Empires, States, and the Making of Power III. Elites, Institutions, and the Dynamics of Political Power

Session Submission Type: Paper Session

Brief Overview

"How do elites gain, preserve, and contest political power across different institutional environments? This panel brings together new research in historical political economy that examines how elite cohesion, fragmentation, and adaptation shape political outcomes over time.

Tine Paulsen studies suffrage extensions in historical Norway, showing that the fiscal consequences of democratization depended on pre-existing elite fragmentation.
Bradley Erickson investigates hereditary autocracies in Europe, finding that the presence of brothers or uncles could, contrary to expectation, enhance regime stability.
Anna F. Callis and Chris Carter examine early-twentieth-century Peru, where countervailing electoral oversight allowed President Augusto Leguía to weaken his own dominant party and consolidate power. Daniel Baquero analyzes how the structure of elite family networks in Peru's República Aristocrática (1895-1919) conditioned the conversion of wealth into political authority, using newly digitized data on business leaders and officeholders.

Together, these papers illuminate how elite networks and institutional constraints interact to shape state formation, redistribution, and political authority across democracies and autocracies alike.

Section

• 84. Working Groups (In House)

Chair

• 1:30pm |

  Yuhua Wang, Harvard University

Individual Presentations

• 1:35pm |

  Elites, Networks and Political Power - Daniel Baquero, New York University

• 1:48pm |

  Trade, Representation, and Electoral Contestation During England's Long 17th Century - Adriane Stewart Fresh, Duke University

• 2:01pm |

  Are Uncles Evil? Familial Commitment Problems in Autocratic Succession - Bradley Erickson, Emory University

• 2:14pm |

  Disrupting the Dominant Party: Countervailing Electoral Oversight in Authoritarian Regimes - Anna Callis, Lafayette College; Christopher Lee Carter, University of Virginia

Discussants

• 2:27pm |

  Emily A. Sellars, Yale University

• 2:27pm |

  Didac Queralt, Yale University

Audience Participation

• 2:40pm |

  Audience participation will last for the remainder of the session.