Lessons from the Dutch Republic

I have an op-ed which ran on the CNN website this weekend, comparing recent events in Catalonia with the Dutch fight for independence in the 16th century:

• • Catalonia's fight for independence: Are there lessons from the Dutch revolt?
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  • A small, wealthy region feels at odds with Spanish rule. Taxes are too high; political representation is limited; the elite feels unheard and ill-treated; unrest and popular opposition spread. Hardliners in Madrid advocate repression and have the ear of a new ruler. Turmoil ensues and escalates until a major confrontation is inevitable.
    http://www.cnn.com/2012/11/21/business/catalonia-dutch-revolt-lessons/index.html
    
    
    
    

Reading about punishment

fodder for our next reading group session (Hermann, Thöni, Gächtner, Science 2008):

We document the widespread existence of antisocial punishment, that is, the sanctioning of people who behave prosocially. Our evidence comes from public goods experiments that we conducted in 16 comparable participant pools around the world. However, there is a huge cross-societal variation. Some participant pools punished the high contributors as much as they punished the low contributors, whereas in others people only punished low contributors. In some participant pools, antisocial punishment was strong enough to remove the cooperation-enhancing effect of punishment. We also show that weak norms of civic cooperation and the weakness of the rule of law in a country are significant predictors of antisocial punishment. Our results show that punishment opportunities are socially beneficial only if complemented by strong social norms of cooperation.