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What is Law? A Coordination Account of the Characteristics of Legal Order
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In this article, a rational choice model of legal order in an environment that relies exclusively on decentralized enforcement is presented, and the authors demonstrate that several features ordinarily associated with legal order such as generality, impersonality, open process and stability can be explained by the incentive and coordination problems facing collective punishment.Abstract:
Legal philosophers have long debated the question, what is law? But few in social science have attempted to explain the phenomenon of legal order. In this paper we build a rational choice model of legal order in an environment that relies exclusively on decentralized enforcement, such as we find in human societies prior to the emergence of the nation state and in many modern settings. We begin with a simple set of axioms about what counts as legal order. We then demonstrate that we can support an equilibrium in which wrongful behavior is effectively deterred by exclusively decentralized enforcement, specifically collective punishment. Equilibrium is achieved by an institution that supplies a common logic for classifying behavior as wrongful or not. We demonstrate that several features ordinarily associated with legal order such as generality, impersonality, open process and stability can be explained by the incentive and coordination problems facing collective punishment.read more
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The Civil Law Tradition. An Introduction to the Legal Systems of Western Europe and Latin America.
TL;DR: In this article, a concise history and analysis of the civil law tradition is presented for the general reader and students of law, which is dominant in most of Europe, all of Latin America, and many parts of Asia, Africa, and the Middle East.
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Legal Institutionalism: Capitalism and the Constitutive Role of Law
TL;DR: The role of law in constituting the economic institutions of capitalism is discussed in this article, where it is argued that law is also a key institution for overcoming contracting uncertainties and is furthermore a part of the power structure of society.
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Law without the State: Legal Attributes and the Coordination of Decentralized Collective Punishment
Abstract: Most social scientists take for granted that law is defined by the presence of a centralized authority capable of exacting coercive penalties for violations of legal rules. Moreover, the existing approach to analyzing law in economics and positive political theory works with a very thin concept of law that does not account for the distinctive attributes of legal order as compared with other forms of social order. Drawing on a model developed elsewhere, we reinterpret key case studies to demonstrate how a theoretically informed approach illuminates questions about the emergence, stability, and function of law in supporting economic and democratic growth.
Journal ArticleDOI
Microfoundations of the Rule of Law
TL;DR: In this article, the authors canvas literature in the social sciences to identify the themes and gaps in the existing accounts and conclude that this literature has failed to produce a microfoundational account of the phenomenon of legal order.
References
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The Evolution of Cooperation
TL;DR: In this paper, a model based on the concept of an evolutionarily stable strategy in the context of the Prisoner's Dilemma game was developed for cooperation in organisms, and the results of a computer tournament showed how cooperation based on reciprocity can get started in an asocial world, can thrive while interacting with a wide range of other strategies, and can resist invasion once fully established.
Posted Content
Law and Finance
Rafael La Porta,Rafael La Porta,Florencio Lopez de Silanes,Florencio Lopez de Silanes,Andrei Shleifer,Andrei Shleifer,Robert W. Vishny,Robert W. Vishny +7 more
TL;DR: This paper examined legal rules covering protection of corporate shareholders and creditors, the origin of these rules, and the quality of their enforcement in 49 countries and found that common law countries generally have the best, and French civil law countries the worst, legal protections of investors.
Journal ArticleDOI
The Evolution of Cooperation
R. B. Greene,Robert Axelrod +1 more
TL;DR: A model is developed based on the concept of an evolutionarily stable strategy in the context of the Prisoner's Dilemma game to show how cooperation based on reciprocity can get started in an asocial world, can thrive while interacting with a wide range of other strategies, and can resist invasion once fully established.
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A Treatise of Human Nature
TL;DR: Hume's early years and education is described in a treatise of human nature as discussed by the authors. But it is not a complete account of the early years of his life and education.
Journal ArticleDOI
Crime and Punishment: An Economic Approach
TL;DR: In fact, some common properties are shared by practically all legislation, and these properties form the subject matter of this essay as discussed by the authors, which is the basis for this essay. But, in spite of such diversity, some commonsense properties are not shared.