The Indigenous Roots of Representative Democracy

Jeanet Bentzen, Jacob Gerner Hariri and James Robinson
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Jacob Gerner Hariri: Department of Economics, Copenhagen University

No 14-30, Discussion Papers from University of Copenhagen. Department of Economics

Abstract: We document that rules for leadership succession in ethnic societies that antedate the modern state predict contemporary political regimes; leadership selection by election in indigenous societies is associated with contemporary representative democracy. The basic association, however, is conditioned on the relative strength of the indigenous groups within a country; stronger groups seem to have been able to shape national regime trajectories, weaker groups do not. This finding extends and qualifies a substantive qualitative literature, which has found in local democratic institutions of medieval Europe a positive impulse towards the development of representative democracy. It shows that contemporary regimes are shaped not only by colonial history and European in uence; indigenous history also matters. For practitioners, our findings suggest that external reformers' capacity for regimebuilding should not be exaggerated.

Pages: 49 pages
Date: 2014-12-20
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cdm, nep-his, nep-hpe and nep-pol
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Related works:
Working Paper: The Indigenous Roots of Representative Democracy (2015)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:kud:kuiedp:1430

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