DOI Heft:
Artykuły / Articles
DOI Artikel:Van Alfen, Peter G.: Problems in the political economy of archaic greek coinage
DOI Seite / Zitierlink:https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.22230#0026
PETER VAN ALFEN
transactions differently than his Athenian counterpart. Since my concern is delin-
eating what we might cali the Realpolitik of archaic coinage, that is the political
and economic bargaining over the practical and materiał considerations of coin
production, and not so much with a coin’s reception and continued use, post-pro-
cessual theories are of less use than those that can address the many communal (or
individual) decisions that must be madę in order to mint in the first place: why do
we need coinage; how much should we produce; where do we procure monetary
metal and what kind; what weight standard and denominational system do we use;
what should appear on the coins? But, perhaps most importantly, who decides?
QUEST10NS AND FRAMEWORKS
I suggest that many of the political and economic interpretations of coinage
discussed above do not go far enough in their conceptual framework to be able to
address these types of ąuestions. In part this is because recourse to the “state” as
the monolithic decider in these matters depersonalizes the very real discussions
and decision processes behind the production of the objects we now hołd in our
hands.37 Elow then to proceed? We can begin by reminding ourselves that in these
comparatively smali communities, with their constant schedules of symposia,
military obligations and religious festivals, those who were eligible to influence
decisions about coin production came to know each other, or know about each
other ąuite well; the “state” was their friends, neighbors, and personal enemies.
Thinking of coin production as a communal project, one comprised of individuals
possessing different types of knowledge, power, and loyalties attempting to work
in concert with each other, we recognize that in the process of negotiating an out-
come, pure motivations like the political or economic become blurred in the clash
of competing self-interests and aims, as we saw in the case of the US Lincoln cent.
We also recognize that because of this the outcome, i.e., the coins, may not reflect
the best policies or the most efficient Solutions. Whatever complexities were expe-
rienced in these negotiations at the domestic level, they were exacerbated when the
talkmg moved across political boundaries, as in the case of cooperative coinages.
Within the fields of economics, politics, and sociology there are tools that can
help us model how these decisions were madę. My suggested theoretical frame-
work is pluralistic, adoptmg components of public choice theory to explore ratio-
nality and the behavior of self-interested political actors and agents; bargaining
theory to understand sources of inefficiencies in reaching agreements; elite theory
37 In RG. VAN ALFEN, “Public benefactor or profiteer? The role of ‘the State' and early electrum coin-
age” [in:] H. GITLER, K. KONUK, C. LOBER (eds.), White Gold, (forthcoming); I deal morę at length with the
analytical tendency to depersonalize the decision making processes within State institutions and focus only on
institutional inputs and outputs.
transactions differently than his Athenian counterpart. Since my concern is delin-
eating what we might cali the Realpolitik of archaic coinage, that is the political
and economic bargaining over the practical and materiał considerations of coin
production, and not so much with a coin’s reception and continued use, post-pro-
cessual theories are of less use than those that can address the many communal (or
individual) decisions that must be madę in order to mint in the first place: why do
we need coinage; how much should we produce; where do we procure monetary
metal and what kind; what weight standard and denominational system do we use;
what should appear on the coins? But, perhaps most importantly, who decides?
QUEST10NS AND FRAMEWORKS
I suggest that many of the political and economic interpretations of coinage
discussed above do not go far enough in their conceptual framework to be able to
address these types of ąuestions. In part this is because recourse to the “state” as
the monolithic decider in these matters depersonalizes the very real discussions
and decision processes behind the production of the objects we now hołd in our
hands.37 Elow then to proceed? We can begin by reminding ourselves that in these
comparatively smali communities, with their constant schedules of symposia,
military obligations and religious festivals, those who were eligible to influence
decisions about coin production came to know each other, or know about each
other ąuite well; the “state” was their friends, neighbors, and personal enemies.
Thinking of coin production as a communal project, one comprised of individuals
possessing different types of knowledge, power, and loyalties attempting to work
in concert with each other, we recognize that in the process of negotiating an out-
come, pure motivations like the political or economic become blurred in the clash
of competing self-interests and aims, as we saw in the case of the US Lincoln cent.
We also recognize that because of this the outcome, i.e., the coins, may not reflect
the best policies or the most efficient Solutions. Whatever complexities were expe-
rienced in these negotiations at the domestic level, they were exacerbated when the
talkmg moved across political boundaries, as in the case of cooperative coinages.
Within the fields of economics, politics, and sociology there are tools that can
help us model how these decisions were madę. My suggested theoretical frame-
work is pluralistic, adoptmg components of public choice theory to explore ratio-
nality and the behavior of self-interested political actors and agents; bargaining
theory to understand sources of inefficiencies in reaching agreements; elite theory
37 In RG. VAN ALFEN, “Public benefactor or profiteer? The role of ‘the State' and early electrum coin-
age” [in:] H. GITLER, K. KONUK, C. LOBER (eds.), White Gold, (forthcoming); I deal morę at length with the
analytical tendency to depersonalize the decision making processes within State institutions and focus only on
institutional inputs and outputs.