Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: https://hdl.handle.net/10419/308985 
Year of Publication: 
2022
Citation: 
[Journal:] Public Choice [ISSN:] 1573-7101 [Volume:] 192 [Issue:] 3 [Publisher:] Springer US [Place:] New York, NY [Year:] 2022 [Pages:] 249-272
Publisher: 
Springer US, New York, NY
Abstract: 
In 594 BCE, the Athenian lawgiver Solon, called upon to resolve a deepening social crisis, introduced a new constitution and mandated that in civil conflicts, no citizen is to remain apathetic and must take sides. Because the law seemed to support strife, it presents a puzzle. The paper offers a political economy rationale for Solon's law against neutrality, modeling social conflict as a rent-seeking competition. We divide society into three groups, a hereditary aristocracy, which monopolized power before the Solonian constitution, a rival wealth-based commercial elite, called the new Solonian elite, and the poor, who are enfranchised only partly. We then identify the conditions under which the third group is better off by allying with one of the other groups, protecting the Solonian constitution. In our framework, Solon's ban on neutrality is an attempt to change the payoffs from violent redistributions of rents, so that conflict is avoided. Accordingly, the ban should not only impede excessive rent seeking, but also prevent the exclusion of any social group.
Subjects: 
Ancient Athens
Solon
Political non-neutrality
Rent seeking
Intra-elite competition
Political apathy
Civil war
Inclusive institutions
JEL: 
D72
D74
N4
Persistent Identifier of the first edition: 
Creative Commons License: 
cc-by Logo
Document Type: 
Article
Document Version: 
Published Version

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