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The Dictatorship of the Popes |
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PADOVANO Fabio, WINTROBE Ronald |
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Affiliation: Università Roma Tre - University of Western Ontario |
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Keywords: Relation between Church and States, Theocracies, Economics |
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| Abstract: | This paper verifies the explanatory and predictive power of Wintrobe’s theory of dictatorship when applied to the history of the temporal power of the Popes. We consider the behaviour of the Catholic theocracy in the Papal States, as this was a very long lasting theocracy, exposed to many historical shocks that reveal information about the incentives and constraints that characterize it. We use this information to test the explanatory power of the theory of dictatorship, showing that never in the history of the temporal power of the Church have the four categories of dictatorship that the theory foresees (tinpot, tyrant, totalitarian and conceivably timocrat) proven inadequate. Theocracy is just like any other form of dictatorship. Furthermore, we test some of the predictions of the theory of dictatorship about the durability of, and the source of opposition to the various regimes on data about the Papacy. The results appear to support the theory. |
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