Expropriative Punishment and the 'Second Order Collective Action Problem'

Human societies of all kinds solve a problem of order. That is what differentiates them from sets of isolated individuals. The problem may be solved in various ways: in particular, some societies possess a state which provides order, while others are stateless. However, the existence of a state does not exempt societies from generating social order. For, as recent writers on state institutions (e.g. Greif, Milgrom and Weingast 1994) have argued, no irreversible, binding delegation of powers is possible: the power of the state, and the coercive capacity required to support it, must spring from within the group and must be continually self-sustaining