IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/mes/jeciss/v46y2012i3p705-728.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Religious Identity, Informal Institutions, and the Nation-States of the Near East

Author

Listed:
  • Mark Tomass

Abstract

This paper uses the Near East as a case study to describe how religious identity became a source of preference formation and a cause of social cleavage. It formulates the concepts of identity-sharing groups and resource-sharing groups to bridge between religious identity's social-psychological aspects and its socioeconomic effects. The paper then argues that social cleavages among religious identity-sharing groups generated informal institutions that are incompatible with the abstract formal institutions of the nation-states of Iraq, Lebanon, and Syria. That incompatibility hobbles efforts of formal state institutions to promote economic development, and instead restrains economic growth by intensifying existing conflicts among groups. It suggests that a state that could promote economic development would be the one that recognizes and supports the informal, localized institutions and allows those of them with common features to evolve into abstract formal institutions.

Suggested Citation

  • Mark Tomass, 2012. "Religious Identity, Informal Institutions, and the Nation-States of the Near East," Journal of Economic Issues, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 46(3), pages 705-728.
  • Handle: RePEc:mes:jeciss:v:46:y:2012:i:3:p:705-728
    DOI: 10.2753/JEI0021-3624460306
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.2753/JEI0021-3624460306
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.2753/JEI0021-3624460306?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.

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Duarte N. Leite & Sandra T. Silva & Oscar Afonso, 2014. "Institutions, Economics And The Development Quest," Journal of Economic Surveys, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 28(3), pages 491-515, July.
    2. Kun Liu & Kun Fu & Jing Yu Yang & Ahmad Al Asady, 2023. "A System Justification Theory of Entrepreneurial Attitudinal Change During a Crisis," Entrepreneurship Theory and Practice, , vol. 47(3), pages 893-923, May.
    3. Dina M. Abdelzaher & Amir Abdelzaher, 2017. "Beyond Environmental Regulations: Exploring the Potential of “Eco-Islam” in Boosting Environmental Ethics Within SMEs in Arab Markets," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 145(2), pages 357-371, October.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    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:mes:jeciss:v:46:y:2012:i:3:p:705-728. 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.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using 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: Chris Longhurst (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.tandfonline.com/MJEI20 .

    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.