11:00 - 13:15
Friday-Panel
Chair/s:
Nestor Castaneda
Discussant/s:
David Rueda
Meeting Room M

Christopher Wratil
Who Gets Represented? (Un)equal Representation in the European Union

Noam Lupu, Nicholas Carnes
Nascent Ambition and Government by the Privileged

André Walter, Andreina Thoma, Patrick Emmenegger
Stalled Democratization: Landholding Inequality, Social Control, and Mass Opposition to Suffrage Extension

Nestor Castaneda, David Doyle, Cassilde Schwartz
Why Steal from the Rich to Give to No One? Rethinking Redistribution in Unequal Countries
Stalled Democratization: Landholding Inequality, Social Control, and Mass Opposition to Suffrage Extension
André Walter, Andreina Thoma, Patrick Emmenegger
University of St. Gallen

Does landholding inequality block democratization? Recent contributions have challenged the established argument that elites oppose suffrage extension if fixed assets such as land are unequally distributed. We advance research on this long-standing question by exploiting exogenous variance in land ownership to investigate the link between inequality and democratization. More specifically, we employ climate suitability for wheat production to estimate the impact of landholding inequality on local support for suffrage extension. By using outcomes for two popular votes on suffrage extension in 1875 and 1877, we find that more favorable climatic conditions for wheat production are robustly associated with higher support for suffrage extension. In addition, our analysis emphasizes the importance of social control in explaining how elites achieve their political goals.