Title
Law without the State: Legal Attributes and the Coordination of Decentralized Collective Punishment
Abstract
Most social scientists take for granted that law is defined by the presence of a centralized authority capable of exacting coercive penalties for violations of legal rules. Moreover, the existing approach to analyzing law in economics and positive political theory works with a very thin concept of law that does not account for the distinctive attributes of legal order as compared with other forms of social order. Drawing on a model developed elsewhere, we reinterpret key case studies to demonstrate how a theoretically informed approach illuminates questions about emergence, stability, and function of law in supporting economic and democratic growth.
Disciplines
Jurisprudence | Law | Law and Economics | Law and Society | Legal History, Theory and Process | Politics | Public Law and Legal Theory
Date of this Version
5-14-2013
Recommended Citation
Gillian K. Hadfield and Barry R. Weingast, "Law without the State: Legal Attributes and the Coordination of Decentralized Collective Punishment" (May 2013). University of Southern California Law and Economics Working Paper Series. Working Paper 168.
http://law.bepress.com/usclwps-lewps/168
Included in
Jurisprudence Commons, Law and Economics Commons, Law and Society Commons, Legal History, Theory and Process Commons, Politics Commons, Public Law and Legal Theory Commons