Morality as a Function of Legal Institutions
Giuseppe Dari-Mattiacci is professor of law and economics at the University of Amsterdam. Marco Fabbri is senior assistant professor at the University of Bologna. This post is based on their recent article How Institutions Shape Morality, published in The Journal of Law, Economics, and Organization (2023).
The recent Moral Machine Experiment (Awad et al., 2018) has documented wide geographical variation in individual responses to moral dilemmas. Could legal institutions be one of the factors affecting morality? Answering this question is challenging because it is obviously difficult to assess causality.
In a new paper (Dari-Mattiacci & Fabbri, 2023), we exploit a unique case in which a reform of fundamental legal institutions was implemented as a randomized control trial: the Plan Foncier Rural effected in Benin in 2010-2011. With the involvement of the World Bank and the Millennium Challenge Corporation, the Beninese government reformed the traditional system of communal ownership of land towards formal, individual property rights, but it did so only in a subset of villages that were randomly selected out of a pool of twice as many eligible villages.
Our team of researchers visited a sample of both treated and control villages in 2020 — that is, nine years after the reform — and ran a survey to record individuals’ moral judgments. Participants in the survey were presented with versions of the traditional Trolley Problem. They saw a car speeding down a road following a sudden brake failure. In the main vignette, the car could either continue straight and kill two individuals or change lanes and kill a different — but only one — individual. No other options were available. The dilemma staked the individuals’ desire to save a life against their repulsion for making an active choice — operating the wheel and swerving — that resulted in somebody dying.
FIGURE 1
We found that individuals living in villages where the reform had been implemented took the utilitarian choice (swerving) more often than those in control villages. This effect was stronger among individuals who could benefit more from the reform because of easier access to the formal justice system. The random assignment of formal property rights allows us to claim that the effect is causal, that is, that the change in moral attitudes is caused by the change in the law and not the other way around. We looked for but could not detect any effect concerning gender (man versus woman), age (young versus old), social status (doctor versus ordinary individual), or wealth (businessman versus ordinary individual).
FIGURE 2
Formalized, private property rights are one of the main pillars of Western, capitalistic societies. Their protection is commonly regarded as a conditio sine qua non for the development of product and financial markets, investment, and business organizations. Our results suggest that this institution changes individuals in fundamental ways: it makes them more utilitarian. Why could that be the case?
We advance two hypotheses. On the one hand, formalized property rights make individuals less dependent on the social embedment necessary to administer traditional use-rights on land, that is, communal property. In the traditional, pre-reform system, land use is regulated by traditional local authorities that take into account distributional and equity concerns when (re-)allocating land and adjudicating conflicts. In contrast, the post-reform system rests on individual property rights embedded in formal documents registered and enforced by state courts located outside the village. In the new system, access to justice is no longer — or less of — a function of local social ties. So freed, individuals could be more willing to take moral positions that might be frowned upon by the community. Morally justifying an active choice that results in the death of an individual — rather than standing by and accepting the “natural” consequences of an unfortunate accident — may be one such socially-damaging position.
On the other hand, private property results in the commodification of a previously non-marketable right and hence may make individuals more willing to make utilitarian comparisons also in other domains. Land is the main productive asset in rural societies and on it depends the livelihood of families. Land is hence central to individuals’ lives. In the traditional system, land is owned by the community, and use-rights are temporary and contingent. In the new system, land becomes a commodity that can be sold or pledged as collateral. In short, once a communal value, land becomes a “thing” with monetary value. One may postulate that individuals are now induced to make “market-like comparisons” also in other domains of their life, such as when they are faced with a tragic choice between one or two deaths. Making such comparisons — and hence taking utilitarian positions — may be more acceptable among individuals accustomed to the commodification of values.
While more research is needed to further explore constraints to and determinants of the effects of legal institutions on morality, our results raise important questions as to the outcome of processes of legal transplantation and, more generally, reforms imposed from outside a community. If changing the law also changes a society’s moral and cultural endowment, Western-inspired legal reforms may transplant more than just Western law.
E. Awad, S. Dsouza, R. Kim, J. Schulz, J. Henrich, A. Shariff, J. F. Bonnefon, & I. Rahwan, The Moral Machine Experiment, 563 NATURE 59–64 (2018).
Giuseppe Dari-Mattiacci & Marco Fabbri, How Institutions Shape Morality, 39(1) J. L., ECON., & ORG. 160–198 (2023).
FIGURE 1
(From Dari-Mattiacci & Fabbri, 2023)
FIGURE 2
(From Dari-Mattiacci & Fabbri, 2023)
Cite as: Giuseppe Dari-Mattiacci & Marco Fabbri, Morality as a Function of Legal Institutions, LAW AS SCIENCE: LEGAL METHOD LAB (June 8, 2023), https://www.lawasscience.org/legal-method-lab/morality-as-a-function-of-legal-institutions.
