Democratization and the Rule of Law: Evidence from Prussia’s Law Codification Movement

• In Event: Law Under Authoritarian Regimes

Brief Overview

Does law codification drive democratization? We exploit the codification of law in 1794 in Prussia as a natural experiment and find that the new law increased i) peasant's propensity to seek justice as well as ii) the fairness of court sentences.

Author

• Anselm Hager, Humboldt-University