Property, Predation, and Informal Governance

Successful governance implies that organizations, networks, or practices create public or club goods by constraining behavior, sharing information, or providing resources. While effective governance may require a functional state, compelling studies have theorized informal governance without Leviathan's backing in a vast number of domains, so much so that few exceptions exist in which the state is deemed an absolute sine qua non. One such exception is the security of private property rights. The consensus on the impossibility of informal property rights' protection partly derives from our ruler-centric concept of the state as a powerful sovereign, first vividly conceptualized in analytic narratives based on medieval Europe. The conventional diagnosis of top-down ruler-sanctioned predation generates the key prescription for sovereigns aiming to increase tax revenue and investment: institutional commitment constraining the upper executive. I offer an alternative perspective on PR security and informal governance. I conceptualize and empirically validate four ideal types of state threats to private property, and show that informal governance is a viable solution to a particularly pernicious – but understudied – threat type