Legal Centralization and the Birth of the Secular State

Noel Johnson () and Mark Koyama

MPRA Paper from University Library of Munich, Germany

Abstract: This paper investigates the relationship between the historical process of legal centralization and increased religious toleration by the state. We develop a model in which legal centralization leads to the criminalization of the religious beliefs of a large proportion of the population. This process initially leads to increased persecution, but, because these persecutions are costly, it eventually causes the state to broaden the standards of orthodox belief and move toward religious toleration. We compare the results of the model with historical evidence drawn from two important cases in which religious diversity and state centralization collided in France: the Albigensian crusades of the thirteenth century and the rise of Protestant belief in the sixteenth century. Both instances sup- port our central claim that the secularization of western European state institutions during the early-modern period was driven by the costs of imposing a common set of legal standards on religiously diverse populations.

Keywords: State Capacity; Religion; Secularization; Heresy; Legal Capacity; France (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: H10 K42 N43 P48 Z12 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2012-08-22
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-his and nep-hpe
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

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Journal Article: Legal centralization and the birth of the secular state (2013)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:pra:mprapa:40887

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