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Destined for Democracy? Labour Markets and Political Change in Colonial British America

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  17 June 2015

Elena Nikolova
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Abstract

In this article a new explanation for the emergence of democratic institutions is proposed: elites may extend the right to vote to the masses in order to attract migrant workers. It is argued that representative assemblies serve as a commitment device for any promises made to labourers by those in power, and the argument is tested on a new political and economic dataset from the thirteen British American colonies. The results suggest that colonies that relied on white migrant labour, rather than slaves, had better representative institutions. These findings are not driven by alternative factors identified in the literature, such as inequality or initial conditions, and survive a battery of validity checks.

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Articles
Information
British Journal of Political Science , Volume 47 , Issue 1 , January 2017 , pp. 19 - 45
Copyright
© Cambridge University Press 2015 

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Footnotes

*

European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, London (email: nikolove@ebrd.com). The author is deeply grateful to Carles Boix, Grigore Pop-Eleches and Jeff Hammer for many discussions, advice and encouragement. She also thanks the Editor (René Lindstädt), three referees and Alicia Adsera, Toke Aidt, Shekhar Aiyar, Ralph De Haas, Stanley Engerman, Ruben Enikolopov, Christina Gathmann, Simon Hess, Kosuke Imai, Marina Kaloumenou, Ilyana Kuziemko, Nolan McCarty, Maria Petrova, Jessica Trounstine, Andrea Vindigni, Joachim Voth, and participants at several seminars and conferences. The views expressed in this article are those of the author only and not necessarily of the EBRD. Data replication sets are available at http://dx.doi.org/doi:10.1017/S0007123415000101. Online appendices are available at http://dx.doi.org/doi:10.1017/S0007123415000101.

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