Institutional Change Through the Institutions of Change: The Case of Civil Disobedience

Paolo Silvestri (University of Catania)
Maurizio Caserta (University of Catania)
Maria Olivella Rizza (University of Catania)

Abstract

Civil disobedience is a principled breach of law intended to change it. Responsibility of that breach rests upon the disobedient only. However, if that change is successful it is the whole society that will benefit from it. Institutional economics has always been interested in understanding institutional change, but has surprisingly neglected the role of civil disobedience, extensively investigated in political and legal philosophy and other social sciences. Only Acemoglu and Robinson (2019) have listed it as one of the initiatives that civil society adopts to keep the state at bay and avoid despotism, but nothing more is said about it. We aim at identifying the formal and informal institutions that could sustain civil disobedience and make society open to accept it as possibly leading to beneficial institutional change.   For disobedience to be ‘civil’ and successful a number of features have been identified: communication, publicity, non-violence, non-evasion, decorum, as well as the accommodating "response" of Police and Judges. But those features must be recognized and accepted. There remains the question, therefore, of what opens the door to civil disobedience and allows it to produce its likely beneficial effects. Quite clearly, those institutions cannot turn civil disobedience into a lawful behaviour. Instead, they should make sure the originative nature of civil disobedience is retained.

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