Waiting for Napoleon? Historical Democracy and Norms of Cooperation
Presenter
Devesh Rustagi
Assistant Professor of Applied Microeconomics at the Department of Management and Microeconomics
Goethe University Frankfurt
Time and location
North Quad 4330, Oct 25, Thursday (1:00-2:00) pm
Abstract
We exploit plausibly exogenous variation in historical experience of democracy to investigate its effect on norms of cooperation today. In the 13th century, a powerful noble house in Switzerland became extinct from the absence of an heir. This resulted in some municipalities acquiring self-governance via imperial immediacy, but the remaining municipalities continued under feudalistic institutions until Napoleon liberated them. Using two different datasets, we show that individuals from municipalities that democratized early display twice the level of cooperation than individuals from municipalities that did not, even after accounting for geographical, language, canton, and dynasty specific factors. These differences persist because of cultural transmission and better quality of institutions in early municipalities that democratized early.