Societal coercion and path-dependence: Punishment and Puritanism in contemporary societies

Abstract

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French

The article analyzes the connections between societal coercion and punishment in contemporary Western and related societies and a particular form of religion, namely Puritanism and its theocracy. It argues that Puritanism and its theocracy tend to determine the level of coercion and punishment in the US and hence make the latter path-dependent on the former. It traces the historical path from Puritanism in the past to coercion and punishment in the US in later eras and today. It adopts the concept and outlines the model of coercive theocracy represented in a functionalist scheme. It first re-examines the Puritan theocracy in early America, in particular its pervasive use and prescription of capital and harsh punishment and the reign of state terror overall. It then focuses on coercion and punishment in Western and other contemporary societies positing that Puritan theocracy or Puritanism has left an enduring legacy in these practices.

Keywords

Political sociology religion social control sociological theory

Introduction

Scholars document the harsh, even Draconian, and excessively coercive, repressive, and punitive nature and outcomes of the US legal-political system (Aizer and Doyle, 2015; Akerlof, 2002; Campbell and Schoenfeld, 2013; Cooney and Burt, 2008; Lim, 2013; Mueller, 2009) and to some extent that of the UK (Sutton, 2013), as well as theocratic Islamic states (Oberschall, 2004; Roberts and Chen, 2013) among contemporary societies. This Draconian harshness (Akerlof, 2002; Matsueda et al., 2006; Mueller, 2013) is particularly manifest in the exceptional ‘American model’ of mass-scale imprisonment (Becky and Western, 2004; Campbell and Schoenfeld, 2013; Fording et al., 2011; Garland, 2002; King et al., 2012; Sutton, 2013; Walker, 2016; Western et al., 2015) and the widespread and continuing application of the death sentence and executions. Such a unique ‘anomaly’ of (Pager, 2003), namely the ‘Draconianism’ of its law-government, renders the US the society with the highest levels of both forms of coercion and punishment among not just Western but all societies (Aizer and Doyle, 2015; Burdett et al., 2003; Kling, 2006; Lofstrom and Raphael, 2016; Sutton, 2013).

Furthermore, scholars have identified various social factors explaining this dual and entwined phenomenon of mass imprisonment and frequent capital punishment that characterizes America and makes it exceptional among Western societies (Sutton, 2013). First, these factors include economic variables such as high and rising economic inequality (Becky and Western, 2004; Bénabou et al., 2015; Steffensmeier and Demuth, 2000; Western et al., 2015), unemployment (Sutton, 2000), and the overall structure of labor markets (Sutton, 2004), in particular the unregulated market and low union density in the US (Fording et al., 2011; Sutton, 2013).

Second, such factors comprise ideological-political variables – the ‘unique American political structures’ (Campbell and Schoenfeld, 2013) and the ‘political nature of legal punishments’ (Jacobs et al., 2007), i.e., the ‘politics of punishment’ (King, 2008). In this connection, a particularly strong factor is the resurgence and domination of conservative politics in the country and its harsh punitive actions, perpetuating ‘American exceptionalism’ among Western societies (Jacobs and Carmichael, 2002; Jacobs and Tope, 2007; Jacobs et al., 2005, 2007; King, 2008; King et al., 2009, 2012; Sutton, 2000). Related explanatory variables involve the government’s ‘disciplinary engagement with the poor’ (Fording et al., 2011) redefined as near-criminals (Bauman, 2001), and seemingly – as Pareto classically suggests by detecting Puritans’ proclivity for ‘tormenting others and oneself’ – sadistic-masochistic ‘populist demands for harsh punishment’ drowning rare appeals for ‘mercy or mildness’ (Campbell and Schoenfeld, 2013). Both tendencies reportedly contribute to the growing ‘punitiveness’ of US politics and law (Aizer and Doyle, 2015) whose formal expression is ‘sentencing harshness’ (Lim, 2013) and similar penal guidelines (Steffensmeier and Demuth, 2000) that enforce ‘tough on crime’ policies. These are exemplified by the Reagan ‘war on drugs’ (Campbell and Schoenfeld, 2013; Jacobson, 2004; Roberts and Chen, 2013) creating ‘drug war crimes’ (Miron, 2004), causing the unprecedented (Turney and Wildeman, 2013) explosion of imprisonment and the ‘massive U.S. penal apparatus’ (Harris et al., 2011) in the form of a ‘prison-industrial complex’. Another related example involves the Draconian ‘three strikes’ laws (Akerlof, 2002) that mirror ‘larger political processes endemic to U.S. capitalism’ (Matsueda et al., 2006).

Third, the explanatory factors of imprisonment and the death penalty in the US also include cultural variables such as the ‘cultural foundation of institutions of control’ in American society (Savelsberg and King, 2005). In particular, as especially observed in the US during its history through recent times, this cultural foundation involves moral outrage and panic entailing ‘passion and indignation’ and other such strong emotions, and functioning as a compelling motivation for enacting rituals of harsh punishment, including execution (Harris et al., 2011). A recent exemplar of such persistent ‘moral panics’ and ‘crusades’ (Roberts and Chen, 2013) in the US is the ‘moral crusade against drugs’ (Steffensmeier and Demuth, 2000) during and since the Reagan presidency, manifesting the moralistic ‘social reaction’ to deviance (Grattet, 2011; Liska and Warner, 1991).

Evidently, the social factors explaining the comparatively exceptional and historically unprecedented growth of mass imprisonment and the frequency and persistence of the death penalty through a massive and ever-growing penal apparatus – and thus intense coercion and severe punishment – in the US are multiple, complex, and mutually related and reinforced. Hence, no single factor or mono-causal explanation suffices. What is beyond doubt, and evidence indicates, is that this striking outcome is produced and sustained by a multiplicity of sociological, including economic, ideological-political, and cultural-moral, factors. Conversely, it is not the product, within a sociological frame of reference, of ‘natural’ forces in the sense of physical nature presumably causing crime and supposedly criminal ‘human nature’. The latter means ‘evil’, ‘depraved’ humans due to the ‘fall’ or ‘original sin’ in Christian, especially Calvinist, theology, and ‘natural born’ killers and other criminals in fiction and the popular media, as well as cost-profit calculating offenders in the reductive and simplistic ‘rational choice’ model of crime and punishment.

Nevertheless, scholars have neglected or under-analyzed one potentially important factor. This is the historical religious determination of mass, growing imprisonment and widespread, continuing executions in the US as the Western leader in both respects and the global in the first. Specifically, this involves Calvinism’s, more precisely Puritanism’s, historical determination of these coercive and punitive processes and more broadly of the US legal-political system, as well as American culture and society (Clemens, 2007; Gorski, 2003; Kaufman, 2008; Mueller, 2009; Munch, 2001). Moreover, in some sociological accounts, American society has been ‘religiously determined’ primarily by Puritanism to an unparalleled extent, intensity, and durability, which is the founding, original religion since Winthrop’s rule as effective ‘theocracy’ (Munch, 2001). Theocracy is a description, along with its equivalents state religion and religious rule, that Weber, Troeltsch, Tawney, and other scholars adopt to describe Puritan-ruled colonial America (Barro and McCleary, 2005; Gorski and Türkmen-Dervişoğlu, 2013), just as England under Puritanism (Hillmann, 2008; Zaret, 1989), Geneva during Calvin and Calvinist-ruled Holland (Gorski, 2003), and parts of Prussia (Savelsberg, 2006), etc.

In this respect, coercion and punishment via imprisonment and the death penalty in the US exhibit their determination by and so path-dependence on Puritanism, notably its ‘coercive theocracy’. Hence, they are historically determined by and dependent on this religion and by extension Calvinism perpetuated through resurgent Protestant evangelicalism and sectarianism (Edgell, 2012; Lindsay, 2008; Madsen, 2009; Owens et al., 2010; Vaisey, 2009). Scholars emphasize such determination and path-dependence of American and to some degree British religious-cultural values (Norris and Inglehart, 2007; Ruiter and Tubergen, 2009), economic and political systems (Gorski, 2003; Hillmann, 2008; Kaufman, 2008), and societies (Munch, 2001) in relation to Puritanism and Calvinism as a whole. Still, with rare exceptions (e.g., Erikson, 2004; Mueller, 2009), they do not explore sufficiently whether and to what extent the US legal-political system, particularly its unique intensity of coercion and severity of punishment via imprisonment and executions, is determined by and path-dependent on Puritanism. The latter involves notably its archetypical Calvinist ‘coercive theocracy’ (Zaret, 1989) with its extraordinary punitive and repressive properties in early America (Erikson, 2004; Finke and Stark, 2005; Kaufman, 2008; Munch, 2001), just as in England (Gorski, 2003).

The remainder of the article proceeds as follows. The next section presents the model of coercive theocracy. The third section then considers coercion and punishment in Western and other contemporary societies and posits that Puritan theocracy and Puritanism overall have left a strong legacy in this respect, primarily in the US. The fourth section presents data on coercion and punishment, specifically imprisonment, death sentences and executions, and state terror, for these societies, namely the OECD countries. The fifth contains a conclusion. A disclaimer is that the article is just the first approximation and presents a study that allows a research question to be posed and a hypothesis for future work.¹ Thus, the data presented provide a first approximation to understand the question that the article seeks to explain, and probably other latent variables could influence these punishment practices among contemporary societies. Therefore the article develops an original theoretical approach in the next section, although it probably cannot empirically sustain itself with the type of data used later.

From past coercive and punitive theocracy to today’s coercion and punishment

A model of coercive theocracy

The model of Puritan and any coercive theocracy is premised on and derives from the ‘Theocratic regime’ elaborated by Bénabou et al. (2015), and discussions of ‘state religion’ in Barro and McCleary (2005) and state financial support for religious organizations in Mueller (2013) and other scholars. The ‘Theocratic regime’ of Bénabou et al. (2015: 347) is defined by ‘knowledge stagnation, extreme religiosity, a Church that makes no effort to adapt since its beliefs are protected by the state, and also high taxes but now used to subsidize the religious sector’. In particular, the state church component involves certain specific elements, as in the intermediate ‘American regime’ mixing secular ‘Western-European’ and ‘Theocratic’ regimes. They include ‘specific exemptions or other policies (e.g., laws regulating behavior) benefiting religious activities and citizens’, as well as, with rising economic inequality, ‘a Religious-Right alliance’ between the non- or quasi-religious rich and the ‘religious poor’ that blocks ‘belief-eroding discoveries and ideas’ (Bénabou et al., 2015: 347; Jouet, 2017; Mueller, 2009). ‘Laws regulating behavior’ that benefit an established religion and enforce religious beliefs and morality were particularly salient and effective in the old Puritan coercive theocracy and remain so in the modern US legal-political system, indicating its sociological determination by and historical path-dependence on this theocratic regime. Such laws are the prime mover of coercion and Draconian punishment for sins-crimes in both political regimes, notably in the latter’s pattern of mass imprisonment for non-violent drug offenses and the frequent use of the death penalty, including its stipulation for certain of these offenses.

Generalizing, ceteris paribus, elements of the ‘Theocratic regime’ yields correspondingly four primary dimensions of the model of Puritan and related evangelical coercive theocracy (Table 1). No doubt, not all theocracies and related religiously-based regimes are the same – i.e., ‘Divinely’ created and ordained equal because each claims its own all-powerful, superior, solely true God – but differ in many respects, as do their underlying religious dogmas, as Weber especially analyzes in his comparative sociology of religion, notably world theocratic religions. Still, all theocracies share some common properties and tendencies, especially those among the main world religions or within Christianity. This is what Weber suggests by identifying various commonalities between Puritan and Islamic theocracy, or Calvinism and Islam more broadly: notably their common theocratic solution to the problem of politics and religion, sharing religious revolution and ‘holy’ war and theological dogmas like the doctrine of predestination, an absolute, all powerful God, etc. (see also Friedland, 2001; Juergensmeyer, 2003).

Table 1.

The model of theocracy as a total social system.

Theocratic economy	Theocratic polity
Accumulation and redistribution of economic resources for religion	State-favored church as the agent of political power, coercion, repression, war
Theocratic civil society	Theocratic culture
Extreme and intolerant religiosity, religious value fanaticism and closure	Suppression of knowledge, rationalism, perpetuation of anti-science, irrationalism

In particular, the properties of Puritan and other Calvinist and derived evangelical coercive theocracy exemplify those of the ‘Theocratic regime’, as Bénabou et al. (2015) suggest by considering the ‘American regime’ largely a variation of the latter, though both mixed and in conflict with some features of the secular ‘Western-European’ regime. In this light, the four primary properties of the model of original Puritan or derivative ‘Puritanical’ (Mueller, 2009) evangelical coercive theocracy comprise the following. The first is suppression and stagnation of knowledge; the second, extreme and pervasive religiosity; the third, the state-favored church or churches refusing to adapt and enforcing religious dogmas; and the fourth, collecting and using economic resources such as taxes to establish or support religion. Evidently, the third property is crucial for understanding and explaining the problem of historical religious over-determination, notably of Puritan destination, and the US legal-political system’s exceptionally severe coercion and Draconian punishment. Yet, it is, as typical for theocracy, intertwined with and mutually reinforced by the other three properties, which thus deserve some, even if secondary, consideration.

The first of these properties of Puritanism consists of depreciation, suppression, and consequently stagnation and ultimately eradication of secular ‘ungodly’ knowledge and thus scientific progress, generally of ‘godless’ science and cultural rationalism (Bénabou et al., 2015). An exemplar is deprecation and suppression of heliocentric astronomical and biological evolution theories in medieval and later Christianity, in particular – especially the second, along with various medical procedures – in Puritan-rooted evangelical Protestantism (Guhin, 2016; Parker and Hackett, 2012). The outcome is stagnation and extinction of secular knowledge and scientific progress in these and related sciences, in astronomy primarily in the past and in biology during more recent times, under theocracy. This negativity to science is combined with the appreciation, imposition, and hence expansion of ‘sacred’ ignorance and religious superstition, fanaticism, and extremism (Glaeser et al., 2005; Mueller, 2009): thus irrationalism and anti-rationalism, as preferable to scientific knowledge and education. Simply put, for US Protestant fundamentalism reportedly no schooling is ‘better’ than secular, public education (Keister, 2008). An instance is the imposition of creationism or ‘intelligent design’ (along with the ‘Christian’ medicine of Bible reading and prayer) in Protestantism, perpetuating religious superstition, fanaticism, anti-science – a pattern inherited from Puritanism (Mueller, 2009; Viner, 1972) – and thus irrationalism to the point of death and serious harm to health (due to ‘rapture’, God’s ‘commands’, non-scientific medical procedures). Particularly germane and relevant to the subject is, for example, the belief in ‘Satan’ and ‘witches’ reportedly pervasive in both historic Puritan theocracy with its ‘witch craze’ (Gorski and Türkmen-Dervişoğlu, 2013) and today’s America, with more than 70% of Americans holding this belief (Glaeser, 2004). This is so because such a belief operated in the first era and still does in more modern times as the motivation or justification for inflicting severe coercion and Draconian punishment such as mass imprisonment and the death penalty on sinners-criminals construed and condemned as associates of ‘Satan’ (Juergensmeyer, 2003) or ‘witches’, as exemplified by Puritanism’s and then McCarthyism’s and generally conservatism’s ‘witch-trials’.

A special aspect of this theocratic property is especially observed in the Puritan-based ‘American regime’ and consists in the wealthy during rising economic inequality forming an anti-science ‘Religious-Right alliance with the religious poor’ for the sake of obstructing ‘belief-eroding discoveries and ideas’ (Bénabou et al., 2015). The list is so long that a separate section would be needed to enumerate them, ranging from heliocentric astronomical theory discrediting its opposite and biological evolutionism eroding creationism to modern medical treatments like vaccinations, radiation, chemotherapy, stem-cell research, etc. causing erosion of religious ‘medicine’ and to climate change science with the same erosive effect on corresponding beliefs.

The second property of the model of Puritan and related coercive theocracy it its extreme religiosity (Bénabou et al., 2015), often intensifying into religious intolerance, fanaticism, exclusion and closure, and generally irrationalism. Hume classically diagnoses the ‘madness with religious ecstasies’ in Puritan theocrats in England like Cromwell and the ‘wretched’, ‘wild’ fanaticism and hence utter irrationalism of Puritanism and its theocracy cum the only ‘true’ religion ‘to be established by law’ and all others prohibited. More broadly, Pareto depicts theocracy, theology, and its disputes (as in early Christianity) after the image of the ‘cage for the insane’ driven by religious fanaticism and theological dogmatism. What usually indicates extreme religiosity is the compounding of the intense, intolerant, and pervasive belief in ‘God’ or related ‘higher’ powers, the extremely important role of religion in private and public life, and widespread church attendance. In coercive theocracy, religiosity, including belief in ‘God’ and especially church attendance, is coerced and mandatory subject to severe punishment to the point of death for non-belief or belief in other religions or even variations of the same religion. Thus, its past Puritan original coerced society into its only ‘true’ faith and church and severely punished, including executing, ‘infidels’, spanning from ‘pagan’ Native Americans to Catholics and even some Protestants like Quakers, etc. In theocracy people are pressured to be religious and ‘godly’, making religiosity and ‘godliness’ spuriously ‘voluntary’, through pervasive social pressure, indoctrination, propaganda, and expectations of ‘faith’ (Ruiter and Tubergen, 2009; Voas and Chaves, 2016), as in the evangelical derivative with its various ‘pressure groups (the Moral Majority, etc.)’ (Blee and Creasap, 2010). On this account, religiosity, including church attendance, like all else, is radically different in Puritan and evangelical theocracy from that in liberal-secular democracy, so the religious beliefs and practices of Puritans like Winthrop et al. (Kaufman, 2008; Munch, 2001) differ from those of Jefferson and other liberals (Mueller, 2009).

The third – and for the purposes of this article, most important – property of the model of Puritan and related coercive theocracy is the state-protected or favored church or churches that resist(s) adapting religious dogmas and beliefs (Bénabou et al., 2015) to social structure and change. Notably, this comprises the resistance to the growing pluralism of religions and ideologies and to liberal democracy and a secular state with its separation from the church, which instead continues to enforce coercively its dogmas and beliefs on politics and society (Mueller, 2009). An initial and in part remaining, although decreasing, pure and simple form of this theocratic property is ‘state religion’, a single established, monopoly church (Barro and McCreary, 2005; Mueller, 2013). Still, this is not the necessary or sufficient condition of theocracy in the present model; instead favoring one or even all religious organizations against secular ones suffices in this respect.

A crucial dimension for the present problem consists, as in the Puritan-rooted ‘American regime’, of ‘laws regulating (private) behavior’ (Bénabou et al., 2015) and related policies, including ‘specific exemptions’. These laws and policies invariably privilege religious activities and believers and dis-privilege, i.e., coerce, repress, and discriminate against, non-believers and those with different or weak beliefs, notably with ‘no religion’ (Hout and Fisher, 2002; Mueller, 2013), an ever-growing share of the population in the US (around a quarter) and even more in other Western societies. They do so by coercively enforcing beliefs and morality on ‘infidels’ (a term shared with Islamic theocracies) and severely punishing, including imprisoning, torturing, abusing, and executing, them for their violations and ‘grave offenses’. The latter are mostly various moral sins construed and punished as the gravest of crimes. They include alcohol consumption during Prohibition and in the ‘Bible Belt’ (Carpenter and Dobkin, 2011) and the use of certain chemicals reclassified (Jenness, 2004; Sutton, 2013) as ‘drug war crimes’ (Jacobson, 2004; Miron, 2004) during the Reagan ‘war on drugs’ and other conservative ‘tough on crime’ wars (Mueller, 2013). Moreover, what primarily drives both moral wars is the Puritan-style obsession with and criminalization of sin and vice. The latter process generates and rationalizes a kind of vice-police state as an intrinsic element of original Puritan and derived evangelical theocracy. Such a state spans from the judicial system turned into ‘God’s vice-regent’ (Zaret, 1989) during Puritanism and the ‘Puritan policeman’ (Merrill, 1945) in New England to the Puritanical (Mueller, 2009) ‘vice-police’ in conservative America, especially the Southern ‘Bible Belt’, along with Islamic states. In these Puritanical and Islamic states alike, therefore, the crusade and jihad against vices and sins rather than proper crimes become the prime activity expending most material and human resources in law enforcement (Levitt, 1997). The latter process hence effectively turns into or perpetuates itself as Puritan-style morality – and by extension religiosity – enforcement, which makes Pareto’s classic observation to that effect not only diagnostic for his time but prescient for later times up to the present.

In terms of the above model, the historical path and sociological determination moving from Puritan coercive theocracy to the US criminal justice system’s coercion runs primarily through the state-favored single or multiple religious organization enacting ‘laws regulating (private) behavior’ and harshly punishing violations that characterizes both regimes. Through this mechanism the former, if not perpetuates itself as officially disestablished (Barro and McCleary, 2005), leaves a permanent imprint on and asserts itself as the latter’s ‘destiny’ à la Tocqueville. Conversely, the latter persistently elicits or evokes, using Tönnies/Weber’s words, the ‘ghost’ of the ‘dead’ religion and theocracy, refusing to admit its ‘death’. This confirms the observations that theocracy as ‘sacred’ tyranny or Jefferson’s ‘religious slavery’, and a theocentric, nominally democratic, state is both more coercive/Draconian and enduring by claiming to be ‘Divinely ordained’, with Divine ‘manifest destiny’ (Bonikowski and DiMaggio, 2016), than a non-religious dictatorship like communism devoid of a ‘holy’ sanctification, that endured less (Juergensmeyer, 2003) and ended peacefully (Habermas, 2001). Still, as Pareto implies by his inference that aristocracies, including their religious variations, theocracies, do not last permanently, even Puritan coercive theocracy or the US theocentric punitive state, at least in the ‘Bible Belt’, is probably not eternal despite its claims to the opposite. This is manifestly shown by the adverse fate of the first, and latently by the secularizing processes (Voas and Chaves, 2016), including the growth of those with ‘no religion’ (Hout and Fisher, 2002), in the latter.

Even while being officially ‘dead’, evidently the ‘ghost’ of Puritan coercive theocracy persists in the US legal-political system’s exceptional level of coercion and Draconian severity, at the minimum in the neo-Puritan, evangelical South, just as in Tönnies/Weber’s words, the ‘ghost’ of ‘dead’ religious beliefs often reappears in modern societies. In terms of the present model of theocracy, the ‘American regime’ today continues to enforce ‘laws regulating (private) behavior’ to conform to religious and moral beliefs and to harshly punish violations, notably imprison and execute violators. These latter include, but are not limited to, drug and related immoral offenders forming the vast majority of the unrivaled and ever-growing prison population and conceivably – through the federal stipulation of the death penalty for ‘drugs war crimes’ – among those executed. And just as the Puritan ‘Theocratic regime’ did centuries ago, the ‘American regime’ enforces moralistic repressive laws through its prototypical death penalty, imprisonment, torture, and general ‘reign of terror’ (Merrill, 1945) against ‘pagans’, ‘heathens’, ‘infidels’, ‘heretics’, ‘sinners’, ‘witches’, and other emanations of ‘Satan’. Not accidentally, the ‘American regime’ retains this irrational belief in ‘Satan’ (71% of Americans as reported in Glaeser, 2004) and by implication ‘witches’ as ‘associates’, as probably the ultimate form of superstition and irrationalism (Popper, 1973) only retained in today’s most primitive societies (Duflo, 2012). This applies, above all, to US religious conservatives or fundamentalists such as Puritanical theocratic evangelicals (Mueller, 2009) who universally hold and often act upon this dogma through counter-state and state terror as part of their holy ‘cosmic war’ and ‘in the mind of God’ (Juergensmeyer, 2003). Acting on the Puritan belief in ‘Satan’, they reportedly commit counter-state terror when being in vehement and violent opposition to liberal democracy (Juergensmeyer, 2003; Mueller, 2009), and state terror once they have infiltrated and wield political power (Lindsay, 2008) – moreover effectively ruling the South turned into or perpetuated as Weber’s Bibliocracy (the ‘Bible Belt’).

Hence, the theocratic pattern in the ‘American regime’ persists, with some variation, as if Puritan coercive theocracy had not really ‘died’, or, if pronounced ‘dead’ by Jefferson et al. (Mueller, 2009), is the ideal to be imposed from the ‘golden past’ – ‘paradise lost and found’ – and legacy to be cherished à la Reagan’s ‘shining city upon a hill’ for modern America. At this juncture, if this is not the 21st-century American regime’s over-determination by and path-dependence on the 17th-century Puritan ‘Theocratic regime’ becoming its ‘destiny’ in the sense of Tocqueville, Ross, Weber, and others, then one wonders what it is among contemporary Western and related societies, from Europe to Canada. On this ground, it is only a slight exaggeration to say: Puritan coercive theocracy is dead in its Calvinist original in early America, long live Puritan coercive theocracy in its evangelical derivative in today’s conservative America.

The fourth property of the model of Puritan and derived theocracy involves collection and redistribution of economic resources such as taxes in the service of establishing or supporting religion as a single state church or multiple religious organizations (Bénabou et al., 2015), thus financially privileging them and discriminating against or devaluing secular ones. Instances are direct state financial subsidies to religious education, tax exemptions, and other financial privileges for churches (Barro and McCleary, 2005; Mueller, 2013), ‘faith-based’ government programs funded by public revenues in the US (Jepperson, 2002; Lichterman, 2007), etc. For instance, Puritan theocracy in the form of the Calvinist ‘Congregational Church’ (Barro and McCleary, 2005) imposed on all residents in Massachusetts a mandatory tax used to finance its activities, which was only abolished with its official disestablishment during the mid 19th century.

Moreover, the US government at all levels reportedly continues to subsidize the religious sector by providing generous financial support as well tax exemptions to churches worth hundreds of billions of dollars per a year (Mueller, 2013). In addition, it reinvents ‘faith-based’ government programs funded by public revenues supposedly to solve various social problems, from poverty to drug addiction. Yet they reportedly (Lichterman, 2007) engage, as their theocratic proponents perhaps hope for and their secular critics certainly fear, in varied forms of discrimination or exclusion against non-believers or non-members, plus conversion efforts and seeking to ‘save’ people’s souls and take them to ‘heaven’ in some distant future rather than improving their wellbeing and life in society in the present. In sum, treating the religious sector through economic privileges and favoritism over its secular counterpart is profoundly different in Puritan and other coercive theocracy than in liberal democracy, which is neutral to various forms of religion and churches (Habermas, 2001), just as to non-religion and ideology in this and all respects (Mueller, 2009).

Coercion and punishment in contemporary societies

Coercion and punishment in Western societies tend to be more intense and severe in those historically Puritan societies such as above all the US as the ‘last remaining Puritan’ society and to a lesser extent the UK as a mixed Anglican-Puritan one, than in their non-Puritan counterparts. What indicates this are levels of imprisonment and executions compared to similar societies such as OECD countries. Mass imprisonment and executions are widely considered indicators of state coercion and punishment, including, along with related coercive human rights violations, what is termed the ‘political terror scale’ (Besley and Persson, 2009).

While officially disestablished yet leaving a strong and enduring legacy as a ‘destiny’ à la Tocqueville, the Puritan coercive theocracy or Puritanism overall in early America historically explains and predicts the US penal system’s unrivalled intensity of coercion and Draconian punishment among Western societies. Specifically, with its unprecedented use or prescription of capital punishment as the Pareto-like optimum and imprisonment, torture, and other forms of ‘holy’ terror as the ‘second best’ solution for sins, the Puritan coercive theocracy explains in a historical path-dependence the US penal system’s exceptional mass incarceration and so largest prison population and its continuing application of the death penalty, plus related elements on the ‘political terror scale’. Hence, this yields Proposition 1 stating that rates of imprisonment or levels of prison population tend to be substantially higher in historically Puritan contemporary societies than in non-Puritan ones within the OECD, especially Western democracies. Alternatively put, historically non-Puritan societies, especially Western democracies, are likely to have lower levels of imprisonment than Puritan ones.

The above also generates Proposition 2, which posits that levels of the death sentence and executions tend to be higher in historically Puritan contemporary societies than in non-Puritan ones within the OECD, especially Western and other European countries. In an alternative formulation, non-Puritan, especially Western and other European, societies are likely to have lower levels of the death sentence and executions than Puritan ones. Moreover, one can expect that only the latter will retain and apply the death penalty versus their non- or less Puritan counterparts.

In addition, the preceding leads to Proposition 3, which proposes that levels of political state terror tend to be higher in historically Puritan than non-Puritan contemporary societies within the OECD, especially in the Western world. Thus, one can predict the former to rank highest on the ‘political terror scale’ comprising ‘state perpetrated human rights violation’ (Besley and Persson, 2009), including, but not limited to, imprisonment and executions. Alternatively, historically non-Puritan societies are likely to have lower levels of political state terror than Puritan ones, especially among Western countries.

Data

Comparative data on imprisonment

Table 2 presents data on imprisonment rates (per 100,000 population) for the OECD countries classified according to their historical predominant religion or religious heritage. The data are from the International Centre for Prison Studies. Generally, the average imprisonment rate for all 36 OECD countries is 151 (with a standard deviation of 116). In particular, the highest imprisonment rate (around 700) characterizes the US, thus being more than six times higher than the average for these other countries! In addition, the US imprisonment rate is multiple times higher than those of the countries ranked next, for example, Latvia (304), Lithuania (268), Chile (247), Turkey (220), Estonia (216), Mexico (212), Czech Republic (195), New Zealand (194), and Poland (191). Evidently, if there is such a thing as ‘American exceptionalism’, ‘uniqueness’, ‘superiority’, ‘supremacy’, or ‘leadership’ (Reagan’s ‘Best’, ‘Number 1’ with unlimited national ‘pride and joy’) among Western and related societies (the ‘free world’) within the OECD, it consists in a comparatively unrivaled scale and scope of imprisonment and consequently coercion and Draconian punishment. No doubt, the above rate definitely proves the pattern of mass, pervasive Orwellian-like imprisonment of the US legal system (contrary to conservative denials), just as does the absolute level of the prison population (around 2.3 million prisoners at the time of writing these lines), the highest not only in the Western but the whole world. Moreover, the vast majority of this record prison population (almost two thirds of federal inmates) are non-violent drug and related offenders convicted for ‘war on drug crimes’ (Becky and Western 2004; Miron, 2004), thus victims of the moralistic Reagan ‘war on drugs’, and in that sense prisoners of ethical conscience, moral sinners, rather than violent criminals. This adds insult and indignity, including the denial of basic political rights such as the right to vote (Uggen and Manza, 2002), to injury and Puritan-style brutality.

Table 2.

Imprisonment rates (per 100,000), OECD countries, 2015 or nearest year.

Country	Prisoner rate	Historical religion
Australia	151	Anglican/Catholic
Austria	95	Catholic
Belgium	105	Catholic
Canada	106	Anglican/Catholic
Chile	247	Catholic
Czech Republic	195	Catholic
Denmark	61	Lutheran
Estonia	216	Lutheran
Finland	57	Lutheran
France	95	Catholic
Germany	78	Lutheran/Catholic
Greece	109	Orthodox Christian
Hungary	187	Catholic
Iceland	45	Lutheran
Ireland	80	Catholic
Israel	223	Judaic
Italy	86	Catholic
Japan	48	Shinto
Korea	101	Buddhist/Confucian
Latvia	304	Lutheran/Orthodox Christian
Lithuania	268	Catholic/Lutheran
Luxembourg	112	Catholic
Mexico	212	Catholic
Netherlands	69	Catholic/Protestant
New Zealand	194	Anglican
Norway	71	Lutheran
Poland	191	Catholic
Portugal	138	Catholic
Slovakia	184	Catholic
Slovenia	73	Catholic
Spain	136	Catholic
Sweden	55	Lutheran
Switzerland	84	Catholic/Protestant
Turkey	220	Islamic
UK: England	148	Anglican/Puritan
US	698	Puritan
Average	151
SD	116

Source: Walmsley (2015).

Non-Americans and perhaps many Americans may wonder what explains this striking – and perhaps for some startling – American abnormality in a record high imprisonment level both relatively and absolutely by virtue of deviating six times from the norm for Western and related societies, and surpassing any other country by far. The column ‘Historical religion’ suggests a major factor, although not the only one. In terms of historically predominant religion or religious heritage, the US is the only historically Puritan country within this group. This strongly supports Proposition 1 that levels of imprisonment are expected to be higher in historically Puritan than non-Puritan contemporary societies. It consequently supports the argument that the US penal, including prison, system is crucially determined by and path-dependent on Puritanism, notably its coercive theocracy in early America. This theocracy can hence be considered the crucial or pertinent historical-religious factor and explanation of the US’s exceptionally high imprisonment level within the OECD and even the entire world, in addition to and in conjunction with other, including economic, political-ideological, and cultural factors, as noted at the beginning of this article.

By contrast, the lowest imprisonment rates (e.g., under 100) are reported for countries like Iceland (45), Japan (48), Sweden (55), Finland (57), Netherlands (69), Norway (71), Slovenia (73), Germany (78), Ireland (80), Switzerland (84), Italy (86), and Austria and France (95). Apparently, their rates are substantially below the OECD average and dramatically – between 7 and 15 times (not percentages) – lower than that of the US. This raises the question of what is the explanation for these mostly European countries dramatically ‘lagging’ behind (or ‘laggards’, as usually described) the US’s ‘leadership’ within the ‘free world’ in this respect. To look at the question from the opposite end, why rates are much lower, the column ‘Historical religion’ implies a crucial, even if not full, explanation. In respect of historically prevalent religion or religious legacy, all these OECD countries with the lowest imprisonment rates are ‘non-Puritan’ – none of them is ‘Puritan’ in the proper sense of Puritanism as an English-American variation of European Calvinism, and not even ‘Calvinist’ more broadly. To that extent, this finding fully supports Proposition 1 in its alternative statement that non-Puritan contemporary societies will have lower levels of imprisonment than Puritan ones.

Comparative data on death sentences and executions

Table 3 contains data on numbers of death sentences and executions for OECD countries, again classified according to their historical predominant religion or religious heritage. The data are from Amnesty International’s Global Report: Death Sentences and Executions. In fact, there are nearly no data and reports on death sentences and executions in these countries as the overwhelming majority of them, 33 out of 36, do not apply capital punishment. In turn, only three of them, the US, Japan, and South Korea, do so, and the first country accounts for almost all death sentences and executions among these and other OECD countries – 80 out of 85 (94%). In this respect, death sentences and executions are an exclusive American exceptionality, specialty or affair practically within the OECD and literally among Western societies, including Europe, Australia, Canada, and New Zealand. Therefore, capital punishment is evidently a non-issue for the West, except for America, revealing its striking ‘exceptionalism’ in severe coercion, especially Draconian punishment. On this account, calculating, unlike with imprisonment rates, an average of death sentences and executions for all 36 OECD countries becomes meaningless.

Table 3.

Death sentences and executions, OECD countries, 2015 or nearest year.

Country	Death sentences/Executions	Historical religion
Australia	0	Anglican/Catholic
Austria	0	Catholic
Belgium	0	Catholic
Canada	0	Catholic/Protestant
Chile	0	Catholic
Czech Republic	0	Catholic
Denmark	0	Lutheran
Estonia	0	Lutheran
Finland	0	Lutheran
France	0	Catholic
Germany	0	Lutheran/Catholic
Greece	0	Orthodox Christian
Hungary	0	Catholic
Iceland	0	Lutheran
Ireland	0	Catholic
Israel	0	Judaic
Italy	0	Catholic
Japan	4	Shinto
Korea	1	Buddhist/Confucian
Latvia	0	Lutheran/Orthodox Christian
Lithuania	0	Catholic/Lutheran
Luxembourg	0	Catholic
Mexico	0	Catholic
Netherlands	0	Catholic/Protestant
New Zealand	0	Anglican
Norway	0	Lutheran
Poland	0	Catholic
Portugal	0	Catholic
Slovakia	0	Catholic
Slovenia	0	Catholic
Spain	0	Catholic
Sweden	0	Lutheran
Switzerland	0	Catholic/Protestant
Turkey	0	Islamic
UK: England	0	Anglican/Puritan
US	80	Puritan

Source: Global Report: Death Sentences and Executions, Amnesty International, April 2016.

Like before, both non-Americans and many Americans may ask what factor(s) might explain this even more striking American anomaly in the death penalty, by it being the only society among Western societies to apply it and its accounting for almost all such applications within the OECD. As previously, the column ‘Historical religion’ suggests a likely pertinent, even if not the only, factor: the fact already noted that the US is the sole or main historically – even in some accounts the ‘last remaining’ – Puritan society among Western and OECD countries. This dramatically validates Proposition 2 that levels of death sentences and executions will be higher in historically Puritan than in non-Puritan societies. As a consequence, it provides strong support for the argument that the US criminal justice system, notably the death-penalty, is over-determined by and so path-dependent on Puritanism, specifically its theocracy characterized, as Tocqueville and other early observers (Fiske, 1899) lament, by an unrivalled frequency and prescription of ‘punishment by death’, in early America. In particular, it confirms that Puritanism and its theocracy due to this unique punitive feature has determined to an even higher degree and so made the US penal system more path-dependent on it with respect to the death penalty than is the case even with mass imprisonment. Still, this determination and path-dependence evidently operate in both forms of Draconian punishment and in coercion and repression generally.

Therefore, this religion/theocracy can be plausibly deemed the primary or most important historico-religious explanatory variable – along with economic, political-ideological, and other variables – of the US being an even more striking deviant case in this respect. This is in its retention and use of the death sentence and execution, unlike all Western democracies, and in the fact that it accounts for almost all such instances within the OECD and, along with Islamic theocracies and other non-Western dictatorships like China, North Korea, etc., the entire world. It may be a sobering, depressing, or startling inference that by so doing, the US penal system objectively leaves or deviates from these democracies and joins or converges with such theocracies and dictatorships as mentioned above, which is apparent and widely observed by analysts (Jacobs et al., 2005; Mueller, 2009). But what is perhaps less apparent and not commonly observed is that it does so thanks, in historical terms, primarily to Puritanism and its theocracy in early America, as its prime historical religion or enduring religious legacy and ‘destiny’ à la Tocqueville. To paraphrase Michels’ ‘iron law’ of oligarchy, ‘who says Puritanism and its theocracy, says unprecedented punishment with death, so who says a historically Puritan society, says a persistent and widespread use of death sentences and executions’, thus Puritanism’s over-determination of America and the latter’s path-dependence.

Conversely, no Western, European or comparable society has retained this ultimate punishment, except for only two other OECD non-European countries, Japan and South Korea (perhaps pressured to maintain it by the US government during its postwar occupation of and neo-colonial presence and interference in these countries). As previously, if one wonders why this is so, the column ‘Historical religion’ in Table 3 offers part of the answer: the fact that all 33 OECD countries that refrain from resorting to capital punishment are historically ‘non-Puritan’, thus none being ‘Puritan’ as understood. If this is so, the above provides strong evidence for Proposition 2 in its alternative formulation that non-Puritan contemporary societies are predicted to have lower levels of – or, as with Western and European countries, even no – the death sentence and executions than Puritan ones. Admittedly, it sounds redundant to say this because in virtually all Western and comparable societies such a punishment is a non-issue (as symbolized by the 0s in the table) – except for America, where it continues to be the opposite historically thanks primarily to its apparent Puritan theocratic ‘destiny’ with respect to the death penalty.

In sum, the US provides a case in point, being the most, longest, and last remaining Puritan society and also the only Western society retaining and applying the death penalty, even potentially for non-violent offenses like ‘drug war crimes’. By stark contrast, all other Western societies, including once Puritan England, have abolished and denounce such Draconian or ultimate punishment by the state.

Comparative data on state ‘political terror’

Table 4 gives estimates of state ‘political terror’ for OECD countries classified again by their historical prevailing religion or religious legacy. The estimates are from the ‘political terror scale’ (www.politicalterrorscale.org) that reports ‘levels of state perpetrated human rights violation’ (Besley and Persson, 2009) in the OECD and other countries. These estimates range from level 1 to 5, with the higher number indicating the greater level of political terror through human rights violations committed by the state, including political imprisonment, unlimited detention, beatings and other police brutality, torture, executions or other political murders and brutality, disappearances, and the like.

Table 4.

Levels of state terror, OECD countries, 2012.

Country	Level	Historical religion/religious heritage
Australia	1.7	Anglican/Catholic
Austria	0.8	Catholic
Belgium	1.1	Catholic
Canada	1.2	Catholic/Protestant
Chile	2.0	Catholic
Czech Republic	1.1	Catholic
Denmark	1.4	Lutheran
Estonia	1.9	Lutheran
Finland	1.5	Lutheran
France	2.3	Catholic
Germany	1.3	Lutheran/Catholic
Greece	2.6	Orthodox Christian
Hungary	0.8	Catholic
Iceland	0.1	Lutheran
Ireland	0.6	Catholic
Israel	5.7	Judaic
Italy	1.7	Catholic
Japan	1.0	Shinto, Buddhist
Korea South	2.8	Buddhist/Confucian
Latvia	0.9	Lutheran/Catholic
Lithuania	1.0	Catholic/Lutheran
Luxembourg	0.6	Catholic
Mexico	0.6	Catholic
Netherlands	1.3	Catholic/Protestant
New Zealand	1.1	Anglican/Catholic
Norway	1.4	Lutheran
Poland	1.9	Catholic
Portugal	1.8	Catholic
Slovakia	1.1	Catholic
Slovenia	1.2	Catholic
Spain	0.9	Catholic
Sweden	1.2	Lutheran
Switzerland	0.8	Catholic/Protestant
Turkey	2.3	Islamic
United Kingdom	2.5	Anglican/Puritan
United States	4.2	Puritan
Average (minus Israel)	1.4
Average all OECD	1.6

Source: The political terror scale: www.politicalterrorscale.org

Note: Level 5: Terror has expanded to the whole population. The leaders of these societies place no limits on the means or thoroughness with which they pursue personal or ideological goals.

Level 4: Civil and political rights violations have expanded to large numbers of the population. Murders, disappearances, and torture are a common part of life. In spite of its generality, on this level terror affects those who interest themselves in politics or ideas.

Level 3: There is extensive political imprisonment, or a recent history of such imprisonment. Execution or other political murders and brutality may be common. Unlimited detention, with or without a trial, for political views is accepted.

Level 2: There is a limited amount of imprisonment for nonviolent political activity. However, few persons are affected, torture and beatings are exceptional. Political murder is rare.

Level 1: Countries under a secure rule of law, people are not imprisoned for their views, and torture is rare or exceptional. Political murders are extremely rare.

Judging by the estimates, the highest level of state ‘political terror’ in the sense of government human rights violations and an extreme form of coercion attaches to the US by a large margin (4.2), followed by the UK (2.5), among Western societies, and for Israel (5.7), then Korea (2.8) and Greece (2.6), within the OECD, with the average being around 1.6. If focusing on Western societies and excluding Israel on this ground, the US reportedly has the highest level in this respect both among Western societies, with the UK being second-ranked, and within the OECD. Generally, the US level is around 3 times and 2.6 times higher than the average for OECD countries without (1.4) and with Israel (1.6), respectively. Specifically, the level (4) estimated for the US involves the following: ‘Civil and political rights violations have expanded to large numbers of the population. Murders, disappearances, and torture are a common part of life. In spite of its generality, on this level terror affects those who interest themselves in politics or ideas.’ In turn, the following specifies the level (2) estimated for the UK: ‘There is a limited amount of imprisonment for nonviolent political activity. However, few persons are affected, torture and beatings are exceptional. Political murder is rare.’

The above opens the question as to the reasons for the US and UK’s first and second highest ranking respectively on this ‘political terror scale’. As predicted, the column ‘Historical religion’ points to a probable major, even if not the sole, culprit, namely that in historical terms the US is a predominantly Puritan society and the UK a mixed Anglican-Puritan one. To that extent, the estimates strongly confirm Proposition 3 that levels of state ‘political terror’ are expected to be higher in historically Puritan than non-Puritan contemporary societies especially within the Western world, thus excluding non-Western countries and what Weber calls Eastern religions. By this account, Puritanism and its theocracy as the reign of ‘holy’ terror both in early America (Merrill, 1945; Rossel, 1970) and England (Walzer, 1963) over-determines the US’s and to some degree the UK’s exceptional higher ranking on the ‘political terror scale’ among Western societies, thus making this ranking and legal-political system generally historically path-dependent on Puritanism and its theocracy. Hence, Puritanism and its theocracy reveals itself as the major or relevant historico-religious factor of the US legal-political system, though in combination with other factors reviewed previously.

By stark contrast, the lowest levels of political terror (i.e., under 1) in the form of government human rights violations characterize such countries as Iceland (0.1), Ireland, Luxembourg and Mexico (0.6), Austria, Hungary and Switzerland (0.8), and Latvia and Spain (0.9). The contrasts between these countries and the US are stark, substantial, and even dramatic; for instance, the countries with the lowest levels have 5 (Spain) to 40 (Iceland) times estimated lower levels of such extreme coercion than the US. This passage specifically describes the level (1) reported for the first group: ‘Countries under a secure rule of law, people are not imprisoned for their views, and torture is rare or exceptional. Political murders are extremely rare.’ In turn, this would not apply to Iceland given its estimate being far below, and only in part to Ireland, Luxembourg, and Mexico with their estimates somewhat lower than, this level. Predictably, the column ‘Historical religion’ helps explain in part this striking divergence: the fact that all the countries ranking the lowest on the ‘political terror scale’ are non-Puritan societies historically, nor Calvinist more broadly. Therefore, their rankings provide strong evidence for Proposition 3 that historically non-Puritan contemporary societies will have lower levels of state ‘political terror’ than Puritan ones, especially within the Western world.

In this connection, one should take appropriate note of the advent of ‘criminal justice system reform’ in the US in light of the importance of this development in 2018.²

According to the media, this reform (under the name the First Step Act) comprises certain modifications of the US criminal justice system, especially sentencing laws. They involve reducing mandatory minimum sentences, including those for ‘three strikes’, for some non-violent drug offenses, giving judges greater liberty relative to mandatory minimums (‘safety valves’), expanding early-release and job training and other programs to reduce prisoner recidivism rates. Still, even this reform fails to accomplish a more comprehensive change in the US criminal justice system that Congress envisioned during the previous presidency in its aims to reduce mass incarceration. First, the reform limits itself to the federal prison population and does not involve state prisons, which confine the majority of US prisoners. Second, the reform does not abolish what are still Draconian or harsh punishments from the stance of Western democracies. For example, while reducing it from life in prison, the reform maintains a mandatory ‘three strikes’ punishment of 25 years, which remains unparalleled, especially for non-violent offenses, in its severity among Western democracies. Relatedly and most important to the present context, the reform does not abolish the Puritanical criminalization and thus punishment of moral sins, notably non-violent drug and related offenses, as crimes. For instance, it retains mandatory minimum sentences for non-violent drug offenders and thus continues to criminalize and harshly punish Puritan-style moral offenses. To that extent, even this relatively substantial reform in a way perpetuates, if in a diluted form, the nature of US criminal justice, including the prison system’s historical path-dependence on moralistic and repressive Puritanism. In turn, this perpetuation through dilution of punishment (e.g., from life in prison to 25 years) corresponds to the evolution of Puritanism in America from, in Sorokin’s (1970) words, ‘pure’ to ‘diluted’ theocracy, geographically from Calvinist New England to the evangelical South (the ‘Bible Belt’). The path-dependence on Puritanism continues both in the criminal justice system and in the political regime (as the 2016 election results also testify) of contemporary America.

Conclusion

In spite or because of claiming to be eternal, immutable, and divinely ordained, theocracies, just as Pareto’s aristocracies of which they are a certain ‘holy’ variation, as he puts it, ‘do not last’ eternally. Even Calvinist theocracies claiming perhaps, as Weber suggests, more vociferously than others in Christianity and other world religions (except for Islam) to be ‘divinely ordained’ did not last forever, from Calvin’s Geneva and Huguenot France through Holland under Calvinism to Puritan England and Weber’s ‘theocracy of New England’. Notably, the last mentioned, as probably the longest Calvinist and other Protestant theocracy – except for that in Scotland – eventually ends after around two centuries through its disestablishment by the mid 19th century.

Yet, theocracies, just as Pareto’s aristocracies, evidently leave strong legacies on subsequent societal structure, including political-legal systems and their degree of coercion and punishment, in the societies they founded or dominated for certain, especially long, historical periods. As demonstrated throughout this article, this is epitomized by the legacy the long Puritan proto-totalitarian theocracy in early America left on later, as Tocqueville observes, and contemporary American society, as other analysts note, in particular its legal-political system’s exceptionally high degree of coercion and severity of punishment. The latter is indicated by it occupying the highest rankings on scales of imprisonment, death sentences and executions, and state ‘political terror’ overall among Western and OECD countries.

Finally, there are several ways to continue working with the theory and hypotheses that the article presents. First, additional sociological studies could explore further the possible historical connections between Puritanism and Calvinism more generally on the one side and contemporary criminal justice, in particular prison, systems in historically Puritan societies such as Britain and especially the US, on the other. Second, more extensive studies could investigate the historical links between the main religious heritage and criminal justice systems in other societies such as those in continental Europe and elsewhere. Third, further sociological analyses could examine the relations between the type of predominant religion and criminal justice systems in contemporary Western and comparable societies, especially comparing Britain and most particularly the US with continental Europe. Fourth, more extensive analyses could examine such relations between religion and criminal justice systems in more numerous non-Western countries and especially in comparison to these processes in Western societies.

Footnotes

Funding

The author received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

ORCID iD

Milan Zafirovski

Notes

Author biography

Milan Zafirovski is Professor in the Department of Sociology at University of North Texas, USA. He holds doctoral degrees in economics and sociology. His research interests are interdisciplinary encompassing sociology and economics. He has published 13 books. Also, he has published around a hundred articles as well as book chapters and other publications in peer-reviewed journals and related outlets in the United States, Europe and elsewhere. In addition, he has been a co-editor of International Encyclopedia of Economic Sociology (2006), advisory editor in Economic Sociology for the Encyclopedia of Sociology (edited by George Ritzer) (2015), and advisory editor for Economy in The Encyclopedia of Social Theory (edited by Brian Turner) (2017).

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