This paper seeks to understand the extent to which religion has been used to legitimize political power in the past, and the extent to which that carries into contemporary institutions. The authors seek to demonstrate that there is a strong link between the stratification of societies in the past and the presence of autocracies in many of those same areas today. They make their case by putting forward, and testing, three linked theories -- first, that stratified societies are more likely to develop religions based on moralizing high gods as a means of divine legitimization, second, that the societies that used religion for legitimacy in their past are more likely to have religion embedded in their institutions today, and third, that societies that used religion for legitimacy in the past are more likely to be autocracies today.

What causes people to trust or distrust others? Through a multi-level empirical analysis, the authors of this article find that societies with historical exposure to infectious diseases will tend to minimize contact with contaminated out-groups while strengthening in-group relationships to manage infections, thus developing a lower radius of trust.