IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/jeborg/v218y2024icp456-469.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

The religious origins of state capacity in Europe and China

Author

Listed:
  • Root, Hilton L.

Abstract

As conduits for the transmission of cultural values, networks of religion and state originating in premodern Europe and China contributed to the institutional roots of their respective development and continue to forge different economic trajectories. In Europe, a universalistic religious doctrine, ideologically and institutionally distinct from the state, led to important underlying differences in market structures and informal constraints. Legal protocols and innovations in social governance emerged whose origins lay in Church doctrine and Christian ethics. In China, Confucian teaching and an examination-based recruitment of officials strengthened centralized authority; but without a systemwide transmission of unifying prosocial bonds and values as a foundation for contract law, this cheap system of social control left the state encumbered with fiscally anemic finances. These differences preceded the Great Divergence and persisted long after it to produce in Europe greater civic and fiscal capacity, and in the end more state building.

Suggested Citation

  • Root, Hilton L., 2024. "The religious origins of state capacity in Europe and China," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 218(C), pages 456-469.
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:jeborg:v:218:y:2024:i:c:p:456-469
    DOI: 10.1016/j.jebo.2023.12.023
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0167268123004602
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1016/j.jebo.2023.12.023?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Timothy Besley & Torsten Persson, 2009. "The Origins of State Capacity: Property Rights, Taxation, and Politics," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 99(4), pages 1218-1244, September.
    2. Greif, Avner & Tabellini, Guido, 2017. "The clan and the corporation: Sustaining cooperation in China and Europe," Journal of Comparative Economics, Elsevier, vol. 45(1), pages 1-35.
    3. Akbari, Mahsa & Bahrami-Rad, Duman & Kimbrough, Erik O., 2019. "Kinship, fractionalization and corruption," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 166(C), pages 493-528.
    4. Tsai, Lily L., 2007. "Solidary Groups, Informal Accountability, and Local Public Goods Provision in Rural China," American Political Science Review, Cambridge University Press, vol. 101(2), pages 355-372, May.
    5. Zelin, Madeleine, 2009. "The firm in early Modern China," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 71(3), pages 623-637, September.
    6. Jonathan F Schulz, 2022. "Kin Networks and Institutional Development," The Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 132(647), pages 2578-2613.
    7. Deng, Kent, 2021. "Ultra-low tax regime in Imperial China, 1368-1911," Economic History Working Papers 108585, London School of Economics and Political Science, Department of Economic History.
    8. Deng, Kent, 2021. "Ultra-low tax regime in Imperial China, 1368-1911," LSE Research Online Documents on Economics 108585, London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. He, Quqiong & Pan, Ying & Sarangi, Sudipta, 2018. "Lineage-based heterogeneity and cooperative behavior in rural China," Journal of Comparative Economics, Elsevier, vol. 46(1), pages 248-269.
    2. Tang, Can & Zhao, Zhong, 2022. "Informal institution meets child development," MERIT Working Papers 2022-032, United Nations University - Maastricht Economic and Social Research Institute on Innovation and Technology (MERIT).
    3. Liu, Feifei & He, Xinming & Wang, Tao, 2023. "In the name of the family: The effect of CEO clan culture background on firm internationalization," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 161(C).
    4. Israel Eruchimovitch & Moti Michaeli & Assaf Sarid, 2024. "On the coevolution of individualism and institutions," Journal of Economic Growth, Springer, vol. 29(3), pages 391-432, September.
    5. Tang, Can & Zhao, Zhong, 2023. "Informal institution meets child development: Clan culture and child labor in China," Journal of Comparative Economics, Elsevier, vol. 51(1), pages 277-294.
    6. Roberto Ezcurra, 2024. "Kin networks and quality of government: a regional analysis," The Annals of Regional Science, Springer;Western Regional Science Association, vol. 73(4), pages 2117-2142, December.
    7. Ruochen Dai & Dilip Mookherjee & Kaivan Munshi & Xiaobo Zhang, 2019. "The Community Origins of Private Enterprise in China," Boston University - Department of Economics - The Institute for Economic Development Working Papers Series dp-320, Boston University - Department of Economics.
    8. Dai, R. & Mookherjee, D. & Munshi, K. & Zhang, X., 2018. "Community Networks and the Growth of Private Enterprise in China," Cambridge Working Papers in Economics 1850, Faculty of Economics, University of Cambridge.
    9. Feifei Lu & Zixuan Zang & Khalid Mehmood & Usman Ghani & Shuya Rao, 2025. "The Green Blueprint: Founder Clan Culture Imprints and Green Innovation in Chinese Family Firms," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 17(5), pages 1-20, February.
    10. Fan, Haichao & Li, Chang & Xue, Chang & Yu, Miaojie, 2023. "Clan culture and patterns of industrial specialization in China," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 207(C), pages 457-478.
    11. Ma, Debin & Rubin, Jared, 2019. "The Paradox of Power: Principal-agent problems and administrative capacity in Imperial China (and other absolutist regimes)," Journal of Comparative Economics, Elsevier, vol. 47(2), pages 277-294.
    12. Alberto Bisin & Jared Rubin & Avner Seror & Thierry Verdier, 2024. "Culture, institutions and the long divergence," Journal of Economic Growth, Springer, vol. 29(1), pages 1-40, March.
    13. Benjamin Enke, 2019. "Kinship, Cooperation, and the Evolution of Moral Systems," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 134(2), pages 953-1019.
    14. Bahrami-Rad, Duman, 2021. "Keeping it in the family: Female inheritance, inmarriage, and the status of women," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 153(C).
    15. Geng Niu & Yi Wang & Yang Zhou & Xu Gan, 2024. "Family ties and corporate tax avoidance," Journal of International Business Studies, Palgrave Macmillan;Academy of International Business, vol. 55(8), pages 976-996, October.
    16. Jiwei Qian & Tuan‐Hwee Sng, 2021. "The state in Chinese economic history," Australian Economic History Review, Economic History Society of Australia and New Zealand, vol. 61(3), pages 359-395, November.
    17. Alessandra Cassar & Alejandrina Cristia & Pauline Grosjean & Sarah Walker, 2022. "It Makes a Village: Allomaternal Care and Prosociality," Discussion Papers 2022-06, School of Economics, The University of New South Wales.
    18. Liu, Weiping & Henneberry, Shida Rastegari & Ni, Jiupai & Radmehr, Riza & Wei, Chaofu, 2019. "Socio-cultural roots of rural settlement dispersion in Sichuan Basin: The perspective of Chinese lineage," Land Use Policy, Elsevier, vol. 88(C).
    19. Lixia Wang & Haiyun Liu, 2024. "Included or Excluded? When Foreign Direct Investment Meets the Confucian Clan in China," Journal of the Knowledge Economy, Springer;Portland International Center for Management of Engineering and Technology (PICMET), vol. 15(4), pages 17232-17255, December.
    20. Siwan Anderson & Chris Bidner, 2021. "An Institutional Perspective on the Economics of the Family," Discussion Papers dp21-14, Department of Economics, Simon Fraser University.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eee:jeborg:v:218:y:2024:i:c:p:456-469. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.elsevier.com/locate/jebo .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.