The Indigenous Roots of Representative Democracy
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.
Year of publication: |
2014-12-20
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Authors: | Bentzen, Jeanet ; Hariri, Jacob Gerner ; Robinson, James A. |
Institutions: | Økonomisk Institut, Københavns Universitet |
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