This paper was originally prepared for presentation to the seminar series on social and institutional change at the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, Princeton, N.J., organized by Paul DiMaggio. I appreciate the insightful comments of Art Stinchcombe on the earlier draft.

When developing electoral protocols, desiderata include a system which is transparent, non-manipulable, honest, and not open to strategizing. However, these desiderata are in tension with each other: Often, transparent electoral procedures are the least strategy resistant, and many honest procedures encourage manipulation. Thus, a balance between these different goals must be sought. In modern times, since the seminal result on vote manipulation, the Gibbard-Satterthwaite Theorem, much attention has been devoted to developing voting rules where manipulation is never in the best interest of the voters, or which are computationally too complex for the average bounded agent to be able to manipulate. In medieval times, such computational routes were generally not available, meaning that other constraints had to be put in place to discourage strategizing and manipulation. We discuss various voting rules and electoral procedures used in the Middle Ages in both ecclesiastical and secular context, highlighting some protocols with unique properties. 1

currently in revise & resubmit status at American Journal of Sociology word count = 21,871 without footnotes; 28,371 with footnotes 1 The authors gratefully acknowledge a series of small grants from the Social Science Division of the University of Chicago, which helped in the collection of data, and a substantial grant from the Hewlett Foundation, which funds John Padgett’s and Walter Powell’s “Co-evolution of States and Markets ” program at the Santa Fe Institute. SFI is the intellectual and research home of this project; we deeply appreciate its support over numerous years. David Sallach

The authors gratefully acknowledge a series of small grants from the Social Science Division of the University of Chicago, which helped in the collection of data. The Santa Fe Institute enthusiastically gave intellectual and research support to the first author. SFI is a creative environment in which to work. David Sallach and Nick Collier, of the Social Science Research Computing Center at the University of Chicago, offered the kind gift of their services in helping to organize the data into relational data-base form. We have received helpful comments on an earlier draft of

This paper was originally prepared for presentation to the seminar series on social and institutional change at the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, Princeton, N.J., organized by Paul DiMaggio. I appreciate the insightful comments of Art Stinchcombe on the earlier draft. ORGANIZATIONAL GENESIS, IDENTITY AND CONTROL: