Queens

Oeindrila Dube and S.P. Harish

No 23337, NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc

Abstract: Are states led by women less prone to conflict than states led by men? We answer this question by examining the effect of female rule on war among European polities over the 15th-20th centuries. We utilize gender of the first born and presence of a female sibling among previous monarchs as instruments for queenly rule. We find that polities led by queens were more likely to engage in war than polities led by kings. Moreover, the tendency of queens to engage as aggressors varied by marital status. Among unmarried monarchs, queens were more likely to be attacked than kings. Among married monarchs, queens were more likely to participate as attackers than kings, and, more likely to fight alongside allies. These results are consistent with an account in which marriages strengthened queenly reigns because married queens were more likely to secure alliances and enlist their spouses to help them rule. Married kings, in contrast, were less inclined to utilize a similar division of labor. These asymmetries, which reflected prevailing gender norms, ultimately enabled queens to pursue more aggressive war policies.

JEL-codes: D74 F51 H56 J16 N43 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2017-04
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-gen and nep-his
Note: LE POL
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Published as Oeindrila Dube & S. P. Harish, 2020. "Queens," Journal of Political Economy, vol 128(7), pages 2579-2652.

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.nber.org/papers/w23337.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:nbr:nberwo:23337

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
http://www.nber.org/papers/w23337

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc National Bureau of Economic Research, 1050 Massachusetts Avenue Cambridge, MA 02138, U.S.A.. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by ().