Post by Muhammad Ibn Abdullah Al-Hasan on Oct 3, 2020 4:26:15 GMT 10
In the name of God Most Gracious, Most Merciful
The political system consists of
U(w,e,θ ) = w− c(e,θ )
The cost of effort function c(e, θ) has the following specifications:
In words, the ruler’s cost of effort is increasing and strictly convex in the effort
level. Higher values of θ denote more productive states of nature in the sense that both
total and marginal cost of effort are lower when θ is higher. For simplicity, we assume
that θ can take on only one of two values, θH > θL, with Prob (θH) = P. The ruler has a
reservation utility level U°. In addition, in any state of nature, when he is a clergyman,
the ruler can secure private benefits to the amount K (or, his effort cost is higher – his
productivity lower – by the amount K): the church must take this into account when
designing a contract that satisfies the participation constraint.
In this setup, under any regime, effort itself is always observable, so the contract
can explicitly state the effort level required. However, an efficient contract that
maximizes the principal’s payoff must make the level of effort responsive to the cost
incurred by the ruler, and hence to the realization of θ.
3. Theocracy
As explained above, a theocracy makes the state of nature observable by the
church but is liable to be incompetent or corrupt. Thus, a complete information contract
directly specifies effort level and wage contingent on each realization of θ and ensures
the cleric an expected utility that is no lower than his reservation utility plus his private
benefits from corruption (or his additional effort cost). With only two states of nature,
the church solves the following problem:
Islamic theocracies The history of Islam (Lapidus, 1988; Berkey, 2003) offers a mixed picture that includes a variant of the conservative type of theocracy – the Caliphate, a number of revolutionary theocracies, and a whole range of secular regimes beholden to the religion. These differences criss-cross the sectarian differences within Islam: among the revolutionary regimes the Iranians are Shi’ite, the Taleban of Afghanistan and the Mahdi of the Sudan in the 1880’s are Sunni, the Assassins of the 12th century were a splinter group from mainline Shi’a (the Ismaili Nizari); likewise, in past centuries there were both Sunni and Shi’a Caliphates ruling over different parts of the Muslim world; and the “secular” regimes born of jihad range from Saudi Arabia to Palestine’s Hamas. The key to understanding the peculiar institution of the Caliphate is the Koranic Law, or shari’a. Unlike any other worldly ruler, the Caliph is supposed to be there to protect and promote the umma, the universal Muslim community, and as far as domestic policies are concerned, this protection boils down to the enforcing of the Law, whose administration is properly entrusted to a religious class – the ulemas. To gain
22perspective, it is useful to contrast the Muslim Caliphate with a superficially similar political institution: the Byzantine empire (Runciman, 1977). In the tradition of the first Christian Roman emperor Constantine, as theorized by church apologists, the Byzantine monarch always styled himself as the protector of the Christian empire, or the vicarious representative of God on earth, and was so anointed and upheld by the church. True to the linguistic roots of the word, they called the empire a theocracy, and this label, confusingly, is still sometimes used by modern historians. But law-making, law-enforcement, and the court system were completely secular and based on the tradition of Roman law, as were the officials running the legal machinery. Consequently, the final fall of Constantinople to the Ottomans did not involve the end of the Orthodox church, at least not in Greece. In the Muslim world the institution of the Caliphate soon became entangled with the issue of the proper line of succession to the Prophet – a constant source of sectarian dispute and schism. But even when power fell into the hands of foreign invaders like the Ottomans, who could lay no claims to legitimate succession, they styled themselves as protectors of the faith, so that the collapse of the empire in 1918 marked the end of an era – as Osama Bin Laden reminded the world after 9/11. Only with the greatest difficulty could the Ottomans take a few sections of the law out of shari’a and into civil law. When the institutional protector of the faith fails or wanes, the fall-back option is jihad, or the holy war. While this was often used against infidels at the frontiers of the umma or as a weapon of anti-colonial struggle (Dale, 1988), time and again it has been called on against lapsed or corrupt Muslim groups or rulers, and here enters the revolutionary theocracy. Jihad has been used in this way since the Middle Ages, for example by the Assassins (Lewis, 1967), and then by charismatic, prophetic figures like the Mahdi of Sudan (Lewy, 1974, ch. 8) and those of several parts of sub-Saharan West Africa in the 19th century. The Saudis, allied with the rigorist Wahabi sect, built up their Arabian kingdom through jihad from the 18th to the early 20th century; they did not build a full-fledged theocracy because, in the absence of a Mahdi or prophet, the traditional organization of Sunni Islam, unlike that of other sects, lacks the hierarchical structure required to fully replace the secular ruler. This disability of the Sunnis has rapidly been overcome in the 20th century as the intrusion of Western rule and the rise to power of secular, nationalist regimes in the Muslim world sparked the rise and spread of fundamentalist Islamic revolutionary organizations patterned after Western political parties, from Egypt to Afghanistan, from Iraq to Somalia, from Algeria to Palestine, from Lebanon to Sudan.
The political system consists of
U(w,e,θ ) = w− c(e,θ )
The cost of effort function c(e, θ) has the following specifications:
In words, the ruler’s cost of effort is increasing and strictly convex in the effort
level. Higher values of θ denote more productive states of nature in the sense that both
total and marginal cost of effort are lower when θ is higher. For simplicity, we assume
that θ can take on only one of two values, θH > θL, with Prob (θH) = P. The ruler has a
reservation utility level U°. In addition, in any state of nature, when he is a clergyman,
the ruler can secure private benefits to the amount K (or, his effort cost is higher – his
productivity lower – by the amount K): the church must take this into account when
designing a contract that satisfies the participation constraint.
In this setup, under any regime, effort itself is always observable, so the contract
can explicitly state the effort level required. However, an efficient contract that
maximizes the principal’s payoff must make the level of effort responsive to the cost
incurred by the ruler, and hence to the realization of θ.
3. Theocracy
As explained above, a theocracy makes the state of nature observable by the
church but is liable to be incompetent or corrupt. Thus, a complete information contract
directly specifies effort level and wage contingent on each realization of θ and ensures
the cleric an expected utility that is no lower than his reservation utility plus his private
benefits from corruption (or his additional effort cost). With only two states of nature,
the church solves the following problem:
Islamic theocracies The history of Islam (Lapidus, 1988; Berkey, 2003) offers a mixed picture that includes a variant of the conservative type of theocracy – the Caliphate, a number of revolutionary theocracies, and a whole range of secular regimes beholden to the religion. These differences criss-cross the sectarian differences within Islam: among the revolutionary regimes the Iranians are Shi’ite, the Taleban of Afghanistan and the Mahdi of the Sudan in the 1880’s are Sunni, the Assassins of the 12th century were a splinter group from mainline Shi’a (the Ismaili Nizari); likewise, in past centuries there were both Sunni and Shi’a Caliphates ruling over different parts of the Muslim world; and the “secular” regimes born of jihad range from Saudi Arabia to Palestine’s Hamas. The key to understanding the peculiar institution of the Caliphate is the Koranic Law, or shari’a. Unlike any other worldly ruler, the Caliph is supposed to be there to protect and promote the umma, the universal Muslim community, and as far as domestic policies are concerned, this protection boils down to the enforcing of the Law, whose administration is properly entrusted to a religious class – the ulemas. To gain
22perspective, it is useful to contrast the Muslim Caliphate with a superficially similar political institution: the Byzantine empire (Runciman, 1977). In the tradition of the first Christian Roman emperor Constantine, as theorized by church apologists, the Byzantine monarch always styled himself as the protector of the Christian empire, or the vicarious representative of God on earth, and was so anointed and upheld by the church. True to the linguistic roots of the word, they called the empire a theocracy, and this label, confusingly, is still sometimes used by modern historians. But law-making, law-enforcement, and the court system were completely secular and based on the tradition of Roman law, as were the officials running the legal machinery. Consequently, the final fall of Constantinople to the Ottomans did not involve the end of the Orthodox church, at least not in Greece. In the Muslim world the institution of the Caliphate soon became entangled with the issue of the proper line of succession to the Prophet – a constant source of sectarian dispute and schism. But even when power fell into the hands of foreign invaders like the Ottomans, who could lay no claims to legitimate succession, they styled themselves as protectors of the faith, so that the collapse of the empire in 1918 marked the end of an era – as Osama Bin Laden reminded the world after 9/11. Only with the greatest difficulty could the Ottomans take a few sections of the law out of shari’a and into civil law. When the institutional protector of the faith fails or wanes, the fall-back option is jihad, or the holy war. While this was often used against infidels at the frontiers of the umma or as a weapon of anti-colonial struggle (Dale, 1988), time and again it has been called on against lapsed or corrupt Muslim groups or rulers, and here enters the revolutionary theocracy. Jihad has been used in this way since the Middle Ages, for example by the Assassins (Lewis, 1967), and then by charismatic, prophetic figures like the Mahdi of Sudan (Lewy, 1974, ch. 8) and those of several parts of sub-Saharan West Africa in the 19th century. The Saudis, allied with the rigorist Wahabi sect, built up their Arabian kingdom through jihad from the 18th to the early 20th century; they did not build a full-fledged theocracy because, in the absence of a Mahdi or prophet, the traditional organization of Sunni Islam, unlike that of other sects, lacks the hierarchical structure required to fully replace the secular ruler. This disability of the Sunnis has rapidly been overcome in the 20th century as the intrusion of Western rule and the rise to power of secular, nationalist regimes in the Muslim world sparked the rise and spread of fundamentalist Islamic revolutionary organizations patterned after Western political parties, from Egypt to Afghanistan, from Iraq to Somalia, from Algeria to Palestine, from Lebanon to Sudan.