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3 - The Decline of Traditional Authority and the Rise of Corporate Actors

from Part II - The Analytic Narrative

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  26 January 2023

Jonathan Hearn
Jonathan Hearn
Affiliation:
University of Edinburgh
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Summary

Chapter 3 provides the key historical antecedents for Chapters 4-7, focusing on changes in the domains of kinship, religion, and law. It examines the decline of traditional authority in medieval Europe, specifically the weakening of inherited monarchical and aristocratic rule, and of the Church and associated belief in supernatural beings. At the same time, the power of state-based law was consolidating and expanding, developing new ideas of ‘legal persons’, as ‘fictions of law’, that would become crucial to the creation of new corporate actors and the domestication of competition. This shift combined with intensifying trans-Atlantic competition among European empires, and novel experiments in republican and democratic government in America and France, created a new context for the development of law and competition.

Keywords

CompetitionPowerAuthorityLegitimacyKinshipAristocracyReligionDecline of magicLawJuristic personality
Type
Chapter
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The Domestication of Competition
Social Evolution and Liberal Society
 , pp. 77 - 108
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2023

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