Institutional Change in the Ancient Mediterranean

The political and economic institutions of the Greeks and Romans have long been the subject of intensive study by historians recognizing not only the importance of these formations in structuring these ancient societies but also the continuity and impact which some of these institutions had, following centuries of evolution and transformation, after classical antiquity.

Until quite recently, most historians who undertook studies of ancient political and economic institutions, including fiscal and legal structures, can be said to have done so through a methodological and theoretical approach now commonly described as ‘old institutionalism.’ This is to say that studies of ancient institutional formations tended to be both narrow in focus, in that they concentrated on a particular institution of interest and were largely uninterested in producing comparative studies of institutions (even within the classical world), and limited to discussions of the formal structure of institutions, largely lacking explorations of possible (indeed probable) disjunctions between the formal structure articulated in the ancient evidence and the actual operational mechanics of the institutions studied. Furthermore, institutions were most typically examined as they (were believed to have) existed in their ‘mature’ forms. While the evolutionary processes which produced these ‘mature’ instantiations were not necessarily ignored, the focus on ‘mature’ forms often engendered teleological thinking concerning the processes of institutional change.

However, during the last few decades, the study of institutions in ancient history has increasingly engaged with New Institutional Economics and its conceptual frameworks. This has led to the proliferation of synthetic accounts dealing with institutional mechanics (i.e., how do institutions work and what kind of outcomes – both intended and unintended – do they produce) and institutional dynamics (i.e., how do institutions change). Those scholars partial to New Institutional Economics - the ‘new institutionalist’ approach now widely applied to the study of ancient institutions - have indeed offered many studies of institutional mechanics. However, institutional dynamics has not gained quite the same level of systematic scrutiny and theoretical reevaluation. In cases where one finds explicit discussion of institutional dynamics, the NIE approaches tend to advance a punctuated equilibrium model of historical change often favored by rational-choice institutionalisms which emphasizes innovative institutional responses to exogenous factors during critical junctures. Political historians, on the other hand, often highlight long term continuities (or path dependencies). Other new institutionalist schools, particularly Historical Institutionalism and Sociological New Institutionalism, also have their own preferred frameworks for modeling institutional change, many of which have not been employed in the study of ancient institutions.

Therefore, the aim of this conference is to encourage scholars - both established and emerging - to tackle the problem of institutional change in the Ancient Mediterranean by engaging deliberately and in depth with a wide variety of the contemporary ‘new institutionalist’ approaches derived from the social sciences. Questions to be addressed by conference papers and participants include the following:

•        What is the form, intensity, and frequency of institutional change in the different yet interconnected domains of political, economic, fiscal, and legal institutions?

•        Can we identify and generalize the circumstances under which certain forms of institutional change take place?

•        How do case studies of particular ancient institutions and their evolution contribute to or challenge the theoretical assumptions of the new institutionalisms? In turn, how does the application of models and theoretical approaches from one or more of the new institutional schools lead to a reassessment of the historical impact and significance of particular ancient institutions?

•        How does the formal structure of particular institutions differ from their operational mechanisms and realities? What are our strategies for recovering or discerning evidence of these disjunctions?

•        Following the DiMaggio and Powell’s (1983) categorization of coercive, mimetic, and normative means of producing institutional isomorphism, what kind of paths can one observe that lead to institutional isomorphism or divergence?

•        Concerning the diffusion of institutional formations, what mode of diffusion (e.g., globalization) or translation (e.g., glocalization) processes can we identify in relation to trends of institutional change at local, regional, and global scales?

•        What kind of independent and dependent variables explain such changes? And how can we evaluate the specifiable roles played by each variable?

•        In terms of methodology, how can we effectively tackle the larger problems of data scarcity in cases where we have a dearth of contextual evidence to develop insights about the nature of institutional change? How might comparative or long-term studies of institutional structures in the Ancient Mediterranean assist in this? Does the prospect exist for ‘big data’ driven inferential reasoning in the context of studying ancient institutions?

9:00-10:30 – First Pair of Papers

-        James Macksoud and Ümit Öztürk: Introduction

-        Sarah Bond (U Iowa): Supply Chains, Law, and Compulsory Corpora in the Late Roman Empire

10:30-11:00 – Break

11:00-12:30 – Second Pair of Papers

-        Dan-El Padilla Peralta (Princeton): Institutional Complexity, Innovation, and Rupture in Late-Republican Politics

-        Barbara Kowalzig (NYU): Religion, Institutional Change and Economic Development in Ancient Greece

12:30-1:30 – Lunch

1:30-3:00 – Third Pair of Papers

-        Jesse J. Obert (U Pittsburgh): Balancing Armed Oligarchs: Comparing the Institutionalization of Military Power in Athens, Sparta, and Central Crete

-        Matteo Demartis (U Edinburgh): The Decree Proposer in Ancient Greek Democracy - From ho Boulomenos to the Magisterial Gnōme: Examples of Institutional Change

3:00-3:30 – Break

3:30-5:00 – Fourth Pair of Papers

-        James Tan (U Sydney): Is Innovation to the Roman Economy as Destabilisation is to Roman Politics (200-49BCE)?

-        Bradley Jordan (U Oslo): Roman Government under the Tresviri: Critical Junctures, Path Dependency, and the Transition from Republic to Principate

9:00-10:30 – Fifth Pair of Papers

-        Emily Mackil (UC Berkeley): Private Property and Economic Growth in Classical Greece: An Alternative Model

-        Dennis Kehoe (Tulane U): Legal Institutions and Land in the Roman Empire

10:30-11:00 – Break

11:00-12:30 – Sixth Pair of Papers

-        Nico Dogaer (KU Leuven): The Great Roman Privatization? Reconsidering Institutional Change in Graeco-Roman Egypt

-        Véronique Chankowski (Ecole francaise d'Athenes): Rationality and Efficiency in Administration from Hellenistic Greek Cities to Roman Power in the Eastern Mediterranean

12:30-1:30 – Lunch

1:30-3:00 – Seventh Pair of Papers

-        Andy Hogan (Loyola Marymount): Farming the Fayum and Bidding at Behdet: A New Understanding of the Implementation and Mutation of Ptolemaic Fiscal Institutions within the Ptolemaic Economy

-        Julia M. Koch (U Giessen): From Sacred Temple States in the Pontic Kingdom to Imperial Urbanism in Roman Anatolia: Institutional Change in the Southern Black Sea Region

3:00-3:30 – Break

3:30-5:00 – Eighth Pair of Papers

-        Alessandro G. Battaglia (U Cincinnati): Building the Roman state: Imperial Notarii and the Creation of the Late Roman Bureaucracy

-        Zlatomira Gerdzhikova (Bulgarian Academy of Sciences): Financial Growth of the Late Antique Church and the Impact on its Institutional Development

5:00-5:30 – Concluding Remarks

During the course of the conference (as well as during two more informal Zoom meetings which were held leading up to the in-person meeting), participants – coming from universities and institutions in North America, Europe, and Australia – were able not only to tackle many of the research questions which impelled the conference but also to identify additional problems in the study of ancient institutions and adjacent domains which require future inquiry.

Reflections collected from presenters and attendees in the weeks following the conference indicated that the program had substantially benefited participants and their research programs insofar as the papers and discussion

1) improved our understanding of the mechanics of institutional change in both generalizable terms as well as in specifically Ancient Mediterranean instantiations;

2) broadened the variety of new institutionalist theories applied to the study of Greek and Roman institutions and the transformations thereof;

3) encouraged the application of theoretically pluralistic and integrative approaches to the dynamics of ancient institutions;

4) made apparent the ways in which new institutionalists paradigms may be themselves enriched by work on ancient institutions (both via testing the robustness of already formulated institutionalist theories through case studies of ancient institutions while also drawing upon ancient data in order to inductively generate or modify new institutionalist theoretical foundations and conceptual frameworks).

In addition to generating these many profitable insights through the exchange of papers and ideas, the other key aim and successful outcome of the conference was in building an international community of scholars working on institutional change in the Ancient Mediterranean. Indeed, having now established professional connections between these geographically disparate researchers and having also come closer to developing a consensus within the discipline on key definitions and theoretical foundations for, as well as the most apt thematic areas within which to focus, the study of ancient institutions and institutional change, there remains also the potential for future collaboration – formal and informal – among conference participants on a number of research programs which may emerge as outgrowths of the conference.