Rebellion, Elite-Empowerment and Democratization: Evidence from Historical China

• In Event: Historical Legacies: Tracing the Origins of Political Behavior

Abstract

The origins of representative institutions are typically traced in either fiscally motivated pacts between the central power and the elites or in mass insurgencies. We use the case of Taiping rebellion in China to argue that these two processes might be interdependent. In order to mobilize local counter-insurgency, the imperial government had to concede administrative, fiscal, and political powers to the local elites. Using original data on civil exam quotas, we show that these concessions were especially concentrated in the localities where the elites had acquired an independent source of wealth from the newly forming export market for commodities like tea. Even though the Qing dynasty ultimately prevailed in suppressing the rebellion, the elites retained their newly acquired administrative and economic power. We show that the places where the elites were more empowered produced relatively more insurgents during the 1911 revolution as well as more elected representatives in the newly formed National Assembly. Even though the Chinese experience with the national representative institutions was very short-lived, it provides an interesting counterpoint to the canonical model of the origin of representative institutions derived from European history. In contrast to European monarchs, the Chinese crown did not establish representative institutions to acquire credit for war-making, but instead relinquished some of its powers to the local elites who then demanded representative institutions to cement their power when the empire was collapsing.

Authors

• Arturas Rozenas, New York University

• Ning He, New York University