Playing by whose rules? Institutional resilience, conflict and change in the Roman economy

This chapter addresses the question of deep institutional change in the Roman provinces—how informal social norms and conventions that affect economic performance changed (or not) under the influence of Roman rule. It argues that systems theory, approaching provincial societies as complex adaptive systems, provides us with a new approach to study the problem of raised economic performance in changing institutional environments, such as the Roman provinces. The Roman empire lacked the resources to impose new formal institutions and needed local elites to enforce them. Deep institutional changes resulted gradually from structural changes including monetisation and commoditisation but also social status signalling, connectivity, and landscape modification. These structural changes affected the situational contexts in which social roles were played out and new social rules developed