Does moral culture contribute to the evolution of cooperation? Here, we examine individuals’ and communities’ models of what it means to be good and bad and how they correspond to corollary behavior across a variety of socioecological contexts. Our sample includes over 600 people from eight different field sites that include foragers, horticulturalists, herders, and the fully market-reliant. We first examine the universals and particulars of explicit moral models. We then use these moral models to assess their role in the outcome of an economic experiment designed to detect systematic, dishonest rule-breaking favoritism. We show that individuals are slightly more inclined to play by the rules when their moral models include the task-relevant virtues of “honesty” and “dishonesty.” We also find that religious beliefs are better predictors of honest play than these virtues. The predictive power of these values’ and beliefs’ local prevalence, however, remains inconclusive. In summary, we find that religious beliefs and moral models may help promote honest behavior that may widen the breadth of human cooperation.

The present study tested the impact of jury experience on citizens’ perceptions of the criminal prosecution system. Based on deliberative democratic theory which predicts the beneficial impact of jury experience on citizen-jurors’ confidence and knowledge in law and the justice system, it was hypothesized that jury experience would be associated with favorable impression of the criminal prosecution system and that jury experience would have a positive impact on citizens’ perceived knowledge of the criminal prosecution system. The present study through analyzing data collected by the American Prosecutors Research Institute (APRI), examined the effect of jury experience (versus no jury experience) on perceptions of the criminal prosecution system. Results show that jury experience positively influences citizen-jurors’ impression and perceived knowledge of the criminal prosecution, supporting an attitudinal and educational impact of jury experience. Potential limitations of the study and policy implications are discussed.

We study an enforcement model in which, as soon as a Legislator grants an amnesty to low-rank criminals cooperating with the justice, top criminals react by bribing public officials in order to avoid being sanctioned. We show that, to prevent this form of subversion of law, the optimal policy must grant leniency not only to low-rank criminals but also to officials who plead guilty and report bribe-givers. By doing so, the policy increases the conviction risk not only for top criminals but also for their soldiers. This higher risk increases the reservation wage that top criminals must pay in order to recruit soldiers and therefore reduces the crime profitability (the bright side of subversion of law).

Land conflicts in many parts of the world indicate pressures for change in the property rights institutions governing land acquisition and land use. Whether or not institutional change occurs depends on the incentives and capacities of political actors. This article argues that the legal environment is one factor influencing incentives for institutional change. Three case studies of land governance in Southeast Asia’s palm oil industry illustrate three types of legal environment—rule-by-law legalism, legal pluralism and lawlessness, or routinized illegality. The cases show that the legal environment shapes modes of resistance to property reallocations in the palm oil industry. Rule-by-law legalism supports legalized modes of resistance through the court system. In contrast, legal pluralism and lawlessness favor the use of political strategies to contest property reallocations. The mode of resistance in turn determines whether actors acquiring property have incentives to gain legal cover, or whether investing in political resources is more rewarding. Although the effectiveness of resistance is largely determined by the distribution of political resources, the mode of resistance helps explain whether there is demand for property rights institutions that offer generalized legal certainty in property protection. Path-dependence arising from the legal environment therefore influences the direction of institutional change.