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Archaic and classical poleis experienced unusually high rates of both political violence (Gehrke, Hansen, Arcenas) and economic growth (Scheidel et al., Ober, Bresson). Because violent political conflict and economic growth are thought to be mutually exclusive (Collier, North et al., Hegre et al.), these findings confront ancient historians with an intriguing question: given the deleterious effects of political violence on economic growth, how can we account for unusually high rates of both phenomena in ancient Greece?

Existing scholarship has reacted to this question in two ways: some have sidestepped the issue by addressing only one of the two topics (Hansen, Ober, Bresson); some have denied the premise by claiming or assuming that one of the two findings must be incorrect (explicit in Vlassopoulos, implicit in Bresson; for discussion, see Mackil). In this paper, I pioneer a third approach. I confront the problem directly and argue that the historically distinctive dynamics of stasis—the dominant form of political violence in ancient Greece—made it an important contributor to, rather than inhibitor of, economic growth.

The paper comprises three parts. In Part 1, I introduce my research question, as well as the empirical and theoretical findings on which it rests. In Part 2, I present a third empirical finding: that the levels of violence involved in stasis were low relative to analogous phenomena in other pre-modern societies. Because losing factions typically fled into exile before the violence could escalate, most staseis involved fewer than a dozen casualties, and many involved no casualties at all (Arcenas).

In Part 3, I use the empirical findings introduced in Parts 1-2 to answer my research question. I argue that the high frequency and low intensity of stasis forced ancient Greek elites to grapple with the likelihood that they would be forced into exile at some point in their lifetimes, and this expectation drove them to engage in risk mitigation strategies—e.g., investing in relationships with elites from neighboring poleis, who might one day support them in exile; investing in shipping or other asset classes that could not be easily expropriated by political opponents—that were growth-promoting, relative to the pre-modern norm of investing in agricultural production close to home.

This paper has significant payoffs for both ancient historians and the increasing number of political scientists and economists who engage with ancient Greek material (Hanssen and Fleck; Carugati, Hadfield, and Weingast; Acemoglu and Robinson). First, I resolve one of the most significant criticisms of the emerging literature on economic growth in ancient Greece—namely, that proponents of growth must be mistaken, because ubiquitous staseis would have rendered growth impossible (Vlassopoulos). Second, I provide a new explanation for the extraordinary rates of economic growth experienced by archaic and classical poleis that is complementary to existing literature on the topic (Ober; Bresson; Harris, Lewis, and Woolmer). Finally, I identify ancient Greece as an illuminating counter-example to the general consensus that political instability—and especially types of instability that involve violence and/or regime change—are inherently inimical to economic growth.