Rulers, Religion, and Riches: Why the West Got Rich and the Middle East Did Not (Cambridge Studies in Economics, Choice, and Society)

this is what I work on, and I found it great to read and think about.

Excellent book...one of the best I have read in the Econ/religion genre.

The book is an interesting examination of the question of why the West got rich and the Mideast, or rather Islam, did not.Despite the title, Rubin says religion is not the decisive factor but definitely correlated with differences. The book examines why. Also the cause is not geography or climate as proposed by Jared Diamond, nor is it sociology or Protestant work ethic as proposed by Max Weber.The book covers the period after Mohammed, when Islam was well ahead of the West only to fall behind as military dominance was lost to about 1850. A sub question concerns why Industrial revolution occurred in the West rather than under Islam. Rubin attributes it to development of institutions significant for commerce and education, particularly banking and printing. Branch banking, the printing press and economic reforms were slow to develop in Catholic Spain or in Islamic nations. Printing, responsible for the rise of Protestantism was banned in Islam until 1729 under Ottoman rule, as the Ottoman empire began descent into the status of the “sick man” of Europe. The Western innovation of trusts proved supperior to the Mohammedan version, the waqf, for investment purposes. The stock market is apparently too recent for consideration. Catholic Church law and Sharia law both limited interest rates with Islamic countries resorting to what we would now call a repo.Rulers propaated power based on legitimacy and/or coercion. Islamic legitimacy is obtained from religious authorities by fatwa. Religious dominance was weaker in the West than in the nations of Islam where a fatwa from a religious leader is needed to invoke political or economic action. In the West the economic elite obtained a seat at the bargaining table, more so in Protestant countries than Catholic, with least in Islam. England and the Dutch republic chartered economic success while Islam fell behind. Italy is missing as an example.Regression analysis is used to show correlations with more Protestants in an urban environment meaning more wealth. Rubin is careful to clarify that economics is not always good for society, nor is religion always harmful. What matters is who propagates political rule; nothing to do with content of a religion. Nothing is determinate. Religion influencing propagation of rule and religious interpretation of common law has proven detrimental to well being in terms of living standards, measured in per capita GDP. Democracy must consider the voice of the economic elite, but imposing democracy from the outside is a fool's errand?In Rubin's take on the modern world, the influence of oil is dismissed in favor of considering an earlier era terminating in the middle ages. He sees oil in the ME as like Spanish influx of gold, where rulers had no need to give commercial interests a voice in economic rule. Arab Spring repressed in Bahrain, created war in Syria and power vacuums in Egypt and Libya. One implication is that poverty is unnecessary as it is always accompanied by the common thread of bad governance. The conclusion opines that the ME has room for cautious optimism. That might be wishful thinking, with probably more room for cautious pessimism.The book presents an interesting historical discussion, partially answering the question that is asked without proposing a course of action for East or West.

This well argued book attempts to explain the diverging fortunes of the Middle East and Europe. In the early Medieval period, the Islamic societies of the Middle East were richer, more urbanized, had greater long-distance trade, and boasted a vibrant intellectual culture. Indeed, Michael McCormick argues that the European economy began to revive in this period because of Middle Eastern demand for European products. By the end of the Medieval period, positions had reversed, and the Middle East never caught up. Rubin presents a cogent argument that the differing roles of religion in legitimizing Middle Eastern and European rulers was at least a key contributor to the divergence. This is not an argument about a distinctive feature of Islam versus Christianity, indeed, Rubin argues for similarities and suggests, at least implicitly, that both could have acted a brakes on economic growth. Rubin's argument is that Islamic rulers had greater dependence on religious support for legitimation and consequently, more deferential to the ideological demands of the Islamic clerisy. He argues that Christianity had more of a Church-State division and that this drove European rulers to depend more on corporate institutions like parliaments for legitimacy with positive consequences for economic growth. Rubin points to the examples of Islamic law holding up the articulation of important credit institutions and the very slow spread of printing in the Islamic world as demonstrating his argument. He also discusses the role of the Reformation and the experiences of Holland and Britain as supports for this argument.This book is written well and argued very well. I was surprised by the strength of Rubin's arguments. There are, however, some significant points that I think he overlooks. He suggests that some form of church-state separation was built into early Christianity. Perhaps, but I suspect the more relevant component is the behavior of the Medieval Papacy and phenomena like the Investiture Controversy. Byzantine Christianity didn't exhibit Church-State separation. Rubin appears to assume consistent Islamic thought and religious practice across this period, but is this correct? He himself points to some hardening of scriptural interpretation and the Islamic legal tradition in later centuries. The period of relative economic decline he describes is also the period of the waning of Islamic science and mathematics, suggesting some major ideological or other change. One of the important features of the great Islamic societies was their vulnerability to Central Asian pastoralist attacks. He mentions the devastating effects of Mongol conquests but never follows up on this point. Finally, his argument is a potential explanation for why the Middle East fell behind in the early modern period, which could be a partial explanation for why industrialization didn't occur in the Middle East, but doesn't explain the failure of Middle Eastern societies to catch up in the ways Japan would achieve in the 19th century.