ABSTRACT
ORDERED ANARCHY, STATE AND RENT-SEEKING;
THE ICELANDIC COMMONWEALTH, 930-1262
Birgir T. R. Solvason, Ph.D.
George Mason University, 1991
Dissertation director: Viktor
Vanberg, Ph.D.
My task is to come up with a theory
of cooperation and, then, apply that theory to a particular historical
case. The historical case I discuss is the rise and decline of social order
in medieval Iceland; the so-called Commonwealth period. The Commonwealth
experience poses two main questions; first, how did the Commonwealth emerge,
and, second, why did it break down.
I begin by discussing the concepts
of reciprocity and cooperation, and then offer an evolutionary theory of
cooperation. Next, I put the theory to the test of actually explaining
the rise of the Commonwealth's institutional structure. I find that the
theory is highly informative in application and able to account for Iceland's
institutional structure. Reciprocal behaviour on the part of the Icelanders
initiated and created the cooperative institutional system. The keys to
the stability of the system are found in the encouragement of reciprocical
behaviour, where the future repeated engagements are important enough to
discourage defections. The Commonwealth was a decentralized structure,
based mostly on voluntary cooperation, and enforcements of judgements were
private.
Along with expanding population,
the Commonwealth chieftains position as arbitrators and owners of churches
strengthened their position with respect to their followers. As time went
by they realized the advantage of their privileged status and combined
the sale of legal and religious services for their own benefit. By the
last decade of the eleventh century the chieftains were able to use their
position to introduce the tithe, obligating farmers to pay a tax to the
chieftains and the Church, of one percentile of their wealth. In essence,
rent-seeking (defection) became more profitable for the chieftains than
long-term reciprocical behaviour. Reciprocity, fruitful in establishing
Iceland's institutional structure, lost its importance and such behaviour
diminished. The tied sales of legal and religious services established
the chieftains as local monopolies, as minimal states. These minimal states
now competed for more territory, and population, and, most importantly,
more chieftaincies and churches. The minimal states became fewer and fewer
as the surviving ones triumphed in their advancements. Through the struggle
for wealth and power the chieftains mostly killed each other and by 1250
only a few chiefdoms and even fewer chieftains survived. By that time the
king of Norway had established a foothold in the country and by the voluntary
choice of the Icelandic farmers in 1262-64, was accepted as king of Iceland. |