Past Session
Sunday, January 26, 2025
17:30h
Presented by
Viktor Malein (Lund University)
https://sites.google.com/view/viktormalein/about-me

Economic Modernisation and Democratization: Evidence from 1917 Russian Revolution

Abstract

This paper examines how exposure to successful democratic institutions influences subsequent electoral support for constitutional order. It leverages a historical quasi-experimental setting: the 1864 Zemstvo reform, which introduced spatial variation within the Russian Empire in access to democratic institutions. The reform established local self-governments, allowing various social groups, including former serfs, to participate in local elections and elect officials to local assemblies. Additionally, Zemstvo institutions played a key role in expanding public goods provision, such as primary schooling and healthcare. Using population census data, the paper exploits variation across cohorts over time, demonstrating that those exposed to the reform experienced significant gains in human capital and occupational choice. By employing a spatial regression discontinuity design and analyzing the results of the 1917 Constitutional Assembly Elections, the paper shows that the literate population in Zemstvo regions, who benefited from public goods provision, increased electoral support for liberal parties (Constitutional Democrats). The findings highlight the mutually reinforcing relationship between support for liberal democracy and economic progress, which benefits broad segments of the population.

About this workshop

The Public Governance workshop is an online seminar series focused on state of art research in political economy that uses non-traditional data and data-intensive methods.

The workshop gives a platform for the research on the role of governance in designing and developing better policies. Key features are the political environment, the role of the media, the engagement of stakeholders such as civil society and firms, the market structure and level of competition, and the independence of public regulators, among others. Particular emphasis is placed on research with NLP methods due to the proven usefulness of transforming text into data for further econometric analysis.

Periodicity: Mondays from 17h30 to 19h.