Workers of the World, Unite! Franchise Extensions and the Threat of Revolution in Europe, 1820-1938

By Toke S. Aidt, Peter Sandholt Jensen. Social Science Research Network, 2014

175 citations recorded by the source corpus.

This paper tests the hypothesis that the extension of the voting franchise was caused by the threat of revolution, as suggested by Acemoglu and Robinson [Quarterly Journal of Economics 115, 1167-1199, 2000]. We approximate the threat of revolution in a given country by revolutionary events happening in neighboring countries. We investigate the relationship between this new measure of the threat of revolution and measures of suffrage reform in two samples of European countries covering the period from 1820 to 1938. We find strong support for the ‘threat of revolution theory’. We also find some evidence that war triggered suffrage reform, whereas other theories of the extension of the franchise, including ‘modernization theory’, receive little support.

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

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/b34b0ddfeff75bf604c6be800fed68c734d9bb01

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Citations in the corpus

Inequality, financial development and economic growth in the OECD, 1870–2011 (2018, background): “Similar preemptive measures have been identified in the democratization and expansion of franchise across the world by Acemoglu and Robinson (2000) and Aidt and Jensen (2014).”
Inequality and Regime Change: Democratic Transitions and the Stability of Democratic Rule (2012, background): “Missing Suriname (1980) P Comoros (1995) Comoros (1995) Suriname (1980) P Suriname (1990) Data Congo (1997) Niger (1996)”
Economics Versus Politics: Pitfalls of Policy Advice (2013, unknown): “A great deal of case study and econometric research supports this emphasis on social confl ict (for example, Aidt and Jensen 2012).”
Response to David J. Samuels and Ben W. Ansell’s review of From Open Secrets to Secret Voting: Democratic Electoral Reforms and Voter Autonomy (2014, background): “…account for the model’s weak empirical performance dispense 3See, for example, Aidt, Daunton, and Dutta (2010); Aidt, Dutta, and Loukoianova (2006); Aidt and Jensen (2011); Banerjee and Duflo (2003); Benabou (1996); Cheibub (1998); Cutright (1965); Easterly and Rebelo (1993); Haggard and Kaufman…”