IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/h/pal/palchp/978-0-230-62006-3_5.html
   My bibliography  Save this book chapter

Theocracy, Natural Spiritual Monopoly, and Dictatorship

In: The Political Economy of Theocracy

Author

Listed:
  • Ronald Wintrobe
  • Fabio Padovano

Abstract

The chapter looks at the behavior of theocracy. We first look at religion, and the reasons why people adopt religious beliefs. In particular we try to understand why people tend to believe in one God. We look at two motivations, the desire for solidarity with a group with common beliefs, and the individualistic desire for an afterlife. Then we turn to dictatorship. Section 4.2 outlines Wintrobe’s (1990, 1998) model of dictatorship. Section 4.3 extends this model to explain the behavior of theocracy, a subject not considered previously. Extending a model developed to understand twentieth century dictatorships to understand the behavior of Calvin or the Papacy might strike the reader as outlandish, and we understand that skepticism. Nevertheless, we believe that the exercise yields some light. On the positive side, looking at a regime such as the Papal States that lasted more than 1,300 years provides a sample unmatched in modern times on which to discuss the implications of a theory of theocracy.

Suggested Citation

  • Ronald Wintrobe & Fabio Padovano, 2009. "Theocracy, Natural Spiritual Monopoly, and Dictatorship," Palgrave Macmillan Books, in: Mario Ferrero & Ronald Wintrobe (ed.), The Political Economy of Theocracy, chapter 4, pages 83-118, Palgrave Macmillan.
    • Handle: RePEc:pal:palchp:978-0-230-62006-3_5
    DOI: 10.1057/9780230620063_5
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    To our knowledge, this item is not available for download. To find whether it is available, there are three options:
    1. Check below whether another version of this item is available online.
    2. Check on the provider's web page whether it is in fact available.
    3. Perform a search for a similarly titled item that would be available.

    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:pal:palchp:978-0-230-62006-3_5. 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: Sonal Shukla or Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.palgrave.com .

    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.