Institutions are the system of legal rules and social norms that enhance individual economic property rights. Individuals take them as exogenous, but they are endogenous to the entire system. Institutions are complicated distributions of economic property rights and are therefore the result of attempts to maximize wealth net of the transaction costs involved. This chapter defines institutions, relates them to property rights, reviews the literature, and provides numerous examples of institutions and their evolution.

Prompted by what he perceived as the chaotic tendencies of the Jacobins, Edmund Burke, in his Reflections on the Revolution in France, proposes a modern revival of honor, a virtue derived from the time-tested principles of chivalry, hierarchy, and, above all, the shared sentiments that bound together the social order. William Godwin’s preeminent Jacobin novel Caleb Williams represents one outcome of living under Burkes sentimentalist honor code: its relentlessly skeptical protagonist is cowed by the emotional demands of chivalry and is ultimately left unable to think about anything but his master, with whom he shares a psychic bond. Instead of eliminating a sense of honor from public life, however, Godwin offers an alternative version of honor. Sharing with Burke a similar fear of post-revolutionary atomization, Godwin presents what he calls “true honor,” a virtue that avoids the sentimentalism and obsession with rank that characterized Burkean chivalry. In commiting to the general good whose circumference expands beyond white, propertied citizens, Godwin presupposes – or even exceeds – the ideals of liberal social democracy by more than a century.

This chapter deals with homicide and serious interpersonal violence in modern Europe, comparing this with the rest of the world for as much as the evidence allows. It focuses, but not exclusively, on male-on-male violence. This is discussed for three subperiods: 1800-1914, 1920-1970, 1970-present. More is known about the global context as we approach the present. In Europe homicide ceased to be a day-to-day affair in urban and rural communities, so that the remaining acts of murder assumed the character of sinister or sensational exceptions. In this connection, the phenomena of serial murder and the underworld are discussed. For the non-Western world, the evidence remains patchy and fragmented up to 1970. Traditional male honor remained important and affected interpersonal violence in independent Latin America as well as Colonial India and Indonesia. Dueling was rather prevalent among European men in colonial societies. The chapter concludes with a tentative thesis that we can speak of a world history of violence since about 1970, under the influence of globalization. International organized crime was a major factor in this.