Missing Discussions: Institutional Constraints in the Islamic Political Tradition

A. Arda Gitmez, James Robinson and Mehdi Shadmehr

No 30916, NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc

Abstract: Institutional constraints to counter potential abuses in the use of political power have been viewed as essential to well functioning political institutions and good public policy outcomes in the Western World since the time of ancient Greece. A sophisticated intellectual tradition emerged to justify the need for such constraints. In this paper we identify a new puzzle: such an intellectual tradition did not exist in the Islamic world, even if the potential for abuse was recognized. We develop a model to explain why such ideas might not have emerged. We argue that this is due to the nature of Islamic law (the Sharia) being far more encompassing than Western law, making it easier for citizens to identify abuses of power and use collective action to discipline them. We study how the relative homogeneity and solidarity of Islamic society fortified this logic.

JEL-codes: D70 D72 D78 H11 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2023-02
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cdm and nep-pol
Note: POL
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.nber.org/papers/w30916.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Working Paper: Missing Discussions: Institutional Constraints in the Islamic Political Tradition (2024)
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:nbr:nberwo:30916

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
http://www.nber.org/papers/w30916

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc National Bureau of Economic Research, 1050 Massachusetts Avenue Cambridge, MA 02138, U.S.A.. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by ().