RENDERING UNTO CAESAR: THEORY

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• RENDERING UNTO CAESARTHEORY
• MR DOUG PERKINS

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SOME NEWS
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http//www.umich.edu/nes/nesguide/nesguide.htm
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Religious Guidance in Day-to-Day Living 1980-2000
Religion an Important Part of Life 1980-2000
Church Attendance (1), 4 categories 1952-1968
Church Attendance (2), 5 categories 1970-2000
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Religion of Respondent (1), 4 categories 1948-2000
Religion of Respondent (2), 7 categories
1960-1988
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(No Transcript)
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WHAT IS A POLITICAL PARTY?

• Anthony Downs
• An Economic Theory of Democracy
• A political party is a team of individuals
  seeking to control the governing apparatus by
  gaining office in a duly contested election.
  (page 25)
• Simplification Parties as Rational Actors
• What do we miss?

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PARTY FORMATION AND EVOLUTION

• Cadre Parties First Parties
• Small Electorate
• ratio of pols/voters small
• Candidate-centered
• Mass Parties Came Next
• Historical Cause
• Unions
• Porous Bureaucracy
• Paradigmatic Party Type
• Effects of Mass Parties
• For Regime Stability
• For Socialization/Identity
• Evolved into Catch-All Parties
• Less need for a standing army
• Utility of the media
• Evolved into Cartel Parties
• Cadre Parties Resurgent

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HOW MANY PARTIES?

• Duvergers Law
• Single member districts favor two party
  systems
• Proportional Representation tends to support
  multiparty system
• Important Term District Magnitude
• The number of representatives elected from each
  district
• The higher the district magnitude, the more
  proportional the system is.
• How Does it Work?
• Mechanical Effect (see handout)
• Psychological Effect
• Party System of parties (and spread)

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WHICH ONE IS BEST?

• TWO PARTIES
• Accountability
• Stability (govt)
• Stability (society)
• Minorities?
• Less Democratic?
• /- Responsive?

• MANY PARTIES
• - Accountability
• - Instability (govt)
• - Instability (society)
• Minorities Reprsntd
• More Democratic?
• /- Responsive

Should we change?
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CAESAR AND THE CHURCH

• Many Possible Combinations
• In Countries with Religious Populations
• Theocracy God and Caesar are One
• Huntington Islam China and Japan
• Under Orthodoxy God is Caesars junior partner
• Separation of Spiritual and Temporal Authority
• Huntington Hindu and Western
• Anti-Clerical/Anti-Religion
• Communism, Liberalism?
• Great Deal of Variation
• What explains the variation?
• Across Civilizations?
• Within Civilizations?
• Potential Research Designs?

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WHY LATIN AMERICA?

• Lots of Variation in Dependent Variable
• Mills Indirect Method of Difference
• Most Similar Design
• Holds many factors (independent variables)
  constant
• A constant cannot cause variation
• What variables are held constant?
• GREAT Research Design
• Comparative Method/Statistics
• Mechanism
• Case Studies

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HUNTINGTON ON LATIN AMERICA

• Offspring of European civilization, but different
• Corporatist and authoritarian
• More purely Catholic
• Indigenous cultures not wiped out or totally
  transformed (this varies)
• Economically less developed
• Dependent development?

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MECHANISM

• It is not clear that rational choice is the
  best way of theorizing about either utopian or
  religious groups. Where nonrational or
  irrational behavior is the basis for a lobby, it
  would perhaps be better to turn to psychology or
  social psychology than to economics for a
  relevant theory.
• Mancar Olson, The Logic of Collective Action
• Religious belief is assumed to be an inherently
  nonrational form of knowledge.
• relies on faith that something is true rather
  than cost-benefit calculation, empirical
  verification, and information updating- the
  hallmarks of rational decisionmaking (Gill p.
  193)
• Catholic elites simply do not consider issues in
  strictly social or political terms but based
  on their understanding of the requirements of
  religious faith, their view of the Church as an
  institution, and their conclusions about its
  proper relation to society at large.
• Pattnayak quote in Gill (p. 194)

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GILL ON RC AND RELIGION

• Rational choice is a means-based theory
• Choicef(rational calculation, preferences,
  exogenous constraints)
• Choice is a function of cost-benefit calculations
  given desires and opportunities
• Rational calculation is assumed
• Especially okay for Bishops
• What can we say about preferences?
• Like more than less (ceteris paribus)
• Should be stable over time
• Have to figure it out
• Can we assume preferences ala economics?
• Maximize parishioners? What about doctrine?
• Exogenous Constraints
• These are the independent variables
• Provided by history and culture (institutional)

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GILL ON RC AND RELIGION

• The Assumptions Apply to All Persons across Time
  and Space
• Ethnocentric? What about less individualistic
  cultures?
• Do Ideas Matter?
• Yes, especially in determining how people
  process information or set their initial
  preferences All said, rational choice offers a
  pwerful tool for understanding behavior wherever
  religious actors face conditions of scarcity and
  are making decisions meant to improve their
  social welfare.
• What do we miss?

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GILL ON CHURCH AND STATE

• Church an organization that professes belief in
  some transcendental being and codifies behavioral
  norms that presumably are in accordance with this
  belief. The level of formal organization varies.
  For these purposes, cults and sects are
  churches.
• Each national Catholic Church is considered a
  unitary actor.
• State a set of organizations invested with the
  authority to make binding decisions for people
  and organizations juridically located in a
  particular territory and to implement these
  decisions using, if necessary, force.
• State refers to the top governmental actors

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AN ECONOMIC MODEL OF CHURCH STATE RELATIONS

• The View from the State
• States attempt to minimize the costs of ruling
• Ideology is the least expensive method of
  obtaining citizen compliance
• Better than coercion and patronage
• How can this happen? How can you create a
  supportive culture? How can a regime become
  legitimate?
• Churches specialize in the production of
  ideological norms and values
• What is good? Why should it be done? How are
  these different from other ideologies?
• How can religious leaders get parishioners to
  support the authorities?
• Resulting Proposition
• Given the above, state actors will cultivate
  cooperative relations with religious leaders more
  often than not.

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AN ECONOMIC MODEL OF CHURCH STATE RELATIONS

• The View from the Church
• Churches maximize parishioners and resources (say
  what to both?!)
• Religious organizations are susceptible to free
  riding and competition.
• Supernatural compensators are highly intangible
  and subject to doubt. This encourages
  competition and free-riding (why?)
• Proposition 2 Given the above, religious leaders
  will seek church-state cooperation more often
  than not.

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CONFLICT

• Proposition 3 Church-state conflict occurs when
  the opportunity costs of cooperation for any one
  party exceeds the present or future benefits of
  cooperation.
• This is most likely to occur for states when
  there are alternative secular ideologies to
  legitimate the state or the state need to pillage
  the church.
• For churches, this increases with a rise in
  competition and access to external funding and a
  decrease in the governments popularity.

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ON TUESDAY

• Test the theory on Latin America.

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QUESTIONS???