Abstract
Universal social institutions, such as marriage, commons management and property, have emerged independently in radically different cultures. This requires explanation. As Boyer and Petersen (J Inst Econ 8:125, 2012) point out ‘in a purely localist framework (these institutional commonalities) would have to constitute massively improbable coincidences’ (3–4). According to Boyer and Petersen, those institutions emerged naturally out of genetically wired behavioural dispositions, such as marriage out of mating strategies and borders out of territorial behaviour. While I agree with Boyer and Petersen that ‘unnatural’ institutions cannot thrive, this one-sided explanation of universal social institutions in terms of genetic human nature is unsatisfactory. Drawing on the literature on multi-level selection and gene-culture coevolution, I argue that universal social institutions are first and foremost the products of cultural selection. They occupy fitness peaks in the landscape of cultural possibilities, much in the same way that biological adaptations occupy fitness peaks in the landscape of biological possibilities. To show this, I use game-theory. By modelling the domains of social interaction in which marriage, commons management, and property emerged as Prisoner’s dilemma situations, it becomes clear how an institutional framework allows the group to move to an interactive equilibrium with a larger payoff. Institutions do so by incentivising (through punishment and/or reward) all parties to adopt a cooperative strategy. They are culturally selected ways of optimising genetically constrained domains of human social interaction.
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Notes
In illiterate societies this takes the form of a series of explicit norms for conflict resolution and the punishment of wrongdoing (such as in-group murder, theft, etc.; Hoebel 1964).
‘Kin selection’—altruism towards one’s genetic kin—and ‘reciprocal altruism’ also called ‘enlightened self-interest’ (‘you scratch my back and I’ll scratch yours’), on the other hand, can easily be explained from a gene-centric evolutionary perspective. In the first case, altruistic behaviour favours the spread of one’s genetic material, since it increases the chances of survival of one’s offspring. In the second case, both parties are better off—a typical instance of mutualism (as opposed to altruism where an individual pays a cost—i.e. loses fitness—to benefit another individual—i.e. increase his or her fitness).
Gintis et al (in press) argue that evolutionary forces steered the hominin line towards a ‘political niche’, to which we adapted by developing the ability (through communication and persuasion) to construct and reconstruct the social order.
I am not claiming this would actually be the case were there no sanctioning institutions. As pointed out in our discussion of gene-culture coevolution, human beings developed strong prosocial emotions. Interestingly, in this context, Gintis (2007) models the endowment effect—the fact that people value an object they possess more than the same object if they do not possess it—as respect for private property in the absence of institutional enforcement. The non-institutional state I refer to, in this regard, is a kind of hypothetical Hobbesian state of nature predating institutions and the coevolving genetic evolution of prosocial dispositions.
Note that the hawk-dove game or the pre-institutional property game is—strictly speaking—not a prisoner’s dilemma. In a Prisoner’s dilemma the Nash equilibrium is a pure strategy equilibrium in which both players defect. In the hawk-dove game, the Nash equilibrium is a mixed equilibrium: the ESS. The problem to be solved however remains to same: to get all parties to adopt a cooperative strategy thereby increasing their payoff in sum and on average.
‘Benefit’ here is intended in a purely evolutionary sense. Following Dawkins’s (1976) gene centric point of view, it might be more accurate to state that genes rather than the individual benefit.
In the case of polygamy, women trade desisting mating opportunism for caretaking. Given that the primary evolutionary ‘interest’ for women is ensuring that the care-taker will not desert the nest and withdraw resources and protection, the commonness of polygamy should not surprise. Polyandry, on the other hand, is extremely rare as can be expected from the evolutionary stakes outlined above.
I’m very well aware that the evolutionary dynamics behind male and female reproductive strategies and therefore ultimately the institution of marriage are more complex than represented here. My account doesn’t factor in the limited reproductive window for women for instance. Also in many cultures there are external punishments (be it only in the form of social punishment) imposed on those adopting the opportunistic strategies (especially for women). Nevertheless, this simplified account offers a neat way of showing that the outcome of an interactive game can be changed by ‘correlating’ the strategies of both parties.
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Vlerick, M. Explaining Universal Social Institutions: A Game-Theoretic Approach. Topoi 35, 291–300 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11245-014-9294-z
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11245-014-9294-z