The Industrial Revolution and the Emergence of Liberal Democracy

• In Event: The Political Economic Origins of Democracy

Abstract

I estimate the causal effect of industrialization on democracy in the United States during the 19th century. For identification I exploit that US states with more coal deposits could more readily imitate the coal-powered British Industrial Revolution. Since the discovery of coal deposits may be endogenous I use proximity to rock strata from the Carboniferous era as a measure of the geological potential to have coal. My main specification controls for state and time fixed effects and uses the interaction between a state’ stock of Carboniferous strata and the lagged level of industrialization in Britain as a time-varying instrument. The results suggest that more rapidly industrializing states were significantly more likely to extend the franchise during the 1820 to 1920 period. Analyzing causal mechanisms I find that more rapidly industrializing counties experienced significantly more mass political protests, providing suggestive evidence that industrialization strengthened the push for democracy from below.

Author

• Sam van Noort, Princeton University