Crowning Achievement
Elite Persistence in the Era of England’s Expanding Overseas Trade
Adriane Fresh
Comparative Political Studies, forthcoming
Abstract:
This paper considers the consequences of England’s 17th-century dramatic expansion of overseas trade for the persistence and turnover of political elites. I study the extent to which “new” commercial economic interests -- individuals involved in expanding trade -- obtained Parliamentary representation, as well as the extent to which those individuals were connected to members of the incumbent parliamentary elite or hereditary aristocracy. I do so using an original dataset on Members of Parliament (MPs) spanning more than two centuries (⇠1550–1750). Despite the dramatic expansion of trade during the period, I find that only a modest share of Parliament represented the commercial sector, and overseas traders never constituted a majority of commercial representatives. The parliamentary entré of trading interests manifested most acutely via investors in trade rather than active participants. Moreover, the growing Atlantic economy was associated with little turnover in MPs’ social and family backgrounds. Broadly, I find that elites persisted across the economic changes of the long 17th century and were well-positioned to capture many of the early gains for themselves.
Income and the (eventual) rise of democracy
Dario Debowicz et al.
Public Choice, September 2025, Pages 381-424
Abstract:
We investigate the relationship between income and democracy. A theoretical framework is developed where citizens derive utility from both material goods and political rights. Citizens can devote their time either to creating material benefits or to political activism (that improves political liberties). We demonstrate a non-monotonic relationship between income and democracy. In low income countries -- where the elasticity of the marginal rate of substitution between material goods and political rights is low because of small incomes -- exogenous increases in income (wages) lead to a reduction in the level of political liberties: as wages increase, citizens are increasingly willing to give up time otherwise devoted to activism to work more. In high income countries, the opposite is true: political liberties increase with income. Our country fixed-effects and GMM estimations on cross-country data over 1960–2010 empirically validate this non-monotonic prediction, thereby corroborating our theory above-and-beyond the effect of institutions and culture. The predictions are equally validated for data spanning back to 1800.
Does economic liberalization increase government accountability?
Veeshan Rayamajhee & Raymond March
Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, September 2025
Abstract:
This paper examines the impact of economic liberalization on government accountability. Using a country-level panel spanning 1900-2020 from the V-DEM dataset, we exploit discrete and sustained jumps in state ownership and control of the economy to identify instances of reforms toward economic liberalization. We use a doubly-robust staggered difference-in-differences approach on stacked data and find a sizable and positive relationship between economic liberalization and government accountability. We further identify three channels through which capitalistic reforms improve government accountability: greater media independence and representation, stronger civil society participation, and broader inclusion of diverse elite groups, all of which impose checks on governmental power. Our results are robust to a host of robustness checks including exclusion of different geo-political regions and historical episodes as well as alternative treatment definitions.
Laboratories of Autocracy: Landscape of Central–Local Dynamics in China’s Policy Universe
Kaicheng Luo, Shaoda Wang & David Yang
NBER Working Paper, September 2025
Abstract:
Using a comprehensive collection of 3.7 million Chinese policy documents and government work reports spanning the past two decades, we identify 115,679 distinct policies and systematically trace their initiation and diffusion. Our analysis reveals three key findings. First, China’s policymaking has historically been highly decentralized, with local bureaucrats playing crucial roles in both creating new policies and spreading them. Second, since 2013, policymaking has become substantially more centralized, driven primarily by changing bureaucratic incentives -- bottom-up innovation is no longer rewarded, while strict enforcement of central policies is. Third, our examination of industrial policies shows that centralization affects both policy suitability and effectiveness. Top-down industrial policies tend to align poorly with local conditions and are less effective at driving industrial growth, highlighting centralization’s costs. On the other hand, under decentralization, competition among local officials can distort policy diffusion, also undermining effectiveness. Our quantitative assessment of both distortions indicates that economic costs of centralizing policymaking in China have significantly outweighed its benefits.
Storm from the Steppes: Warfare and Succession Institutions in Pre-Modern Eurasia, 1000–1799 CE
Daniel Steven Smith
American Political Science Review, forthcoming
Abstract:
A prominent literature on pre-modern warfare and institution-building holds that intense military competition in pre-modern Europe encouraged institutional innovations -- for example, centralized bureaucracies and monopolies on coercion -- that empowered rulers and enhanced state capacity, with salutary effects on long-run political development. States that adopted these innovations were more likely to survive, whereas those that did not succumbed to invading armies. Yet links between geopolitical competitiveness and capacity building are largely theorized and tested based on the European historical experience. A broader view of that period reveals a more complicated picture. The dominant mode of warfare throughout much of medieval and early modern Eurasia, Inner Asian cavalry warfare (IACW), favored succession institutions that selected for competent military leaders at the expense of long, secure reigns and cumulative capacity-building potential. I explore these links between IACW, succession practices, and rule duration with a novel dataset of over 300 Eurasian dynasties.
Maintaining Empire: The Examination System and Secessionist Conflict in Imperial China
Gary Cox, Mark Dincecco & Yuhua Wang
Stanford Working Paper, September 2025
Abstract:
The endurance of empire in China over much of the past two millennia contrasts starkly with the political fragmentation in Europe since the fall of Rome. To explain the persistence of China’s empire, we analyze the role of keju, the imperial civil service examination system. While geographic features and external threats impacted state formation, we argue that the systematic implementation of keju from the Song dynasty onward tied local elites to the imperial state, promoting centralized governance and reducing secessionist conflicts. Exploiting panel data spanning more than 4,200 grid cells and 20 centuries, we find robust evidence that areas producing more jinshi -- the top exam passers -- experienced significantly fewer secessionist wars. Our study shows how the examination system created the political incentives for imperial unity.
Inward and Outward Migration under Shifting Legal-Democratic Regimes
Assaf Razin
NBER Working Paper, September 2025
Abstract:
This paper analyzes the two-way relationship between international migration and political regime change, highlighting a feedback loop in which political shifts shape migration flows, while migration itself reshapes political trajectories. Relying on a Difference-in-Differences (DiD) framework and a dataset combining migration flows, regime quality indicators (CHRI), and measures of international integration, we identify three central results. First, substantial immigration into politically fragile democracies undermines institutional quality. The 2015 Syrian shock provides a particularly valuable exogenous case: a sudden, large-scale refugee inflow that bypassed domestic policy controls and provoked sharp political responses, allowing for clearer identification of immigration’s institutional effects. Second, democratic decline increases emigration, draining human capital and further weakening prospects for democratic recovery. Third, international integration -- most notably through EU accession -- conditions these dynamics, amplifying or dampening the outflow response to political change. Taken together, these findings show that migration is not merely a symptom of political instability but also a driver of institutional transformation, simultaneously reinforcing and accelerating regime shifts toward illiberalism.
Strength in Numbers: How Variation in Party Size Impacts the Origins, Evolution, and Durability of Communist Regimes
Martin Dimitrov
Comparative Political Studies, forthcoming
Abstract:
This article proceeds from a novel empirical finding: namely, there is substantial divergence in the size of the communist party between two subtypes of communist autocracies (revolutionary vs. nonrevolutionary regimes). The communist party is small at the moment of the seizure of power in the revolutionary dictatorships (e.g., China) and remains relatively small throughout their lifespan. By contrast, in the nonrevolutionary subtype (e.g., Bulgaria) the communist party is large at the time of regime inception and remains so throughout the lifespan of the dictatorship. The article identifies the precommunist historical antecedents of this variation and offers an explanation of its effects, linking the divergence in party size to variation in outcomes of central theoretical interest to students of authoritarianism, such as regime origins, regime evolution, and regime durability. The article is based on an original communist party dataset constructed from qualitative corpora of archival materials, supplemented with relevant secondary sources.
An Economic Model of the French Revolution
Kishore Gawande & Ben Zissimos
Journal of Public Economic Theory, October 2025
Abstract:
We offer a new economic perspective on the French Revolution by analyzing how an elite commitment problem and trade policy shaped revolutionary dynamics. We develop a complete-information game-theoretic model in which revolution can occur on the equilibrium path. By formalizing the interaction between democratization and trade policy, our model explains when revolution may occur with some probability. Unlike models with incomplete information, where revolutions may be mistakes, our approach shows that revolution occurs only when it is beneficial for the rest of society. Paradoxically, we show that revolution could occur only because there was sufficient trust in the Ancien Régime.