Religion and Tradition in Conflict Experimentally Testing the Power of Social Norms to Invalidate Religious Law

Christoph Engel, Klaus Heine and Shaheen Naseer
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Klaus Heine: Erasmus University Rotterdam (EUR), Erasmus School of Law
Shaheen Naseer: Lahore School of Economics

No 2021_13, Discussion Paper Series of the Max Planck Institute for Research on Collective Goods from Max Planck Institute for Research on Collective Goods

Abstract: Often, religion, law and tradition co-evolve. Religious precepts shape social practice, which translates into law. Yet this harmony is not universal. The Sharia guarantees daughters their share in the family estate. Yet in Pakistan, this rule clashes with tradition. While the country was jointly governed with (mainly Hindu) India, it had been customary that the entire estate goes to the eldest son. Combining a survey with a lab in the field experiment, we show that this is still the descriptive and the injunctive norm. Yet participants have a strong preference for the conflict to be dissolved by legislative intervention.

Keywords: religious norm; legal rule; descriptive and injunctive social norm; inheritance; gender discrimination; Sharia; experiment (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C91 C93 D01 D15 D31 D63 J16 K00 O12 O53 R22 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021-05-10
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cbe, nep-evo, nep-exp, nep-law and nep-soc
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