Pub Date : 2023-08-09DOI: 10.1177/10434631231194521
R. Mason, Marianne Mason
This paper develops a method to identify manipulation of custodial suspects who attempt to invoke the Miranda right to legal counsel during a custodial interrogation. The method, developed from a combination of framing theory and hypergame theory, first documents the point where custodial suspects’ preferences shift and second identifies the proximate cause of that shift using excerpts from legal cases. The method applies linguistic analysis within a hypergame framework to reveal rational behavior of custodial suspects who, despite owning an initial preference to invoke, waive their right to counsel without explicit pressure from police. The paper terms this shift in preferences “manipulation” adding the concept to hypergames and to the literature on noncooperative discursive exchanges.
{"title":"Reconsidering Miranda rights: Modeling strategic action during the invocation stage of a police interrogation","authors":"R. Mason, Marianne Mason","doi":"10.1177/10434631231194521","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/10434631231194521","url":null,"abstract":"This paper develops a method to identify manipulation of custodial suspects who attempt to invoke the Miranda right to legal counsel during a custodial interrogation. The method, developed from a combination of framing theory and hypergame theory, first documents the point where custodial suspects’ preferences shift and second identifies the proximate cause of that shift using excerpts from legal cases. The method applies linguistic analysis within a hypergame framework to reveal rational behavior of custodial suspects who, despite owning an initial preference to invoke, waive their right to counsel without explicit pressure from police. The paper terms this shift in preferences “manipulation” adding the concept to hypergames and to the literature on noncooperative discursive exchanges.","PeriodicalId":47079,"journal":{"name":"Rationality and Society","volume":"1 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.0,"publicationDate":"2023-08-09","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43631189","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-08-07DOI: 10.1177/10434631231193599
David A. Comerford, Angela Tufte-Hewett, Emma K. Bridger
Policymakers must ration healthcare. This necessity became salient during the COVID-19 pandemic. Some policymakers took that opportunity to reduce inequality of health outcomes at the expense of overall health gains. There is a literature that seeks to quantify the optimal trade-off between efficiency and equality in health outcomes: economists employ surveys to quantify the public’s preferred level of equity/efficiency trade-off. An odd result from these studies is that a non-trivial subsample of respondents choose to “level down” i.e., they choose as though an additional year of life delivers negative utility to society if it accrues to the most privileged. In an experiment of US and UK respondents ( n = 495), we compare equity/efficiency trade-offs across an abstract scenario along the lines of that presented in previous surveys versus a COVID-19 scenario, where it is made explicit that healthcare rationing is a real and current necessity occasioned by the pandemic. We find that preference for “levelling down” is reduced in the COVID-19 scenario relative to the abstract scenario. This result implies that, at least in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic, previous results have overestimated the public’s willingness to sacrifice overall gains in population health in order to reduce inequality of health outcomes.
{"title":"Public preferences to trade-off gains in total health for health equality: Discrepancies between an abstract scenario versus the real-world scenario presented by COVID-19","authors":"David A. Comerford, Angela Tufte-Hewett, Emma K. Bridger","doi":"10.1177/10434631231193599","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/10434631231193599","url":null,"abstract":"Policymakers must ration healthcare. This necessity became salient during the COVID-19 pandemic. Some policymakers took that opportunity to reduce inequality of health outcomes at the expense of overall health gains. There is a literature that seeks to quantify the optimal trade-off between efficiency and equality in health outcomes: economists employ surveys to quantify the public’s preferred level of equity/efficiency trade-off. An odd result from these studies is that a non-trivial subsample of respondents choose to “level down” i.e., they choose as though an additional year of life delivers negative utility to society if it accrues to the most privileged. In an experiment of US and UK respondents ( n = 495), we compare equity/efficiency trade-offs across an abstract scenario along the lines of that presented in previous surveys versus a COVID-19 scenario, where it is made explicit that healthcare rationing is a real and current necessity occasioned by the pandemic. We find that preference for “levelling down” is reduced in the COVID-19 scenario relative to the abstract scenario. This result implies that, at least in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic, previous results have overestimated the public’s willingness to sacrifice overall gains in population health in order to reduce inequality of health outcomes.","PeriodicalId":47079,"journal":{"name":"Rationality and Society","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.0,"publicationDate":"2023-08-07","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48745751","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-07-10DOI: 10.1177/10434631231186067
Bengt-Arne Wickström
Language policies for the purpose of (re)vitalizing a minority language are analyzed as a dynamic cost-effectiveness problem. We focus on policy measures with two types of cost structures: costs largely proportional to the number of beneficiaries (a rival measure) and costs independent of the number of beneficiaries (a non-rival measure). An example of the former is home nursing in the minority language and an example of the latter is street signs in the minority language. Both types of measures are assumed to contribute positively to the vitality of the minority language. We stylize the analysis, letting the rival measure have an immediate direct effect on the vitality and the non-rival one a protracted indirect effect on the language’s status. Two problems are addressed. Firstly, we study how the optimal combination of the two types of measure changes as the policy is implemented and the vitality of the minority language increases and show that a policy with fixed budget shares as a rule is sub-optimal. Secondly, we compare the opportune policy of a policy maker planning with a fixed time horizon with the optimal policy as the time horizon approaches infinity. The policy maker has incentives to plan for a sub-optimal policy with a reduction in the protracted measure for the whole planning period and making it equal to zero at the time horizon. All effects are illustrated in numeric examples.
{"title":"Optimal and politically opportune language policies for the vitality of minority languages","authors":"Bengt-Arne Wickström","doi":"10.1177/10434631231186067","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/10434631231186067","url":null,"abstract":"Language policies for the purpose of (re)vitalizing a minority language are analyzed as a dynamic cost-effectiveness problem. We focus on policy measures with two types of cost structures: costs largely proportional to the number of beneficiaries (a rival measure) and costs independent of the number of beneficiaries (a non-rival measure). An example of the former is home nursing in the minority language and an example of the latter is street signs in the minority language. Both types of measures are assumed to contribute positively to the vitality of the minority language. We stylize the analysis, letting the rival measure have an immediate direct effect on the vitality and the non-rival one a protracted indirect effect on the language’s status. Two problems are addressed. Firstly, we study how the optimal combination of the two types of measure changes as the policy is implemented and the vitality of the minority language increases and show that a policy with fixed budget shares as a rule is sub-optimal. Secondly, we compare the opportune policy of a policy maker planning with a fixed time horizon with the optimal policy as the time horizon approaches infinity. The policy maker has incentives to plan for a sub-optimal policy with a reduction in the protracted measure for the whole planning period and making it equal to zero at the time horizon. All effects are illustrated in numeric examples.","PeriodicalId":47079,"journal":{"name":"Rationality and Society","volume":"35 1","pages":"448 - 479"},"PeriodicalIF":1.0,"publicationDate":"2023-07-10","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45423136","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-05-15DOI: 10.1177/10434631231170342
J. Kas, R. Corten, A. van de Rijt
Buyers in online markets pay higher prices to sellers who promise a high-quality product in auctions of used goods, even though they cannot assess quality until after the sale. The principal argument offered in prior work is that reputation systems render sellers’ ‘cheap talk’ credible by allowing buyers to publicly rate sellers’ past honesty and sellers to build a reputation for being honest. We test this argument using both observational data from online auctions on eBay and an internet experiment. Strikingly, in both studies we find that unverifiable promises are trusted by buyers regardless of seller reputation or the presence of a reputation system, and sellers mostly refuse to take advantage. We conclude that the prevailing conception of markets in economic sociology as made possible by opportunism-curtailing institutions is “undersocialized”: Reputation systems may be used to identify more reliable providers of a product, but that they would be needed to prevent otherwise rampant deceit relies on a cynical assumption about human behavior that is empirically untenable.
{"title":"Trust, reputation, and the value of promises in online auctions of used goods","authors":"J. Kas, R. Corten, A. van de Rijt","doi":"10.1177/10434631231170342","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/10434631231170342","url":null,"abstract":"Buyers in online markets pay higher prices to sellers who promise a high-quality product in auctions of used goods, even though they cannot assess quality until after the sale. The principal argument offered in prior work is that reputation systems render sellers’ ‘cheap talk’ credible by allowing buyers to publicly rate sellers’ past honesty and sellers to build a reputation for being honest. We test this argument using both observational data from online auctions on eBay and an internet experiment. Strikingly, in both studies we find that unverifiable promises are trusted by buyers regardless of seller reputation or the presence of a reputation system, and sellers mostly refuse to take advantage. We conclude that the prevailing conception of markets in economic sociology as made possible by opportunism-curtailing institutions is “undersocialized”: Reputation systems may be used to identify more reliable providers of a product, but that they would be needed to prevent otherwise rampant deceit relies on a cynical assumption about human behavior that is empirically untenable.","PeriodicalId":47079,"journal":{"name":"Rationality and Society","volume":"35 1","pages":"387 - 419"},"PeriodicalIF":1.0,"publicationDate":"2023-05-15","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48465953","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-04-25DOI: 10.1177/10434631231172386
A. Collins, S. Drinkwater, C. Jennings
This paper presents a model to identify why, for some, the expression of liberal attitudes towards the LGBT population may be strategic rather than sincere. We show that the British population displays considerably more tolerant views towards homosexuality compared to the end of the 1980s. However, there is evidence that this has slowed in recent years, especially in areas that have experienced the highest levels of immigration, particularly from countries outside Europe. We explain these changes with reference to two effects that immigration/multiculturalism may have – direct cultural and indirect political effects – the latter manifested in selective liberalisation such that for some members of the in-group adopting a liberal attitude towards a group that was once the salient out-group (in this case the LGBT population) generates greater benefits for the in-group by creating disutility for the currently salient out-group (in this case culturally conservative religious minorities and immigrants). We explore both influences using survey data and find strong evidence for the first effect and suggestive support for the second effect.
{"title":"Selectively liberal? Social change and attitudes towards homosexual relations in the UK","authors":"A. Collins, S. Drinkwater, C. Jennings","doi":"10.1177/10434631231172386","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/10434631231172386","url":null,"abstract":"This paper presents a model to identify why, for some, the expression of liberal attitudes towards the LGBT population may be strategic rather than sincere. We show that the British population displays considerably more tolerant views towards homosexuality compared to the end of the 1980s. However, there is evidence that this has slowed in recent years, especially in areas that have experienced the highest levels of immigration, particularly from countries outside Europe. We explain these changes with reference to two effects that immigration/multiculturalism may have – direct cultural and indirect political effects – the latter manifested in selective liberalisation such that for some members of the in-group adopting a liberal attitude towards a group that was once the salient out-group (in this case the LGBT population) generates greater benefits for the in-group by creating disutility for the currently salient out-group (in this case culturally conservative religious minorities and immigrants). We explore both influences using survey data and find strong evidence for the first effect and suggestive support for the second effect.","PeriodicalId":47079,"journal":{"name":"Rationality and Society","volume":"35 1","pages":"420 - 447"},"PeriodicalIF":1.0,"publicationDate":"2023-04-25","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"49339321","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-04-18DOI: 10.1177/10434631231170460
Alberto Acerbi, P. Sacco
In this paper, we perform a text analysis of Adam Smith’s two books, the Theory of Moral Sentiments and the Wealth of Nations, to better characterize their highly disputed differences in terms of moral cognition. In particular, given that Smith’s ideas are still very cited and influential in the current scholarly debate on moral cognition, we are interested in understanding whether a text analysis would unveil a semantic structure that is in line with a dual process theory interpretation or, alternatively, with a neuro-emergent cognition one. We find that, despite that the intellectual koine in which Smith’s thought was originally embedded would be more in line with a dual process theory approach, the analysis reveals a better consonance with the neuro-emergent cognition approach. This opens new and interesting perspectives in future research on the moral cognition of market interactions in a Smithian tradition of thought.
{"title":"Self-Interest, prosociality, and the moral cognition of markets: A comparative analysis of the Theory of Moral Sentiments and the Wealth of Nations","authors":"Alberto Acerbi, P. Sacco","doi":"10.1177/10434631231170460","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/10434631231170460","url":null,"abstract":"In this paper, we perform a text analysis of Adam Smith’s two books, the Theory of Moral Sentiments and the Wealth of Nations, to better characterize their highly disputed differences in terms of moral cognition. In particular, given that Smith’s ideas are still very cited and influential in the current scholarly debate on moral cognition, we are interested in understanding whether a text analysis would unveil a semantic structure that is in line with a dual process theory interpretation or, alternatively, with a neuro-emergent cognition one. We find that, despite that the intellectual koine in which Smith’s thought was originally embedded would be more in line with a dual process theory approach, the analysis reveals a better consonance with the neuro-emergent cognition approach. This opens new and interesting perspectives in future research on the moral cognition of market interactions in a Smithian tradition of thought.","PeriodicalId":47079,"journal":{"name":"Rationality and Society","volume":"35 1","pages":"502 - 524"},"PeriodicalIF":1.0,"publicationDate":"2023-04-18","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46267039","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-03-30DOI: 10.1177/10434631231167738
Claire Mouminoux
This article focuses on why people may become dishonest when they are unfortunate. Studies have shown that dishonesty increases in unfortunate or unfair situations, suggesting that misfortune could be used as a self-serving justification. I investigate this effect by analyzing the effect of luck on participant dishonesty in a laboratory experiment. I also control for participants’ belief about others’ honesty in fortunate and unfortunate situations. Participants were more dishonest when they were unfortunate and expected other participants to be more dishonest in similarly unfortunate situations. The similarity of the effects of fortune on expected and actual behaviors suggests that this norm can facilitate self-serving justification. The frequency of dishonest behavior was associated with higher individuals’ beliefs in others’ dishonesty. This effect was particularly important for participants who believed that others would have been dishonest even in fortunate situations. It therefore appears that the justification depends both on being unfortunate and the fact that some people assume others do not behave honestly even when they are fortunate.
{"title":"Can misfortune lead to dishonesty?","authors":"Claire Mouminoux","doi":"10.1177/10434631231167738","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/10434631231167738","url":null,"abstract":"This article focuses on why people may become dishonest when they are unfortunate. Studies have shown that dishonesty increases in unfortunate or unfair situations, suggesting that misfortune could be used as a self-serving justification. I investigate this effect by analyzing the effect of luck on participant dishonesty in a laboratory experiment. I also control for participants’ belief about others’ honesty in fortunate and unfortunate situations. Participants were more dishonest when they were unfortunate and expected other participants to be more dishonest in similarly unfortunate situations. The similarity of the effects of fortune on expected and actual behaviors suggests that this norm can facilitate self-serving justification. The frequency of dishonest behavior was associated with higher individuals’ beliefs in others’ dishonesty. This effect was particularly important for participants who believed that others would have been dishonest even in fortunate situations. It therefore appears that the justification depends both on being unfortunate and the fact that some people assume others do not behave honestly even when they are fortunate.","PeriodicalId":47079,"journal":{"name":"Rationality and Society","volume":"35 1","pages":"293 - 310"},"PeriodicalIF":1.0,"publicationDate":"2023-03-30","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48886627","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-03-30DOI: 10.1177/10434631231168031
Tom Ahn, Paul Shea, Jeremy Sandford
Duels remained an important and surprisingly common means of settling disputes in the American South until after the Civil War. We examine two historical puzzles. First, why did dueling persist as a preferred tool to resolve conflicts in the South? Second, why did duelers use relatively inaccurate weapons when deadlier weapons were available? We construct a game theoretic model and conduct simulation exercises to find the following results. One, when the public views dueling as an appropriate means of mitigating the effects of libel, then it encourages socially desirable behavior such as reduced libel and more moderate behavior. Two, a sufficiently high mortality rate may deter libel without resulting in many dueling deaths. Third, if mortality rates are too high, dueling is no longer an effective institution. We compile a novel data set of newspaper accounts of duels from digitized archives to present empirical evidence that buttresses our insights from the model.
{"title":"Lethality and deterrence in affairs of honor: The case of the Antebellum U.S. South","authors":"Tom Ahn, Paul Shea, Jeremy Sandford","doi":"10.1177/10434631231168031","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/10434631231168031","url":null,"abstract":"Duels remained an important and surprisingly common means of settling disputes in the American South until after the Civil War. We examine two historical puzzles. First, why did dueling persist as a preferred tool to resolve conflicts in the South? Second, why did duelers use relatively inaccurate weapons when deadlier weapons were available? We construct a game theoretic model and conduct simulation exercises to find the following results. One, when the public views dueling as an appropriate means of mitigating the effects of libel, then it encourages socially desirable behavior such as reduced libel and more moderate behavior. Two, a sufficiently high mortality rate may deter libel without resulting in many dueling deaths. Third, if mortality rates are too high, dueling is no longer an effective institution. We compile a novel data set of newspaper accounts of duels from digitized archives to present empirical evidence that buttresses our insights from the model.","PeriodicalId":47079,"journal":{"name":"Rationality and Society","volume":"35 1","pages":"259 - 292"},"PeriodicalIF":1.0,"publicationDate":"2023-03-30","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44262379","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-03-12DOI: 10.1177/10434631231162212
Anton B. Andersson, C. Barone, Martin Hällsten
Relative risk aversion (RRA) models explain social class inequalities in education with risk avoidance, i.e., the risky choice assumption (RCA). This assumption concerns risks related to more ambitious educational choices and has been subject to little explicit scrutiny. In this paper, we test whether or not vocational education is a safety net that protects from labor market marginalization. We present an empirical assessment of upper-secondary track choices in Sweden, contrasting the vocational and the academic tracks for those not pursuing tertiary educational degrees. We use Swedish administrative data for all siblings born 1972–1980 and fit sibling fixed effects models netting out unobserved time-constant confounders. The only evidence in favor of the RCA is that when considering selection, graduates of the academic track without a tertiary degree initially face higher risks of not being stably employed and registered as unemployed in their early 20s than their counterparts from vocational education. However, the academic tracks significantly protect men from the threat of entering unskilled routine occupations. We conclude that the support for the RCA is scant at best.
{"title":"Are upper-secondary track decisions risky? Evidence from Sweden on the assumptions of risk-aversion models","authors":"Anton B. Andersson, C. Barone, Martin Hällsten","doi":"10.1177/10434631231162212","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/10434631231162212","url":null,"abstract":"Relative risk aversion (RRA) models explain social class inequalities in education with risk avoidance, i.e., the risky choice assumption (RCA). This assumption concerns risks related to more ambitious educational choices and has been subject to little explicit scrutiny. In this paper, we test whether or not vocational education is a safety net that protects from labor market marginalization. We present an empirical assessment of upper-secondary track choices in Sweden, contrasting the vocational and the academic tracks for those not pursuing tertiary educational degrees. We use Swedish administrative data for all siblings born 1972–1980 and fit sibling fixed effects models netting out unobserved time-constant confounders. The only evidence in favor of the RCA is that when considering selection, graduates of the academic track without a tertiary degree initially face higher risks of not being stably employed and registered as unemployed in their early 20s than their counterparts from vocational education. However, the academic tracks significantly protect men from the threat of entering unskilled routine occupations. We conclude that the support for the RCA is scant at best.","PeriodicalId":47079,"journal":{"name":"Rationality and Society","volume":"35 1","pages":"311 - 337"},"PeriodicalIF":1.0,"publicationDate":"2023-03-12","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"49410580","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-03-02DOI: 10.1177/10434631231160657
G. Benzecry, M. Shera
What can the fall of the Knights Templars teach us about medieval institutions? We highlight that the Templar’s annihilation results from the institutional shock of Pope Clement V’s decision to relocate the papacy from Italy to France. Prior to the relocation, an equilibrium persisted for more than a century where the Templars made loans to more powerful kings, with the reassurance that they were protected by the Church. The decision of Pope Clement V to relocate the papacy to France altered the Church’s relationship with the French Crown and imposed substantial constraints on the Church’s ability to safeguard one of its most important monastic orders, the Knights Templar. In a dynamic game scenario, we model Clement V and Philip IV’s decision making, emphasizing important choices that led to the Knights Templar’s demise. This historical episode illustrates the relationship between credible commitments and religious legitimacy, and the precarious and personal nature of pre-modern political institutions.
{"title":"The King’s Gambit: Rationalizing the fall of the Templars","authors":"G. Benzecry, M. Shera","doi":"10.1177/10434631231160657","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/10434631231160657","url":null,"abstract":"What can the fall of the Knights Templars teach us about medieval institutions? We highlight that the Templar’s annihilation results from the institutional shock of Pope Clement V’s decision to relocate the papacy from Italy to France. Prior to the relocation, an equilibrium persisted for more than a century where the Templars made loans to more powerful kings, with the reassurance that they were protected by the Church. The decision of Pope Clement V to relocate the papacy to France altered the Church’s relationship with the French Crown and imposed substantial constraints on the Church’s ability to safeguard one of its most important monastic orders, the Knights Templar. In a dynamic game scenario, we model Clement V and Philip IV’s decision making, emphasizing important choices that led to the Knights Templar’s demise. This historical episode illustrates the relationship between credible commitments and religious legitimacy, and the precarious and personal nature of pre-modern political institutions.","PeriodicalId":47079,"journal":{"name":"Rationality and Society","volume":"35 1","pages":"167 - 190"},"PeriodicalIF":1.0,"publicationDate":"2023-03-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47076483","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}