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The Paradox of Civilization

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The Paradox of Civilization American Political Science Review (2021) 1–18 doi:10.1017/S000305542100071X © The Author(s), 2021. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of the American Political Science Association. This is an Open Access article, distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial- ShareAlike licence (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/), which permits non-commercial re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the same Creative Commons licence is included and the original work is properly cited. The written permission of Cambridge University Press must be obtained for commercial re-use. The Paradox of Civilization: Preinstitutional Sources of Security and Prosperity ERNESTO DAL BÓ University of California, Berkeley, United States PABLO HERNÁNDEZ-LAGOS Yeshiva University, United States SEBASTIÁN MAZZUCA Johns Hopkins University, United States https://doi.org/10.1017/S000305542100071X . he production of economic surplus, or “prosperity,” was fundamental to financing the rise of pristine civilizations. Yet, prosperity attracts predation, which discourages the investments required T for civilization. To the extent that the economic footing of civilization creates existential security threats, civilization is paradoxical. We claim that, in addition to surplus production, civilizations require surplus protection, or “security.” Drawing from archaeology and history, we model the trade-offs facing a society on its path to civilization. We emphasize preinstitutional forces, especially the geographical environment, that shape growth and defense capabilities and derive the conditions under which these capabilities help escape the civilizational paradox. We provide qualitative illustration of the model by analyzing the rise of the first two civilizations, Sumer and Egypt. https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms INTRODUCTION where investments in water management could aug- ment crop yields. odern humans have existed for roughly The problem with productivist optimism is that the 200,000 years. They started adopting agricul- endowments that made an ecology economically prom- M ture only around 12,000 years ago, and it was ising also made it geopolitically vulnerable. An alterna- only around 5,000 years ago that a few populations tive view, which could be called “predatory fatalism,” is intensified agricultural production to create economic based on the observation, made by historians, that surpluses, cities, and bureaucracies. The social Big taking advantage of favorable endowments could back- Bang had occurred: prehistory was over, and history fire. The first agricultural settlements were often sur- began, as Sumerians and Egyptians created the first two rounded by pastoralist tribes ready to loot. According to civilizations. Michael Mann, “the greater the surplus generated, the Archeologists and historians have long studied early more desirable it was to preying outsiders” (1986,48). civilizations, but political scientists have devoted little Indeed, “soon after cities first arose … the relatively attention to them. This is unfortunate because political enormous wealth that resulted from irrigation and plow- , subject to the Cambridge Core terms of use, available at analysis can contribute a new angle to the study of ing made such cities worthwhile objects of attack by civilization. A political perspective uncovers how civil- armed outsiders” (McNeill 1992, 85). The destructive izations could arise despite unfavorable odds, why backlash was so strong that it could abort the civilization civilizations arose where they did, and why they process altogether. Thucydides drew a direct link appeared coupled with another innovation: the state. ’ between the security backlash and a choice for economic The archaeological literature, going back to Childe s backwardness. He viewed pre-Hellenic Greeks as “cul- 18 Aug 2021 at 18:44:53 (1936) foundational work, emphasizes favorable tivating no more of their territory than the exigencies of , on endowments for food production as the driver of civil- “ ” life required, destitute of capital, never planting their ization. According to this productivist optimism, cit- land, [f]or they could not tell when an invader might not ies and large-scale architecture arose wherever humans come and take it all away … consequently [they] neither could produce a substantial agricultural surplus. In built large cities nor attained any other form of turn, surpluses were most likely where settlers found 157.131.250.151 greatness” (Thucydides 431BC [Warner 1974,35–6]). a favorable array of animal and plant domesticates and The geographic promise of productivists suggests that given some natural advantages, humans will seize them and inevitably attain civilization. In contrast, for preda- . IP address: tory fatalists, prosperity brings its own demise. Agricul- Ernesto Dal Bó , Professor, Haas School Of Business and Travers tural settlements cannot remain prosperous for long, and Department of Political Science, University of California, Berkeley, may choose to avoid prosperity altogether, making civ- United States, [email protected]. Pablo Hernández-Lagos , Associate Professor, Sy Syms School of ilization an impossible outcome. Fatalists have not the- Business, Yeshiva University, United States, pablo.hernandezlagos@yu. orized why civilizations emerge. To the extent that it edu. occurred, civilization is both a mystery and a paradox. Sebastián Mazzuca , Assistant Professor, Department of Political The contradiction in the received wisdom derives Science, Johns Hopkins University, United States, [email protected]. from a political blind-spot. In between the inevitabilities https://www.cambridge.org/core Received: July 06, 2019; revised: July 8, 2020; accepted: June 21, 2021. of geography and predation, settler societies made 1 Downloaded from Ernesto Dal Bó, Pablo Hernández-Lagos, and Sebastián Mazzuca decisions about how to manage the tension between Defense capabilities play a critical role, so the settler security and prosperity. These decisions concerned col- has its best chance at civilization when both growth and lective efforts to create major public goods for produc- defense capabilities are high and relatively balanced. tion and defense. Those decisions were eminently Our results rectify the view of productivists. The eco- political, and constituted the first public choice. As a nomic fundamentals are not the entire story, and to result, civilization, the successful combination of surplus reach civilization a society needed to be twice-lucky in production (“prosperity”) with surplus protection terms of growth and defense capabilities. (“security”), was a geopolitical entity as much as an Were societies with low defense capabilities doomed? economic one. Some early civilizations made durable investments in We advance a political theory of civilization centered protection—such as perimeter walls—that strengthened around the joint attainment of prosperity and security. defense. In the second part of our theory, the settler can Due to predation, in our theory civilization does not invest in defense capabilities so that defense efforts in https://doi.org/10.1017/S000305542100071X necessarily follow from the endowments emphasized the future become more effective at resisting attacks by . by productivists. And when it occurs, it is not a miracu- the challenger. Investments in defense take time to lous escape from predation. Instead, civilization has a mature, and like productive investments, they can be logic derived from the nature of the first public choice. appropriated by the challenger. Because both kinds of The trade-offs facing an agricultural settlement striving investment incite immediate predation, the settler may for civilization were stark. On one hand, investing in prefer to avoid them. Indeed this is what happens if the irrigation could increase crop yields in the future. On settler’s initial income is low. However, if initial income the other hand, investments required sacrificing imme- is high enough, the settler will choose to enhance its diate consumption and the future benefits could be defense capabilities to mimic the profile of a twice-lucky taken away. The decision to augment crop yields and society and attain civilization. An intertemporal comple- exit subsistence agriculture was a gamble. The terms of mentarity with productive investments incentivizes https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms the gamble were shaped by the initial available defense investments. If enough defense capability is built resources, the relative gains from investment, and the today, enhanced security will increase effective returns prevailing conditions of security. Geography affected to productive investments tomorrow and open the path all three parameters, but the decision belonged to the to civilization. settlers. The analysis of such a delicate calculus is Integrating the productivist and the fatalist views in a ideally suited for a formal treatment. formal model creates new insights. Surplus production Our formal theory takes into account the geographic provokes a destructive backlash that precludes civiliza- aspects emphasized by archaeologists, and the security tion for societies that do not have, or cannot build, challenges highlighted by historians. We focus on the defense capabilities. Yet, an optimal first public choice first public choice of how to trade off growth and offers a resolution to the paradox of civilization along security to understand whether
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