The core of our analysis asks why and when elites renounce the privileges of reducing effort and immunity to coercion that they enjoy under elite rule. To do this most clearly, we continue to focus on the best balance from the elite`s perspective (which we will relax later), but we now also endorse the extent to which elites are subject to “the law” (i.e. coercive punishments) when they step aside. We note several key findings. 23. Lawyers, like other citizens, have the right to freedom of expression, belief, association and assembly. In particular, they have the right to participate in public debate on matters of law, the administration of justice and the promotion and protection of human rights and to participate, establish and attend meetings of local, national or international organizations without professional restrictions by virtue of their lawful act or membership in a legitimate organization. In exercising these rights, lawyers always conduct themselves in accordance with the law and the recognized standards and ethics of the legal profession. The impact on equality before the law is ambiguous, as the balancing effect is that a higher endowment of elites improves their payments in the event of self-sufficiency, making deviation more tempting.
To counter this increased temptation to deviate, greater equality before the law may be necessary. However, if the allocation of foundations is also socially determined – so that dissidents can be deprived of their equipment of future era – then this second effect disappears. In this case, the large elite foundations clearly reduce equality before the law. 28. Disciplinary proceedings against lawyers shall be brought before an impartial disciplinary committee appointed by the legal profession, before an independent statutory authority or before a court and shall be subject to independent judicial review. In particular, the loss of the benefits of the cooperation of others (which creates incentives for both regular and elite agents) can be facilitated by sinister trigger strategies – where cooperation collapses completely after a deviation – combined with a constant coercive punishment of normal agents that deviates. With these strategies, the equilibrium payment of a normal agent (per period) is |$left( 1-alpha right) f_{N}left( xright) +alpha f_{E}left( yright) -x$|, while its best payout of deviations is |$left( 1-delta right) left[ left( 1-alpha right) f_{N}left( xright) +alpha f_{E}left( yright) right] -g$| east. Assimilation of the two yields (2).
Similarly, the equilibrium payment of an elite agent is |$left( 1-alpharight) f_{N}left( xright) +alpha f_{E}left( yright) -y$|, while its best payout of the deviation is |$left( 1-delta right) left[ left( 1-alpha right) f_{N}left( xright) +alpha f_{E}left( yright) right]$| east. The equivalence of these quantities gives (3). Thus, normal agents are punished by both withdrawal from cooperation and foreclosure, while elites are punished only by withdrawal from cooperation. Note that in the best balance for elites, normal agents should always work as hard as possible, i.e. (2) bind. The most important part of our analysis concerns situations in which the elite can choose between elite domination and different degrees of equality before the law. We show that it can be optimal – also from the point of view of elites – to introduce full equality before the law, which combines strong coercion with low inequality. Norms and laws, in turn, are interdependent: equality of treatment before the law coincides with a shift in norms towards expectations of identical behavior of elites and ordinary actors. The key mechanism is that by depriving elites of their privileges, equality before the law strengthens the carrot of future cooperation for ordinary agents. This encourages ordinary agents to make greater efforts, which can benefit all members of society, including elites. This comparative statistic (such as Proposition 9) is related to the argument by North et al. (2009) that the rule of law among elites is a precursor to the emergence of equality before the law for all individuals.
Consistent with this comparative statistic (and Northet al.), several historical episodes support the idea that political changes that strengthen small elites promote greater equality before the law. For example, the Magna Carta was an agreement imposed on King John in 1215 by a group of English barons that limited their powers and ability to act without the Baron`s consent. But the final charter was formulated as a concession by the king “to all the free men of our kingdom” and went so far as to limit the ability of landowners to impose their own serfs on forced labor (see Holt, 2015, and discussion in Acemoglu and Robinson, 2019). While the Standard Minimum Rules for the Treatment of Prisoners recommend, in particular, that legal assistance and confidential communication with a lawyer be provided to unconvicted prisoners, States should not allow existing protection of economic, social and cultural rights to deteriorate unless there are strong justifications for retrogressive action. For example, the introduction of secondary school fees, which were previously free, would be a deliberate step backwards. To justify it, a State would have to demonstrate that it had adopted the measure after carefully considering all options, assessing the impact and making full use of its maximum available resources. One of the most important medieval English labor regulations was the Workers` Statute, enacted in the fourteenth century, which allowed landowners to force workers to work at fixed wages. In the words of historian Robert Steinfeld: “The English working arms of this period |$ldots$| have been subject to a repressive regime of legal regulation” (2001, p.
8) and “In the 14th and 15th centuries, judges regularly ordered prison sentences for those who violated their oral employment contract by leaving before the agreed deadline” (p. 28). This law was reaffirmed by later statutes of the sixteenth century and extended to a handful of craft trades in the eighteenth century. Steinfeld writes: “In seventeenth-century England, the almost universal legal form of consensual manual labor was not free labor, but unfree labor” (p. 3). This regime was also exported to the American colonies and formed the core of their labor law.