Which of the following types of government is formed around religious laws and leaders?

Theocracy is the exercise of political power by the clergy or laity of a particular religion, usually, although not necessarily, claiming to be acting primarily on behalf of a divinity and governing according to its principles and requirements. Debates on the meaning of the term religion have led some scholars to widen the definition of theocracy to include states that are not theocracies in the traditional sense, such as Saudi Arabia and the USA under George W. Bush. In turn, it has been argued that some apparently secular contemporary states that legislate morality actually do so on the basis of a historical trajectory proceeding from Protestant notions of guilt, and should thus be termed secular theocracies. Although the global influence of religious political ideologies has grown over the past three decades, there are very few theocracies, in the traditional sense, in the world. Nonetheless, those that do exist can have profound and highly idiosyncratic impacts on development. This article considers the cases of the Holy See/Vatican City, and Islamism in Egypt and the Horn of Africa.

The Personal-Psychological Context

As the opponents of religion are all too quick to acknowledge, religious people are trained like Skinner’s rats to develop beliefs of revelation, election, and theocracy. Even though these practices are less frequent in modern society, we still have the all-powerful, less obvious, communal practices of religion which silently dictate that there is the in group and there is the out group.

People may claim that they hold the truth, they are the chosen ones, and their ordained religious leaders are to be blindly followed. Their communal gatherings of like-minded people are right, and all others are wrong.

Or they may question and create their own idiosyncratic religion. They may question and doubt. They may find a definition of God that is opposed to the rigid, slow-to-evolve concept of God of the institutionalized religions. They may move beyond the traditional preached morals and search for a higher level of ethics, as Erikson discussed when he wrote about the sufferings and lives of Luther and Gandhi.

Yes, many religiously oriented people have been courted with the teachings of revelation, election, and theocracy. Yes, many religiously oriented people have been limited in their spiritual quest to people of like mind, like ethnicity, and like socioeconomic status.

However, it was left to Allport to remind us that some people opt to escape. And, there are those who choose to remain within the fold.

For the citizen

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Understand your country’s constitution (if there is one). Read and connect its principles to the relationships between the government and the citizens.

Determine what type of government your country employs (e.g. democracy, theocracy, dictatorship), and its implications for information literacy.

Distinguish between local, regional and national government. Identify their departments (e.g. labor, education, health care). Do they facilitate information literacy? If so, then how? If not, then why?

Stay informed of current events and issues; connect these with government responses. Are they consistent with what you understand about the government? Determine why or why not.

Understand the political platforms of government officials and their opponents. Compare what they say about one issue with things they have said about other issues: is there consistent rationale? Granted, not all politicians completely follow their affiliation’s platform, but why do some stray?

1 Commodifying Law

Lawyers, like law, have social preconditions. There must be a state: in acephalous societies, where power is dispersed among kinship groups and age grades, parties typically represent themselves. Secular power must be differentiated from religious: the priesthood performs legal functions in theocracies. There must be a market: administrators replace most lawyers in command economies. Power must be exercised through general rules: totalitarian states deploy force rather than law. The amount of law and lawyering vary with the proportions of state and nonstate social control, secular and religious authority, market and plan, legality and autocracy, as well as the distribution of wealth, power, and status (dispersed or concentrated, equal or stratified) and the nature of the economy (goods or services; land, natural resources, capital, and intellectual property).

But even if law is differentiated from informal social control, religion, plan, and diktat, lawyering must be commodified. Most societies value meaning and salvation (religion), health (medicine), physical comfort (engineering) even financial security (accounting) over justice (which is inherently ambiguous—one's justice is another's outrage). Knowledge occupations advance their professional project by capturing vital arenas: church, hospital, factory, stock market, tax office, court, document registry. (This advantages advocacy over transactional lawyering.) Potential clients must be persuaded to buy another's services rather than represent themselves, as we do whenever we comply with or evade, mobilize, or resist law (Kritzer 1998). The division of labor makes generalist consumers dependent on specialist producers (although some societies may resist this in the name of revolutionary ideology or religion, e.g., Wahabi Islam). Lawyers draw upon the devices of other professions—ritual, dress, esoteric language—though they lack some of the most effective (technology, scientific validation). Legal knowledge can effloresce (like science) and decline (like religion). Although law is proliferating, its techniques have been challenged by economics and its legitimacy by legal realism and critical legal studies (including feminism, antiracism, and queer theory). Knowledge, to be commodified, must balance technicality and indetermination (Jamous and Peloille 1970): too technical and it becomes an algorithm consumers perform for themselves (ATMs replacing bank tellers); too indeterminate and the only performance criterion is artistic taste. This balance between theory and craft, symbolic and practical mastery, is related to the tension between university and apprenticeship (Schön 1987). Information technology is restoring some lawyering functions to more educated consumers (both individual and commercial). Constant change in the knowledge base influences the careers and turnover of personnel, professional fission into subspecialities, and the relationship between knowledge producers (teachers and researchers) and consumers (practitioners).

Napoleon III

On May 30, 1814, France signed the First Paris Peace Treaty with the Anti-France Alliance and announced the demise of the Napoleonic Empire. Louis XVIII succeeded to the throne of France. In June 1814, Louis XVIII signed the new constitution called the 1814 Charter. In its 74 articles, it displayed concessions to the achievements of the Revolution and reflected orthodox ideology and the tendency to restore the legitimacy of the ancient regime. After the death of Louis XVIII, his younger brother Charles X succeed to the throne; the Bourbon dynasty further intensified to restore ‘the throne and the sacrificial altar’ as ‘theocracy politics’ in the social construction, and launched a vengeful counterattack. Parisians became angry and launched a revolt on July 27, 1830. On July 29, the Louvre and Tuileries Palace were seized by the rebels, so the rule of Bourbon dynasty ended.

In February 1848, a mammoth people’s revolution to overthrow the old feudal dynasty finally erupted. The following general election had the new political power come into being. As a result, Louis Bonaparte was elected as the Republic’s president; he had no direct relation to the February Revolution. Louis Bonaparte took on the restoration of the empire his uncle, Napoleon Bonaparte, had started; he eliminated all barriers and made a coup in December, 1851. In 1852 he put on the crown of Napoleon III, started the second empire following the same old disastrous road of warfare. The foreign policies of Napoleon III were to implement an amicable consultation policy with Britain and a practical policy with Germany. In 1870, it was ended by the surrender of the army and its commander Napoleon III in the Franco–Prussian war, which initiated the revolution of the Paris commune. This revolution had significant worldwide historic importance. Afterward in 1871 Germany defeated France and annexed France’s Alsace region and part of Lorraine, which realized the unification of Germany.

3 Distribution

Within any society there are individuals who behave like persons in collectivist cultures. They are called allocentrics, and contrast with those who behave like persons in individualist cultures who are called idiocentrics. It is assumed that there are both allocentrics and idiocentrics in every society, but their distributions are different, with more allocentrics found in collectivist cultures. The distinction between collectivism and allocentrism is important because in some cases a phenomenon observed at the cultural level is quite different from the phenomenon at the individual level of analysis.

Collectivism is maximal in relatively homogeneous societies, such as theocracies and monasteries, while individualism is maximal in heterogeneous societies that are very affluent. Thus, there will be few idiocentrics in monasteries and few allocentrics among Hollywood stars.

All individuals have access to cognitive systems that include both allocentric and idiocentric cognitions but they sample them with different probabilities, depending on the situation. For example, if the ingroup is under attack most individuals become allocentric. In the company of other allocentrics the norms for allocentric behavior become salient and individuals are more likely to sample allocentric cognitions. Some situations provide very clear norms about appropriate behavior (e.g., in a house of worship), while other situations do not (e.g., at a party). Individuals will be more allocentric in the former than in the latter situations. When the ingroup can supervise an individual's behavior norms are more likely to be observed, and the individual will be more allocentric. When individuals are asked to think for two minutes about what they have in common with their family and friends they are likely to sample allocentric cognitions. Situations are more important than the personality of individuals as determinants of allocentric behaviors.

Collectivism can appear in all or none of the domains of social life. For example, it can be found in politics, religion, aesthetics, social life, economics, or philosophy, as was the case in China during the Mao period, or in none of these domains, as among Hollywood stars.

Distribution

Within any society there are individuals who behave like persons in collectivist cultures. They are called allocentrics, and contrast with those who behave like persons in individualist cultures who are called idiocentrics. It is assumed that there are both allocentrics and idiocentrics in every society, but their distributions are different, with more allocentrics found in collectivist cultures. The distinction between collectivism and allocentrism is important because in some cases a phenomenon observed at the cultural level is quite different from the phenomenon at the individual level of analysis.

Collectivism is maximal in relatively homogeneous societies, such as theocracies and monasteries, while individualism is maximal in heterogeneous societies that are very affluent. Thus, there will be few idiocentrics in monasteries and few allocentrics among Hollywood stars.

All individuals have access to cognitive systems that include both allocentric and idiocentric cognitions but they sample them with different probabilities, depending on the situation. For example, if the ingroup is under attack most individuals become allocentric. In the company of other allocentrics the norms for allocentric behavior become salient and individuals are more likely to sample allocentric cognitions. Some situations provide very clear norms about appropriate behavior (e.g., in a house of worship), while other situations do not (e.g., at a party). Individuals will be more allocentric in the former than in the latter situations. When the ingroup can supervise an individual's behavior, norms are more likely to be observed, and the individual will be more allocentric. When individuals are asked to think for 2 min about what they have in common with their family and friends they are likely to sample more allocentric cognitions. Situations are more important than the personality of individuals as determinants of allocentric behaviors.

Collectivism can appear in all or none of the domains of social life. For example, it can be found in politics, religion, aesthetics, social life, economics, or philosophy.

Following is an outline of findings in the empirical literature that describes the antecedents and consequents of collectivism, as characterized by Triandis and Gelfand (2012).

Styles of Life

The ‘contemplative’ and ‘active’ styles of religious life rarely are walled off entirely from each other. The ‘world’ knocks at the monastery gates in every era. Pontiffs and prelates have sought the support of abbeys and nunneries in the promotion of this or that ecclesial cause from prayers for the crusades to theological backing in the extirpation of heresy. Monarchs and nobles have found ways to secure preference and placement for one of their number in the governmental and suffrage systems of religious life. Paradoxically, these attractions and achievements have at times led to monasticism assuming considerable economic and political power (see Religion: Mobilization, and Power) be it that of the great medieval religious foundations (Grande Chartreuse, Cluny, Citeaux, Monte Cassino) with their vast benefices and endowments; or the self-governing republic since 1052 of the influential monastery of Mount Athos in northern Greece; or the three centuries of state control assumed by the Dalai Lama, the chief abbot of Tibetan Buddhism; or the impact since 1837 of the Senusi Islamic brotherhood on Sudan and the eastern Sahara. There is a continuous tradition of criticism of the worldly foibles and contradictions of monastic elites down the ages, from Vigilantius (fourth century), through Chaucer, Erasmus, Luther, and Calvin, to Voltaire and modern anticlerical republicanism worldwide. Liberation theology and a spate of contemporary novels and films directed against ‘new world theocracies’ (the Paraguayan Reductions) and colonial ‘foreign missions’ sustain the iconoclastic suspicion of monastic imperialism.

Successive waves of new religious foundations have been launched by charismatic (see Charisma and Charismatic) religious founders animated by a utopian ‘return to sources’ (ad fontes) from which ‘scriptural primitivism,’ the combined attack on abuses within the Church and world, have been prepared down the centuries. The inherent tension between its this-worldly and other-worldly parameters accounts in great measure for the transformative capacities of monasticism which owes its survival and dynamism to an ongoing internal reform impulse (the Gregorian Reforms, for instance). Following the upheavals of the Protestant Reformation (’the dissolution of the monasteries’) and the French Revolution, Roman Catholicism invested heavily in ‘apostolic orders’ (Jesuits, Daughters of Charity) and missionary teaching congregations (Sallesians, Marists) which served as ‘the pope’s battalions’ in the Tridentine ‘counter-modern’ offensive. The nineteenth-century Oxford Movement saw fit to revive monasticism within Anglo-Catholicism (Hill, 1973). Come the age, come the religious order. The aggiornamento of the Second Vatican Council (1962–65) with its emphasis on ‘adaptation to the signs of the times’ and ‘a preferential option for the poor’ (Sweeney, 1994) is the most recent expression of the sporadic self-reform tendency in religious life to check the mixed fruits of sanctity’s success, social, and theological drift.

Each new age of monastic life and religious congregations addresses the perceived apostolic needs and ecclesiastical interests of the epoch be that for grand monastic citadels, hostels for crusaders and pilgrims, sanctuaries from plague and persecution, hospitals, schools, orphanages, hospices, food kitchens, or way stations for state policies of care in the community. Monasticism serves as a ligature binding civilizations east and west to their pasts and a bridge across which lessons of the religious quest are passed over into civil society. Not surprisingly, militant secular regimes (see Secularization) have found pretext to sequester monastic assets and secularise (and worse) religious personnel. Monasticism and the religious orders provide the great world religions with multiple and mixed benefits: an outlet for ‘charisms’ to flourish then ‘routinize’; an opportunity context for a specialized religious ‘division of labor’; social space to cultivate a realm of inter mediate associational life – collegia – within the complex organic ecclesiastical commonwealth (the communitas communitatum) without need for secession from the Mother Church.

Islamism and Other Revolutions of Values

The 1979 Islamic revolution in Iran highlighted the growing influence of Islamism, also known as political Islam, as an ideological impetus for mass mobilization around radical social and political change. The revolutionary forces arrayed against the Shah of Iran were a diverse coalition, but the religious current led by Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini succeeded in gaining power and imposed a theocracy based on the radical clerics' interpretation of Islamic religious law, or shariah. Elsewhere in the Middle East and beyond, a number of groups emerged or expanded that sought a guiding role for Islam in social and political life, though they varied widely in both their strategies for achieving that end and their interpretations of the religion (see Islam: Middle East). They ranged from reformist variants such as the Justice and Development Party in Turkey and the Muslim Brotherhood that won Egyptian elections in 2012 after the ouster of Hosni Mubarak, to radical groups such as the Taliban in Afghanistan or the Al Qaeda terrorist network responsible for the 11 September 2001 attack on the World Trade Center. While the Iranian version of Islamism supported a revolution, the Al Qaeda network took aim primarily at U.S. global power, and the Wahhabi movement supported the continuation of conservative monarchy in Saudi Arabia.

Among possible explanations for the rise of radical and sometimes revolutionary political expressions of Islam, political scientist Samuel Huntington posited that the end of the Cold War would see a ‘clash of civilizations’ in which culture and religious values would be the new axis of fundamental global conflict. This interpretation found support in the analysis of cross-national values surveys (Inglehart and Welzel, 2005; Welzel, 2013) that revised modernization theory to emphasize the way national cultural traditions shaped attitudes and values toward emancipation. Others saw the Islamist phenomenon as fueled by multiple factors, including a backlash against globalization and the corresponding spread of Western culture; moral outrage over corrupt and oppressive regimes in the Arab world; frustration among educated, unemployed youth; and a rejection of U.S. hegemonic pretensions in general and policies in the Middle East in particular.

Religion can be an ideological framework encouraging acquiescence to the status quo – the ‘opiate of the masses,’ in Marx's famous dictum – or it can provide a unifying message and values framework for potential agents of revolutionary change to mobilize against social injustice. For example, Catholicism in Latin America once served to rationalize the Spanish invasion and centuries of racial/class stratification. Then the Vatican II reforms of the 1960s opened the door for Liberation Theology, a movement advocating a ‘preferential option for the poor’ within Latin American Catholicism, which influenced revolutionaries in the region as well as a variety of other grassroots initiatives in the succeeding decades. By the late 1980s, the Liberation Theology influence was waning, as Pope John Paul II launched a theological counteroffensive and as more conservative evangelical Protestant religions spread in Latin America.

Another example of fundamental ideological challenge to social hierarchies came from indigenous movements in Latin America. In the poor southern Mexican state of Chiapas, the 1994 Zapatista uprising of Maya peoples rejected the economic impact of neoliberal, free-market policies on the peasantry as well as historic suppression of indigenous rights. The Zapatistas formed their own autonomous governing structures, and their discourse called for a political model of ‘governing by obeying’ and ‘a world in which many worlds may fit.’ A mass movement in Bolivia, also motivated by a critique of both global capitalism and ethnic exclusion, overthrew the government and brought the election in 2005 of Evo Morales, the first indigenous president in the country where indigenous peoples are a majority. Some of that government's policies reflected the indigenous cosmovision, including groundbreaking legislation that granted legal rights to Mother Nature. Similarly in Ecuador, the mass mobilization of indigenous people led to a new constitution recognizing the rights of nature and the ancestral communitarian principle of ‘Buen Vivir’ (the concept of the right to a good life).

Fourth-generation theorists of revolution highlighted what Selbin (2010) calls ‘story,’ the narratives that have powerful subjective appeal and can generate mass mobilization. The shift of focus from the state to the power of ideas in society, or ‘cultures of revolution,’ calls attention to the myths, historical figures, and symbols that stir collective memories and action (Foran et al., 2008). Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez invoked the historical figure of the anticolonial liberator Simón Bolívar, along with socialist ideology, to proclaim a ‘Bolivarian revolution.’ After his election in 1999, Chávez combined radical redistribution, mobilization of the poor, and anti-imperialist rhetoric. These policies represented a radical change in class relations, but they were carried out through state reforms (concentrating executive power) backed by an electoral mandate, generating sharply polarized discourses over whether Chávez should be considered a revolutionary, a populist, or a dictator.

Synthesis of Perspectives

A number of recent power theorists have synthesized these various perceptive upon power. By way of conclusion, we will concentrate upon three: Clegg, Allen, and Haugaard.

Stewart Clegg (1989) has argued that social life is made up of distinct circuits of power. Corresponding to the agency view of Dahl, the first circuit is where decision-making takes place. Following a more systemic perspective, including the work of Foucault, the second circuit comprises the structures of meaning, or the rules of the game, which are central to the constitution of social subjects. The third circuit of power is the systemic whole, which gives coherence to the second circuit. When A prevails over B in decision-making (the first circuit), this is simultaneously an exercise that is only possible because of the second circuit, which reproduces the rules of the game and the types of agents these actors are; are they a priest and supplicant, or employer and employee? In turn, the third circuit gives systemic place to these positions, a priest/supplicant, and employer/employee only make sense with a theocracy and capitalism, respectively. Clegg has extended his three-circuit analysis to the consideration of complex organizations and contemporary business (Clegg et al., 2006). In the latter work, and of late, Clegg has particularly concerned himself with the types of domination associated with bureaucracy and with ethics in business organizations.

Amy Allen is a feminist philosopher who has integrated the three-dimensional power debate with Arendt's republicanism and Foucault's account of subject positions (Allen, 1999, 2007). Allen (1999) argues that one must distinguish between power-to, power-with, and power-over (she hyphenates the terms). Power-to refers to agency, and power-with concerns the collective coming together, which Arendt describes. Like Morriss (2002), Allen argues that power-with and power-to are fundamental to understanding power-over. Furthermore, she points out that power-over, is not always dominating. For instance, typically, a good pedagogue exercises power-over a student in a manner that empowers (power-to) the student. If the pedagogue's power is emancipatory for the student, this is a coming together of powers (plural), of pedagogue and student, which makes it power-with. Similarly, a feminist movement is a coming together (power-with), that will exercise power-over resistant patriarchal male power structures for the purposes of giving women more power-to agency.

Allen (2007) has developed Butler's (1990) analysis of the constitution of subject positions. Allen stresses that actors frequently embrace their subject positions because these empower them within the local structured context. Subject positions facilitate action, even if they simultaneously reflect a kind of structural/systemic disadvantage. Following Arendt, Allen is interested in how subject positions constitute modes of emancipation. Thus, she is acutely aware that critique of domination is not equivalent to a critique of subjection per se. Allen critiques particular forms of subjection without using the freedom/power opposition or any foundational anchoring positions. Thus, she does not construct a normative ideal of an emancipated subject that transcends power through freedom. Without foundations as a bannister, Allen (2007) theorizes the critique of subjection through a critical focus upon the constitution of subject positions relative to contingent historical consciousness and imaginative narrative readings of alternatives. Hence, a reflective awareness of power relations emerges as key to power as nondomination.

Like Allen, Mark Haugaard argues that the same processes that are central to domination also constitute conditions of possibility for empowerment (Haugaard, 2020). Haugaard argues that it is important to distinguish sociological and normative power claims. Using this distinction, he theorizes the four dimensions of power both sociologically and normatively. As with Clegg, the first dimension corresponds to agency. Haugaard expands the concept of authority in a manner reminiscent of Bourdieu. Essentially, he argues that all social positions, with the notable exclusion of slavery, are positions of authority, which make certain actions and resources felicitous and others not. As in Barnes, authority is anchored in shared meaning. The second circuit concerns structural bias (as in Bachrach and Baratz), plus the idea of structural conflict. Haugaard argues that social interactions are characterized by two forms of conflict: the shallow conflicts that reproduce existing structures and meaning, and the deeper conflicts over structures. For the more powerful, if they wish to move beyond coercion, to a stable system of power relations, they have an incentive to convert violence into authority. Coercion begets potentially revolutionary resistance. In contrast, authority entails consent, and, therefore, is more stable. Historically, the advance of modernity is driven by threats of deep conflict, which lead to constant concessions by elites, culminating in social democracy. Slowly, as coercion gives way to authority as the key resource, power becomes less zero-sum and more positive-sum. The third dimension concerns ways to stabilize structures, avoiding structural conflict, by processes of reification. Drawing upon Lukes, Bourdieu (symbolic violence), and Foucault (power/knowledge), Haugaard argues that social structures are stabilized by reifying them, which takes place through a number of methods: structures are made sacred, the natural order of things or they are linked to foundational truth claims. The fourth dimension of power concerns the creation of a social subject with certain predispositions. Following Foucault (1979), this can include discipline that makes for docile subjects, which reinforces domination. However, on the normatively positive side, these predispositions can also be enabling for the purposes of meritocracy and democracy.

With Dahl (1957), the power debates began as debates concerning the relationship between power and democracy. Haugaard (2020) draws the four dimensions back to democratic theory. Like Allen, he avoids foundational positions, arguing that democracy and human rights are conventional modes of strategic “play,” facilitated by structural constraint, which allow social actors to exercise repeat games of power-over, that deliver power-to for all actors involved. Essentially, democracy is a set of institutions for iterative contests of conflict, designed to make power relations positive-sum, even for the worst off. When a party loses an election they lose episodically, but they still gain the power-to of the reproduction of the democratic process, which enables them fight another day. Thus, for the losers in any election, it becomes reasonable to continue “playing the game” of democracy because they are valued as citizens, who have agency.