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The ideal length of formal rules has been studied as a core preoccupation of firms and states. Shorter rules are a typical firm’s response to performance pressures concerning efficiency; longer rules are a typical polity’s solution to questions of political control and order. Very little is known in this respect about the rules of an institution that has been longer-lived and more influential than most firms and states: organised religion. Are the drafters of church rules more sensitive to performance pressures or to political considerations or to both? This article brings together theories of constitutional politics, church and state, bureaucracy, and economic competition to develop explanations of length variation in the core rules of churches. An empirical exploration proposes ways to test these expectations and produces relevant preliminary evidence. This new direction in the study of institutional religion can update existing understandings of churches as complex institutions that lie somewhere between the ideal-typical firm and the ideal-typical polity.

The formal rules of organised religion: a framework for empirical research