Cultural and Institutional Bifurcation: China and Europe Compared
研究前现代中国和欧洲的社会组织如何通过不同的外部执行机制和内在动机组合来维持合作，对比了以宗族和城市为代表的两种路径，并探讨文化、制度与当代态度、行为的关系。
How to sustain cooperation is a key challenge for any society. Different social organizations have evolved in the course of history to cope with this challenge by relying on different combinations of external (formal and informal) enforcement institutions and intrinsic motivation. Some societies rely more on informal enforcement and moral obligations within their constituting groups. Others rely more on formal enforcement and general moral obligations towards society at large. How do culture and institutions interact in generating different evolutionary trajectories of societal organizations? Do contemporary attitudes, institutions and behavior reflect distinct pre-modern trajectories? This paper addresses these questions by examining the bifurcation in the societal organizations of pre-modern China and Europe. It focuses on their distinct epitomizing social structures, the clan and the city, that sustain cooperation through different mixes of enforcement and intrinsic motivation. The Chinese clan is a kinship-based hierarchical organization in which strong moral ties and reputation among clan’s members are particularly important in sustaining cooperation. In Medieval Europe, by contrast, the main example of a cooperative organization is the city. Here cooperation is across kinship lines and external enforcement plays a bigger role. But morality and reputation, although weaker, also matter and extend beyond one’s kin.