Partisan Competition, Growth, and the Franchise

By Humberto Llavador, Robert J. Oxoby. 2005

261 citations recorded by the source corpus.

We present an argument for changes in the franchise in which an elite split along economic interests uses the suffrage to influence implemented policies. Through the influence of these policies on the character of industrialization, we analyze the effects of franchise changes on economic growth. We identify in the social structure of society an explanation for the connection between enfranchisement and growth: when (1) there exists an economic conflict among the elite, (2) landed classes are not politically strong, and (3) there exists a critical mass of industrial workers, we observe both growth and democratization. The lack of conditions (1) or (2) resolves in stagnant autocracies while the absence of condition (3) drives growth-deterring democratic expansions. We provide historical support for our argument by analyzing the experience of eleven countries.

Subfields: Demography, Economics and Econometrics, Sociology and Political Science

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/96050712ea4e936a2deeff5b63efa39c43d82843

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Citations in the corpus

Institutions and Development: The Interaction Between Trade Regime and Political System (2005, unknown): “Matsuyama (1992) and Gylfason et al.”
Workers of the World, Unite! Franchise Extensions and the Threat of Revolution in Europe, 1820-1938 (2014, background): “…of franchise extension, see Falkinger (1999), Justman and Gradstein (1999), Conley and Temini (2001), Boix (2003), Lizzeri and Persico (2004), Llavador and Oxoby (2005), Jack and Lagunoff (2006), Congleton (2007, 2011), Aidt et al. (2010), Engerman and Sokoloff (2012, chapter 4) or Aidt and…”
Women’s rights and development (2013, unknown): “Substituting (31) and (32) in the RHS of (3) and (4), and substituting (33) and (34) in the RHS of (16), one obtains”
Do Natural Resources Fuel Authoritarianism? A Reappraisal of the Resource Curse (2011, unknown): “doi:10.1017/S0003055410000584”
The Origins of Democracy: A Model with Application to Ancient Greece* (2006, background): “On the expansion of democracy, see Lipset (1959), Olson (1993), Londregan and Poole (1996), McGuire and Olson (1996), and Llavador and Oxoby (2005).”
The Enfranchisement of Women and the Welfare State (2007, unknown): “…on institutions, with contributions by Acemoglu and Robinson (2000), Bertocchi and Spagat (2001), Justman and Gradstein (1999), Lizzeri and Persico (2004), and Llavador and Oxoby (2005), few papers have so far specifically focused on the determinants of the extension of the franchise to women.”
Inequality and Regime Change: Democratic Transitions and the Stability of Democratic Rule (2012, background): “Matt Buehler, alumnus of the University of Texas-Austin (2013), will begin a tenure track position at the University of Tennessee’s Department of Political Science in Fall 2014.”