Øivind Schøyen, NHH: When do the powerful fail to promote the morality of their authority?

Staff lunch seminar. Øivind Schøyen is a PhD student at NHH. He will present a paper entitled "When do the powerful fail to promote the morality of their authority?".

Øyvind Schøyen

Øyvind Schøyen. Photo: NHH.

This paper models an authority aiming to maximize legitimacy by imposing its preferred morality, whilst facing resentment to the use of coercion and the risk of insurrection  from non-authority morality holders. The main contribution of the paper is to introduce and explore the consequences of a novel micro assumption of intrinsic reaction to coercion; coercion resentment. This micro assumption of coercion resentment is in accordance  with findings from social psychology while the macro predictions it generates correspond to political scientists' understanding of  legitimacy. The model develops a formal notion of equilibrium level of coercion, a corresponding equilibrium of minority prevalence and a formal definition of implementable levels of coercion as a function of current military technology, the strength of coercion resentment, and preferences for acting in opposing moralities.  Two historical periods are presented through the lens of the model; the Counter-Reformation in early modern France and the Holy Roman Empire (1517-1685) and  the Soviet Secularization project (1922-1991).

 

Host: Jo Thori Lind

Published Apr. 1, 2016 11:36 AM - Last modified Sep. 11, 2020 8:34 AM