Lottery-Based Elections, Power Monopolization, and Urban Development: The Case of Swiss City-States, 1666–1794

Jonas M. Geweke and Katja Rost

The Journal of Economic History, 2025, vol. 85, issue 3, 767-805

Abstract: Early modern urban parliaments suffered an increasing monopolization of political power that hampered urban development. To combat power monopolization, some Swiss city-states reformed their election systems by randomly selecting political representatives from a pre-elected pool of candidates. We implement a difference-in-differences design and find that lottery-based election systems improved the equality of distribution of political seats within parliaments. Lottery-based elections also had positive effects on trade tax revenues, trade volumes, and infrastructure expenditures. We explain this finding by showing that lottery-based election systems fostered the election of merchants to top political positions.

Date: 2025
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