The Political Economy of Democratization: A Quantitative-Historical Approach

Session Submission Type: In-Person Full Paper Panel

Session Description

How democracy first got established, and how it in turn has grown into the most legitimate form of government today, is a foundational question in comparative politics. This panel brings together four papers that study the roots of modern democracy using novel historical data and a quantitative political economic approach. Taken together the papers provide new theoretical perspectives on the structural causes of early democratization, as well as on the role and motivations of different actors in bringing it about.

Aditya Dasgupta and Daniel Ziblatt study how the discourse surrounding democracy shifted from being pejorative to being laudative in 19th century Britain. Combining novel data on the content of parliamentary debates with the tools of advanced text analysis, they uncover the important role that Britain's two main political parties have played in the structural shift in discourse surrounding democracy.

Mona Morgan-Collins focuses on the key and understudied question of how women were mobilized and included into mass political after they had won the right to vote. Using data from four Western countries she shows that women voters were under-mobilized in general, and that the degree to which they were under-mobilized depended on the structure of the electoral system.

Sam van Noort and Magnus Rasmussen use a novel quasi-experimental design to estimate the causal effect of industrialization on democratization in 19th century Norway. To do so they exploit that Norwegian constituencies that due to exogenous (geographical) reasons had greater access to hydropower were significantly more likely to industrialize after the introduction of hydroelectricity.

Adriane Fresh studies the causes of the introduction of the first recorded electoral institutions in England and Wales. Using novel data over the 1400 to 1700 period she examines whether the first elections were introduced as a result of changing economic circumstances spurred by increased overseas trade or whether election contests emerged due to the expansion of the gentry after the Reformation.

Sub Unit

• Division 44: Democracy and Autocracy

Individual Presentations

• We Are All Democrats Now: The Ideational Development of Democracy in Britain - Aditya Dasgupta, University of California, Merced; Daniel F. Ziblatt, Harvard University

• Competing for New Votes: Mobilization of Women in the Wake of Democratization - Mona Morgan-Collins, King's College London

• Does Industrialization Cause Democratization? Evidence from Norway - Sam van Noort, Princeton University; Magnus Bergli Rasmussen, University of Oslo

• The Modern Origins of Political Contestation - Adriane Fresh, Duke University

Chair

• Carles Boix Princeton University

Discussants

• Milan Svolik Yale University

• Michael Albertus University of Chicago