Moralizing Gods and Armed Conflict

Skali, Ahmed (2017): Moralizing Gods and Armed Conflict. Forthcoming in: Journal of Economic Psychology

Abstract

This study documents a robust empirical pattern between moralizing gods, which prescribe fixed laws of morality, and conflict prevalence and fatalities, using spatially referenced data for Africa on contemporary conflicts and ancestral belief systems of individual ethnic groups prior to European contact. Moralizing gods are found to significantly increase conflict prevalence and casualties at the local level. The identification strategy draws on the evolutionary psychology roots of moralizing gods as a solution to the collective action problem in pre-modern societies. A one standard deviation increase in the likelihood of emergence of a moralizing god increases casualties by 18 to 36% and conflict prevalence by 4 to 8% approximately.

• Item Type: MPRA Paper
• Language: English
• Keywords: Conflict; Commitment Problem; Religion; Africa; Cooperation
• Subjects: D - Microeconomics > D7 - Analysis of Collective Decision-Making > D74 - Conflict ; Conflict Resolution ; Alliances ; Revolutions; O - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth > O5 - Economywide Country Studies > O55 - Africa; Z - Other Special Topics > Z1 - Cultural Economics ; Economic Sociology ; Economic Anthropology > Z12 - Religion

References

Akcomak, I. S., Webbink, D., & ter Weel, B. (2015). Why Did the Netherlands Develop So Early? The Legacy of the Brethren of the Common Life. The Economic Journal, n/a-n/a.

Alesina, A., Giuliano, P., & Nunn, N. (2011). Fertility and the Plough. American Economic Review, 101(3), 499-503.

Alesina, A., Giuliano, P., & Nunn, N. (2013). On the Origins of Gender Roles: Women and the Plough. The Quarterly Journal of Economics, 128(2), 469-530.

Almer, C., Laurent-Lucchetti, J., & Oechslin, M. (2014). Agricultural Shocks and Riots: A Disaggregated Analysis. Available at SSRN: http://ssrn.com/abstract=1952606

Arland, T. (1985). Reciprocal Influences of Family and Religion in a Changing World. Journal of Marriage and Family, 47(2), 381-394.

Arrunada, B. (2010). Protestants and Catholics: Similar Work Ethic, Different Social Ethic. The Economic Journal, 120(547), 890-918.

Ashraf, Q., & Galor, O. (2013). The 'Out of Africa' Hypothesis, Human Genetic Diversity, and Comparative Economic Development. American Economic Review, 103(1), 1-46.

Atran, S., & Ginges, J. (2012). Religious and Sacred Imperatives in Human Conflict. Science, 336(6083), 855-857.

Augenblick, N., Cunha, J.M., Dal Bo, E., & Rao, J.M. (2012). The Economics of Faith: Using an Apocalyptic Prophecy to Elicit Religious Beliefs in the Field. NBER Working Paper 18641.

Baliga, S., & Sjostrom, T. (2004). Arms Races and Negotiations. The Review of Economic Studies, 71(2), 351-369.

Basedau, M., Pfeiffer, B., & Vullers, J. (2016). Bad Religion? Religion, Collective Action, and the Onset of Armed Conflict in Developing Countries. Journal of Conflict Resolution, 60(2), 226-255.

Bates, R. H. (2001). Prosperity and Violence: The Political Economy of Development. New York and London: Norton.

Bates, R. H. (2008). When Things Fell Apart: State Failure in Late-Century Africa. Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press.

Becker, S. O., & Woessmann, L. (2009). Was Weber Wrong? A Human Capital Theory of Protestant Economic History. The Quarterly Journal of Economics, 124(2), 531-596.

BenYishay, A., Grosjean, P., & Vecci, J. (2015). The Fish is the Friend of Matriliny: Reef Density Predicts Matrilineal Inheritance. UNSW Business School Research Paper No. 2015-21. Available at SSRN: http://ssrn.com/abstract=2658484

Besley, T., & Reynal-Querol, M. (2014). The Legacy of Historical Conflict: Evidence from Africa. American Political Science Review, 108(02), 319-336.

Blattman, C., & Miguel, E. (2010). Civil War. Journal of Economic Literature, 48(1), 3-57.

Bohara, A. K., Mitchell, N. J., & Nepal, M. (2006). Opportunity, Democracy, and the Exchange of Political Violence: A Subnational Analysis of Conflict in Nepal. Journal of Conflict Resolution, 50(1), 108-128.

Botero, C. A., Gardner, B., Kirby, K. R., Bulbulia, J., Gavin, M. C., & Gray, R. D. (2014). The Ecology of Religious Beliefs. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 111(47), 16784-16789.

Botticini, M., & Eckstein, Z. (2007). From Farmers to Merchants, Conversions and Diaspora: Human Capital and Jewish History. Journal of the European Economic Association, 5(5), 885-926.

Bourrat, P., Atkinson, Q. D., & Dunbar, R. I. M. (2011). Supernatural Punishment and Individual Social Compliance Across Cultures. Religion, Brain & Behavior, 1(2), 119-134.

Bushman, B. J., Ridge, R. D., Das, E., Key, C. W., & Busath, G. L. (2007). When God Sanctions Killing: Effect of Scriptural Violence on Aggression. Psychological Science, 18(3), 204-207.

Collier, P., Elliott, V. L., Hegre, H., Hoeffler, A., Reynal-Querol, M., & Sambanis, N. (2003). Breaking the Conflict Trap: Civil War and Development Policy. Washington, DC: World Bank.

Conley, T. G. (1999). GMM Estimation with Cross Sectional Dependence. Journal of Econometrics, 92(1), 1-45.

Couttenier, M., & Soubeyran, R. (2014). Drought and Civil War In Sub-Saharan Africa. The Economic Journal, 124(575), 201-244.

Croicu, M., & Sundberg, S. (2015). UCDP GED Codebook version 2.0. Department of Peace and Conflict Research, Uppsala University.

Dal Bo, E., & Powell, R. (2009). A Model of Spoils Politics. American Journal of Political Science, 53(1), 207-222.

Diamond, J. M. (1997). Guns, Germs, and Steel: the Fates of Human Societies. New York: Norton.

Dittmar, J. E. (2011). Information Technology and Economic Change: The Impact of The Printing Press. The Quarterly Journal of Economics, 126(3), 1133-1172.

Dube, O., & Vargas, J. F. (2013). Commodity Price Shocks and Civil Conflict: Evidence from Colombia. The Review of Economic Studies, 80(4), 1384-1421.

Fearon, J. D. (1995). Rationalist Explanations forWar. International Organization, 49(3), 379-414.

Fearon, J. D., & Laitin, D. D. (2003). Ethnicity, Insurgency, and Civil War. American Political Science Review, 97(01), 75-90.

Garfunkel, M. R., & Skaperdas, S. (2000). Conflict without Misperceptions or Incomplete Information: How the Future Matters. Journal of Conflict Resolution, 44(6), 793-807.

Gennaioli, N., & Rainer, I. (2007). The Modern Impact of Precolonial Centralization in Africa. Journal of Economic Growth, 12(3), 185-234.

Gorodnichenko, Y., & Roland, G. (2011). Which Dimensions of Culture Matter for Long-Run Growth? American Economic Review, 101(3), 492-498.

Harari, M., & La Ferrara, E. (2013). Conflict, Climate and Cells: A Disaggregated Analysis. CEPR Discussion Paper No. DP9277. Available at SSRN: http://ssrn.com/abstract=2210247

Hassner, R. E. (2003). To Halve and to Hold": Conflicts over Sacred Space and the Problem of Indivisibility. Security Studies, 12(4), 1-33.

Herbst, J. I. (2000). States and Power in Africa: Comparative Lessons in Authority and Control. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

Hodler, R., & Raschky, P. A. (2014). Economic Shocks and Civil Conflict at the Regional Level. Economics Letters, 124(3), 530-533.

Isaacs, M. (2016). Sacred Violence or Strategic Faith? Disentangling the Relationship between Religion and Violence in Armed Conflict. Journal of Peace Research, 53(2), 211-225.

Johnson, D. D. P. (2005). God's Punishment and Public Goods. Human Nature, 16(4), 410-446.

Joshua Project (n. d.). www.joshuaproject.net. Accessed January 2016.

Laurin, K., Shariff, A. F., Henrich, J., & Kay, A. C. (2012). Outsourcing Punishment to God: Beliefs in Divine Control Reduce Earthly Punishment. Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences.

Letendre, K., Fincher, C. L., & Thornhill, R. (2010). Does Infectious Disease Cause Global Variation in the Frequency of Intrastate Armed Conflict and Civil War? Biological Reviews of the Cambridge Philosophical Society, 85(3), 669-683.

Madsen, J. B., Raschky, P. A., & Skali, A. (2015). Does Democracy Drive Income in the World, 1500-2000? European Economic Review, 78(0), 175-195.

McNamara, R. A., Norenzayan, A., & Henrich, J. (2016). Supernatural Punishment, In-group Biases, and Material Insecurity: Experiments and Ethnography from Yasawa, Fiji. Religion, Brain & Behavior, 6(1), 34-55.

Michalopoulos, S. (2012). The Origins of Ethnolinguistic Diversity. American Economic Review, 102(4), 1508-1539.

Michalopoulos, S., Naghavi, A., & Prarolo, G. (2016). Islam, inequality and Pre-Industrial Comparative Development. Journal of Development Economics, 120, 86-98.

Michalopoulos, S., & Papaioannou, E. (2016). The Long-Run Effects of the Scramble for Africa. American Economic Review, 106(7): 1-49.

Michalopoulos, S., & Papaioannou, E. (2013). Pre-Colonial Ethnic Institutions and Contemporary African Development. Econometrica, 81(1), 113-152.

Murdock, G. P. (1959). Human Relations Area Files. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.

Murdock, G. P. (1967). Ethnographic Atlas. Pittsburgh, PA: University of Pittsburgh Press.

Murdock, G. P., & White, D. R. (2006). Standard Cross-Cultural Sample: on-line edition.

Norenzayan, A. (2013). Big Gods: How Religion Transformed Cooperation and Conflict. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

Norenzayan, A., & Shariff, A. F. (2008). The Origin and Evolution of Religious Prosociality. Science, 322(5898), 58-62.

Nunn, N. (2008). The Long-term Effects of Africa's Slave Trades. The Quarterly Journal of Economics, 123(1), 139-176.

Nunn, N., & Wantchekon, L. (2011). The Slave Trade and the Origins of Mistrust in Africa. American Economic Review, 101(7), 3221-3252.

Olson, M. (1965). The Logic of Collective Action. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

Peoples, H. C., & Marlowe, F. W. (2012). Subsistence and the Evolution of Religion. Human Nature, 23(3), 253-269.

Phillips, C., & Axelrod, A. (2005). Encyclopedia of Wars: A-F: Facts On File.

Powell, R. (2006). War as a Commitment Problem. International Organization, 60(01), 169-203.

Putterman, L., & Weil, D. N. (2010). Post-1500 Population Flows and The Long-Run Determinants of Economic Growth and Inequality. The Quarterly Journal of Economics, 125(4), 1627-1682.

Ramankutty, N., Foley, J. A., Norman, J., & McSweeney, K. (2002). The Global Distribution of Cultivable Lands: Current Patterns and Sensitivity to Possible Climate Change. Global Ecology and Biogeography, 11(5), 377-392.

Reilly, B. (2001). Democracy, Ethnic Fragmentation, and Internal Conflict: Confused Theories, Faulty Data, and the "Crucial Case" of Papua New Guinea. International Security, 25(3), 162-185.

Roes, F. L. (2009). Moralizing Gods and the Arms-Race Hypothesis of Human Society Growth. The Open Social Science Journal, 2, 70-73.

Roes, F. L., & Raymond, M. (2003). Belief in Moralizing Gods. Evolution and Human Behavior, 24(2), 126-135.

Schwarz, M., & Sonin, K. (2008). A Theory of Brinkmanship, Conflicts, and Commitments. Journal of Law, Economics, and Organization, 24(1), 163-183.

Shariff, A. F. (2015). Does Religion Increase Moral behavior? Current Opinion in Psychology, 6, 108-113.

Sinnott-Armstrong, W. (2013). How Religion Undermines Compromise. In S. Clark, R. Powell, & J. Savulescu (Eds.), Religion, Intolerance, and Conflict. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Stock, J., & Yogo, M. (2005). Testing for Weak Instruments in Linear IV Regression. In W. K. A. Donald (Ed.), Identification and Inference for Econometric Models (pp. 80-108). New York: Cambridge University Press.

Strathern, A. (2013). Why are Buddhist Monks Attacking Muslims?. BBC Magazine Online. Available at http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-22356306. Accessed February 2016

Sundberg, R., & Melander, E. (2013). Introducing the UCDP Georeferenced Event Dataset. Journal of Peace Research, 50(4), 523-532.

Svensson, I. (2007). Fighting with Faith: Religion and Conflict Resolution in Civil Wars. Journal of Conflict Resolution, 51(6), 930-949.

Tabellini, G. (2008). Presidential Address: Institutions and Culture. Journal of the European Economic Association, 6(2-3), 255-294.

Urdal, H. (2008). Population, Resources, and Political Violence: A Subnational Study of India, 1956-2002. Journal of Conflict Resolution, 52(4), 590-617.

Wade, L. (2015). Birth of the Moralizing Gods. Science, 349(6251), 918-922.

Watts, J., Greenhill, S. J., Atkinson, Q. D., Currie, T. E., Bulbulia, J., & Gray, R. D. (2015). Broad supernatural punishment but not moralizing high gods precede the evolution of political complexity in Austronesia. Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences, 282(1804).

Weber, M. (1930). The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism. London: Unwin Hyman.