Peter Leeson

Leeson's Invisible Hook argues that Caribbean pirates developed an early form of constitutional democracy and engaged in behaviors such as flying the Jolly Roger because doing so maximized their profit.[22]

In the wake of the Maersk Alabama hijacking, his work on piracy drew substantial media attention.[23][24][25][26] In an article published by National Public Radio, he said that "early 18th century pirates, men like Blackbeard, "Black Bart" Roberts, and "Calico" Jack Rackam, were not only thieves. They were also early experimenters with some of the modern world's most cherished values, such as liberty, democracy, and equality."[27]

Although Leeson is careful to note that he does not praise the criminal actions of pirates, he argues that their self-organization is a useful illustration of how even criminal conduct is based on rational self-interest. In an interview published by The New York Times, Leeson summarized his thesis:

The idea of the invisible hook is that pirates, though they're criminals, are still driven by their self-interest. So they were driven to build systems of government and social structures that allowed them to better pursue their criminal ends.... The reason that the criminality is driving these structures is because they can't rely on the state to provide those structures for them. So pirates, more than anyone else, needed to figure out some system of law and order to make it possible for them to remain together long enough to be successful at stealing.[26]

Leeson's book WTF?! argues that practices which seem senseless, such as trial by ordeal, trial by combat, and oracular divination, are in fact clever solutions devised by people to overcome social problems.[28] A recurrent theme in his work is that "people—all of them, regardless of time or place, religion or culture, wealth, poverty, or anything else—are rational."[29] Similarly, he maintains that all institutions, including those "that seem obviously inefficient—and, indeed, sometimes downright absurd—are in fact, on closer inspection, efficient and not so absurd after all."[30]

Leeson has written extensively on the economics of anarchy and has suggested that "self-governance works better than you think."[31] Avinash Dixit described Leeson's book Anarchy Unbound: Why Self-Governance Works Better Than You Think as "an eye-opener," and Robert Ellickson described it as "masterly."[32] According to Leeson:

[T]he case for anarchy derives its strength from empirical evidence, not theory.... Despite... significant arenas of anarchy we do not observe perpetual world war in the absence of global government, shriveling international commerce in the absence of supranational commercial law, or even deteriorating standards of living in Somalia. On the contrary, peace overwhelmingly prevails between the world's countries, international trade is flourishing, and Somali development has improved under statelessness.[31]

The Fund for the Study of Spontaneous Orders, which is administered by the Atlas Economic Research Foundation, awarded Leeson its Hayek Prize in 2006, noting of his scholarship that:

Leeson has concentrated on the study of the problem of order where no formal law exists, showing how in such diverse situations as trade among strangers, banditry in colonial West Central Africa and modern Somalia, and life in pirate societies over the ages often informal rules emerge that allow order to be preserved without heavy-handed government control.[33]