tax morale, and the shadow economy