Working Paper: CEPR ID: DP15280
Authors: Dominic Rohner; Alessandro Saia
Abstract: Does democracy hold its promise to curb domestic political violence? While the matter has been heatedly debated for decades, not much reliable causal evidence exists so far. To study this question we focus on UK's Victorian Age of Reform, and in particular the Representation of the People Act of 1867 -- which is widely regarded as a critical juncture in the history of democratization. We have constructed a novel dataset on conflict events and economic performance around the 1868 Elections (the first elections where newly enfranchised citizens could vote) and exploit arguably exogenous variation in enfranchisement intensity across UK cities. We find a strong and robust peace-promoting effect of franchise extension and identify as major channel the beneficial impact of representation on local economic growth.
Keywords: Social violence; Conflict; Riots; Democracy; Enfranchisement; Franchise extension; Voting; Elections; Growth; Development
JEL Codes: C33; D72; D74; N43; O17
Edges that are evidenced by causal inference methods are in orange, and the rest are in light blue.
| Cause | Effect |
|---|---|
| Enfranchisement (H13) | Reduction in conflict likelihood (D74) |
| Increase in electors by 89 (K16) | Reduction in conflict likelihood by 0.93 (D74) |
| One standard deviation increase in enfranchisement (I24) | Lower risk of conflict by 10 standard deviations (D74) |
| Enfranchisement (H13) | Boost in local economic growth (O29) |
| Increasing electors (K16) | Conditions conducive to peace (F51) |
| Democratization (O17) | Economic growth (O49) |