Douglas North (& Co.) published Violence and Social Orders in 2009 to offer, in his own words, a conceptual framework for interpreting recorded human history.  The reader will find strong evidence of anthropology, sociology, social psychology, economics, law, and political theory.  A cornerstone work of political science.  Although it lacks the total volume of Marx or Weber, it is equal in scope and universality, providing a theoretical framework that explains the causal forces of historical human social organization.  The concepts are categorically less supermundane and much easier to work with.  As a student unfamiliar with political science this has come as relief after a year of Marx and Weber.  As a plausible framework it offers a consistent explanation of society, organizational structure, economics, politics and law that is organized, rigorous and very well documented.

Violence and Social Orders offers a unique explanation of human society, emphasizing violence-management as the key dynamic within social construction.  In effect, the process where by which a given society manages its human-violence-potential determines the quantity and nature of the other social properties.  The possibilities and limitations of institutional and organizational development, civic participation, etc, are determined by the mechanism of violence-management employed by a society, hence the title “Violence and Social Orders”.

Of primary consideration is North’s claim of empirical evidence that proves economic growth to be directly correlated with open access societies (explained later) and less correlated with repressive social orders (Natural States); that entire geographic regions can be economically assessed (even over thousands of years) in terms of expanding and retreating economic development, to prove that geographic areas and countries which remain economically regressive in comparison to the West, are so to the degree to which they are/have not been free, democratic, impartial, and egalitarian over time (pgs 4-5 table 1.1 & 1.2).  This of course is a huge claim statement that, if correct, offers major considerations regarding past and current social orders, such as Western capitalism, socialism, and communism (China most specifically).

This essay will identify North’s primary concepts and how they are employed to explain social reality.  Later pages will explore the extent to which the book lives up to its title (and claim) of explaining human recorded history.  Final writings will explore the scope of North’s conceptual framework and how it explains social phenomena beyond capitalism proper.

According to North, the primary concern of all human social orders is the regulation and management of violence.  In scope, this book reaches back beyond the Agricultural Revolution and claims strong evidence of social violence based on archaeological findings.  North asserts that social violence was much more pronounced in our ancestral past; that the primary social order of hunter-gatherers (referred to as foraging order) of human society were in fact the most violent (pg 75 table 2.1).  With this as his backdrop, Violence and Social Orders (2009) charts human  history from the Agricultural Revolution (8K-10K years ago), claiming all social orders that followed (until quite recently) to be various iterations of what he refers to as Natural States.

Natural States are defined by the manner in which they employ ‘rent creation’ as the mechanism for social order vis-à-vis violence management, and North identifies three phases/types.  Fragil; Basic; Mature.  The word “Natural” is used because, for the last 10K years it has been virtually the only form of society (larger than a few hundred people) that has been capable of creating order and managing violence.  Simply stated, it has become natural to people to organize under these conditions.  Natural States are structured with (1) an elite body of stakeholders and (2) the vast majority of people controlled and disenfranchised from power or resources, with access to the governing body for the most part closed off to all but the Elite- of limited access.  This basic dynamic is held in place by rent-creation.

Rent creation is the process of manipulating an environment to gain access to greater portions of the available resources without necessarily adding value.  It is the traditional society as described by Weber, in which status, class, and association are determinant in one’s access to resources.  North describes this rent creation process as essential to understanding the Natural State construction.  In the Natural State, elite players have created a situation where they command resources from average, controlled, agents.  As long as the elites observe that it is more beneficial for them to get rents in a stable social environment, and less advantageous in a conflict situation, this maintains peace.  In the various stages of Natural states, the ever-constant agenda of unequal access to resources by the elites (rent creation) is the underpinning of social stability- and the road-block to equality and impersonality (the foundation of open access societies).  Natural states rely on rent creation as the building block of social control, and the degree to which it is present is also an indicator of the degree to which a society is distanced from an open access environment.  Rent creation is important to Natural States as there can be no Natural State without rent control.  Rent creation and Natural states are to North, synonymous.

These are some important delineations between Natural and Open Access orders and specific characteristics of North’s social theory.

• North does not suggest a teleological framework or the assertion of destiny.  North’s framework offers no utopian eventuality, does not decree that the Universe, or innate human disposition, or anything else will ensure or direct human social order.  Societies can and do slide into violence and instability or transition into egalitarian and open access environments.  Open access is not an inevitability or an eventuality orchestrated by universal laws or innate human disposition.  There is no end-goal in North’s presentation.
• Natural States are by nature repressive and limit the development of social organizations in favor of control and the benefits this control extends to the elite stakeholders.
• North asserts that the Natural State is the most common, most used, and thus the default model that humans have been using since the beginning of the agricultural revolution.  North asserts (countering Marx) that the Natural state is our default organizational model and more akin to human disposition; not a staging point in our transformation toward a “better future”.

As was stated in the introduction, all other aspects of society must conform to its mechanism of violence management control.  As such, there is a huge social trade-off for a rent-controlled society.  Complex organizations, be they political, economic, social, civic, education, etc, are all subsumed to the needs of controlled repression.  The difference between Fragile, Basic, and Mature Natural States is in the quantity and quality of the various social organizations allowed for by rent-controlling elites.  Elites must surrender ever increasing degrees of their private control (of violence) in order for there to be openness and organizational freedom.  Which brings economic success and great competitive advantage to the entire society, but in effect dethrones the independent violence- controlling elite as the shareholders of success, resources, and power.  A society can become open-access only as the elites become incorporated into society and surrender their specific control of violence.

North asserts that the Natural State is more akin to human disposition, but that it is possible to move toward (not forward) to a more open access environment…and just as possible to move toward a more destabilized Fragile State as well.  One of the fundamental differences between Marx and North is the very deliberate lack of assertions of inevitability (from North) regarding the progress and destination of humanity.  Marx believed in an implicit disposition of human nature that would eventually realise its destiny in a transformed human society.  North decidedly does not agree.  Open Access societies are equivalent to the Weberian description of a bureaucratic society.  Impartial laws, equal access, organizational freedom and constant development, equal participation, political freedom, rapid economic growth, etc.  In Open Access societies, violence management has been removed from individual hands and placed with the State, that has layers and controls in its use.  Political openness and access ensures that no one player or party can steal or co-opt power, and rent control evaporates in an environment of earned privilege and merritt.   North places Open Access societies as a very modern construction, no more than a few hundred years old.  This is why he used the term “Natural State” in reference to human historical social order.

It is possible under certain conditions for societies to shift into open-access societies.  Open access meaning nothing less than (ideally) having all aspects of society; politics, economics; civic participation, etc open to all citizens and protected by bureaucratic mechanisms that recognize and reward merit – the opposite of traditional societies, which is to say rent control, which it to say, limited access, or Natural States.  The conditions are referred to by North as Doorstep conditions.  North is clear that there is no prescriptive or homogeneous set of conditions to explain or predict this, but that the important feature is the decision of elites in a Mature Natural State that it is in their best interest to let go and allow the transitioning into an open access environment.  Key to North’s understanding of the growth-power and the access-protection mechanism of Open Access societies is Schumpeter’s concept of creative-destruction.

Open Access societies employ an entirely different violence-management dynamic, one that specifically reflects (and creates) the impersonal bureaucratic and meritorious social arrangement found in western-style constructions.  North points out that violence, in Open Access, has to be removed from individual employment, as all levels.  There is no place for power-wielding elites who control social organization with their violence-potential.   Power/the use of violence becomes departmentalized, meshed into other departments of a complex system that regulates with predictable checks and balances to ensure that violence can not be co-opted by charismatic individuals or casually employed even by elected officials.  Violence becomes bureaucratized, “owned” by the State, and used by officials who can be removed from position at any time if their actions do not reflect public opinion.  Similar to Weber’s description of the State’s monopoly on violence/legitimate use of physical force.  Thus society is a system (ideally) influenced by all and owned by none.  No person, no party, no group, can solidify power, as the creative destructive process that is synonymous with open access societies (as rent creation is synonymous with Natural States) provides for growth, equal opportunity, legal equality, and equal participation (=) Open Access.

North is very intent on emphasizing the power of creative-destruction in open-access societies and identifies it as the key variable upon which equality, economic development, the exchange of power, and the ongoing and overall economic growth this process calls forth.  It is fair to say that North choose to Not highlight the aspect of social turmoil that Schumpeter is explicit about in his own writings on the subject, nor the social costs associated with this process.  For North, this social dynamic is exactly what keeps open access societies fresh, and denies the consolidation and stagnation of political or economic power with any particular group.  As a reader who has currently discovered Schumpeter there is an impression that North employed an idealized presentation of the subject.  His description of Open Access societies read much like a high-school textbook on American History; it predictably extolled the virtues and successes of the system as it should work in its most simplistic description, while failing to mention stickier subjects like war, poverty, inequality, violence, crime, ect.

North identifies open access as the most economically profitable form of social organization.  The charts provided in the first chapter make it clear that growth, innovation, prosperity are directly linked with conditions of open access and freedom of participation.  The dynamic possibilities of Schumpeterian entrepreneurialism, of rapid and continuous economic and technological growth go hand in hand with the evolution of social freedom and the right to participate.  Open access as such is synonymous with the amazing growth and development of modern industrialized societies.

North points out quite aptly the specific and essential relationship between civic freedom (i.e. voting, non-discrimination, impersonality before the law, meritorious social arrangements, ect) and the unparalleled growth and development in the modern western societies (and of course non-western societies that have thoroughly adopted these social standards).  It is imperative to understanding Open Access that this dynamic be understood.

North asserts that growth and development (Capitalism in the Schumpeterian) exists to the degree in which people are free to create and develop complex social, civic, political, and economic organizations.  His main point with this is of course that a society which employs rent-creation, and its complementary social repression/unequal-access must de facto (and in Mature Natural States de jure) limit the activities, expression, creativity, and most important to his work, the economic growth and capacity of a given people/region/society.  Having read Schumpeter and finding strong personal agreement with his presentation, this model makes  sense and seems to work when applied to social circumstances.

Considering the scope (human history) and the unit of measurement (societies) North’s concepts are graspable, useable, and directly address the issues of concern both for the field of political economy and the general concerns of modern social inquiry.  For those who are politically, philosophically and morally inclined to concepts of western democracy and its relationship with capitalism, understanding where “we” have come from, what our expressed inclinations are (Natural State), and an acceptance (according to North) that there is no expected teleology of an evolved human state that we can rely on or hope for, it makes this inquiry of imminent importance.

Does book  live up to its subtitle?  “Framework for recorded history”

In regards to this book living up to its subtitle as a Framework for recorded history, this author would tend to agree that it has indeed done so.  It provides a solid, big picture frame on which to place various social entities and a description of structure and causality that seems to work very nicely.  This book is a quality complement to other social theories I am familiar with, and address the basic questions of how and why from a fresh (to me), political/economical perspective.  The terms and scope is graspable, and the excellent historical examples provide not only a fascinating insight to events but also verifies the depth and capacity of the authors.  I experienced an undeniable rigor of investigation and mastery of fact that was important for me as the reader.

Does the book go beyond narrower concept of capitalism to give broader framework of understanding?

North’s concepts directly assist in fleshing out and highlighting key components of social theory; freedom, equality, law, growth, ect.  He addressed economics, law, organizational construction, human behavior, and political organization.  This book is as much a work of sociology as it is that of political science and history.  This represents a very nice complement for an historical framework.  As was stated in my introduction, “Although it lacks the total volume of Marx or Weber, it is equal in scope and universality, providing a theoretical framework that explains the causal forces of historical human social organization.”

This being said I would not feel comfortable with North’s book as my only reference to human social development, history, motivation, and human potential.  It is a very bold statement to assert that humans are disposed/inclined to live in top-down societies in which strong-man dynamics rule.  That anthropological science points to increased human social violence in hunter/gatherer societies.  This framework does not investigate the role of beliefs, the (direct) relationship between specific technological innovations and social organization, the impact of rational science, or the rise of bureaucracy in relationship to economic growth and its concurrent influence on social construction.  Not that anything in the book/theory is wrong, but more so that there is much that could be added to the understanding of important causal factors that have influenced and shaped social organization over the past 10,000 years.  This being said, I am quite sure that Violence and Social Orders deserves many readings, after which I might very well reconsider any of the above criticisms.