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• Networks of religion and state shaped fiscal capacity in both Europe and China. • Deep civic penetration of a universalistic religion bolstered European state capacity. • China's imperial dynasties stifled connectivity among subnetworks. • Kinship ties were an incomplete substitute for corporate structures in China. • Dissimilar premodern network topologies underpin the Great Divergence. As conduits for the transmission of cultural values, networks of religion and state originating in premodern Europe and China contributed to the institutional roots of their respective development and continue to forge different economic trajectories. In Europe, a universalistic religious doctrine, ideologically and institutionally distinct from the state, led to important underlying differences in market structures and informal constraints. Legal protocols and innovations in social governance emerged whose origins lay in Church doctrine and Christian ethics. In China, Confucian teaching and an examination-based recruitment of officials strengthened centralized authority; but without a systemwide transmission of unifying prosocial bonds and values as a foundation for contract law, this cheap system of social control left the state encumbered with fiscally anemic finances. These differences preceded the Great Divergence and persisted long after it to produce in Europe greater civic and fiscal capacity, and in the end more state building. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We explore how macro and micro networks influence the diffusion of technological innovation and cultural/social behavior. Across the historical regimes in China and Europe, dynastic lordship's macro networks afforded different advantages in technological innovation. A network particular to Europe, the Roman Church, extended deep into local parishes with ethical norms prescribing fairness to strangers, and these cultural foundations helped guilds, trade associations, merchant courts, and universities operate cooperatively far beyond kinship. In contrast, Chinese emperors relied on ancient Confucian moral codes and system-spanning Confucian-educated officialdom; but fiscal limitations compelled officials to defer to local lineage orders, resulting in an enduring cultural pattern of guanxi and a polity whose institutional problem-solving capacity falter beyond the local level. Yet the civil service system has enabled China to outperform similar lineage-dependent regimes. Probing network topologies, we find that system-spanning networks can facilitate technological diffusion, but local networks influence cultural and behavioral change. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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