Predatory private governance

Abstract

Economic analyses of private governance typically consider historical episodes where such governance successfully protected the property rights of the governed. This paper economically analyzes an episode where it did not: late Heian Japan. There, governance was supplied privately by competing landlord-cum-governance monopolists. Such a monopolist may be induced to respect the property rights of the governed by a credible threat of revolt or by the disciplinary logic of markets. The threat of revolt is credible, however, only if the governed are organized. And the logic of markets is disciplinary only if the territorial interests of governance monopolists are stable and the assets of the governed are mobile. Each of those conditions was violated in late Heian Japan, whose private governance monopolists thus often found it profitable to prey on the governed.