The Modern Origins of Political Contestation

• In Event: The Political Economy of Democratization: A Quantitative-Historical Approach

Abstract

Many theoretical treatments of the selection of political representatives assume the institution of an election in which a contest can occur --that is, a situation in which more than one candidate vie for a seat in a representative institution. Despite the importance of electoral institutions to our theoretical understanding of much of politics -- both democracy and electoral authoritarianism -- the origin of these institutions is far less understood. In this paper I consider the origin of contests in electoral institutions. I collect new data on the universe of candidate selections from approximately 1400 to 1700 in England and Wales, covering the period in which the first contests are historically recorded. With this data, I evaluate two competing theoretical accounts of contest emergence in this historical context: first, that contests emerged as a response to the changing economic environment brought about by expanding overseas trade in the late 16th and early 17th centuries; and second, that contests emerged due to the expansion of the gentry as former Catholic lands were redistributed following the Reformation. Evaluating these theories speaks directly to the relative economic and social importance of early representative institutions; the latter of which has been far less appreciated in contemporary political economy scholarship. The paper contributes to our understanding of the long-run process of democratic development broadly by evaluating one of the most important of its constituent institutions.

Author

• Adriane Fresh, Duke University