TY - GEN A1 - Schwuchow, Sören C. A1 - Tridimas, George T1 - The political economy of Solon’s law against neutrality in civil wars T2 - Public Choice N2 - 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. KW - Ancient Athens KW - Solon KW - Political non-neutrality KW - Rent seeking KW - Intra-elite competition KW - Political apathy KW - Civil war KW - Inclusive institutions Y1 - 2022 UR - https://opus4.kobv.de/opus4-UBICO/frontdoor/index/index/docId/29290 UR - https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11127-022-00980-8 SN - 1573-7101 VL - 192 IS - 3-4 SP - 249 EP - 272 ER -