Protecting Your Protection in a Violent World: the Link between an StatesÆs Organisation of Violence and its Constitutional Design

Shawn Humphrey ()
Additional contact information
Shawn Humphrey: California State University San Marcos, Department of Economics, San Marcos, CA, USA,

Homo Oeconomicus, 2004, vol. 21, 117-152

Abstract: This paper analyses one of the most critical problems in all of political economy, i.e. the dilemma of credible commitment. Economic prosperity requires the presence of a state powerful enough to establish and enforce property rights, yet not so powerful that its presence destabilises these rights. Humphrey demonstrates that solutions to this dilemma, advocated by the literature, are incomplete because they fail to acknowledge a stateÆs source of power - namely, its ability to organise violence. By modelling the state as a protection contract and using formal lines of reasoning, Humphrey concludes that a state can strike the efficiency-enhancing balance between power and restraint by a) organising a monopoly on violence and b) organising the decision to employ violence as a team decision.

Date: 2004
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

There are no downloads for this item, see the EconPapers FAQ for hints about obtaining it.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:hom:homoec:v:21:y:2004:p:117-152

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in Homo Oeconomicus from Institute of SocioEconomics Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by ().