Democracy and Redistribution When do countries democratize? What facilitates the survival of authoritarian regimes? What determines the occurrence of revolutions, often leading to leftwing dictatorships, such as the Soviet regime? Although a large literature has developed since Aristotle through contemporary political science to answer these questions, we still lack a convincing understanding of the process of political development. Employing analytical tools borrowed from game theory, Carles Boix offers a complete theory of political transitions, in which political regimes ultimately hinge on the nature of economic assets, their distribution among individuals, and the balance of power among different social groups. Supported by detailed historical work and extensive statistical analysis that goes back to the mid-nineteenth century, this book shows, among many other things, why democracy triumphed in nineteenth-century agrarian Norway, Switzerland and the Northeastern United States yet failed in countries with a powerful landowning class. It accounts for the spread of democracy in the developed world while clarifying why authoritarianism prevails in wealthy oil nations and explains the distribution of revolutionary outbursts and regime shifts in the world in the last two centuries. To round off its exploration of the nature of political regimes, the book offers as well an assessment of the distributive and governance consequences of democracies and dictatorships. is professor of political science at Princeton University. His research and teaching interests include comparative political economy and comparative politics. His book Political Parties, Growth and Equality (Cambridge, 1998) won the 1999 American Political Science Association Best Book Award in political economy.
Cambridge Studies in Comparative Politics General Editor Margaret Levi University of Washington, Seattle Assistant General Editor Stephen Hanson Associate Editors University of Washington, Seattle Robert H. Bates Harvard University Peter Hall Harvard University Peter Lange Duke University Helen Milner Columbia University Frances Rosenbluth Yale University Susan Stokes University of Chicago Sidney Tarrow Cornell University Other Books in the Series Lisa Baldez, Why Women Protest Stefano Bartolini, The Political Mobilization of the European Left, 1860 1980: The Class Cleavage, Political Parties, Growth and Equality: Conservative and Social Democratic Economic Strategies in the World Economy Catherine Boone, Merchant Capital and the Roots of State Power in Senegal, 1930 1985 Michael Bratton and Nicolas van de Walle, Democratic Experiments in Africa: Regime Transitions in Comparative Perspective Valerie Bunce, Leaving Socialism and Leaving the State: The End of Yugoslavia, the Soviet Union and Czechoslovakia Ruth Berins Collier, Paths Toward Democracy: The Working Class and Elites in Western Europe and South America Donatella della Porta, Social Movements, Political Violence, and the State Gerald Easter, Reconstructing the State: Personal Networks ad Elite Identity Robert J. Franzese, Jr., Macroeconomic Policies of Developed Democracies Continued on the page following the index.
A l Alícia... more than reason. (Much Ado about Nothing, V,4)
Democracy and Redistribution CARLES BOIX Princeton University
cambridge university press Cambridge, New York, Melbourne, Madrid, Cape Town, Singapore, São Paulo, Delhi, Tokyo, Mexico City Cambridge University Press The Edinburgh Building, Cambridge CB2 8RU, UK Published in the United States of America by Cambridge University Press, New York Information on this title: /9780521825603 2003 This publication is in copyright. Subject to statutory exception and to the provisions of relevant collective licensing agreements, no reproduction of any part may take place without the written permission of Cambridge University Press. First published 2003 Reprinted 2005, 2006, 2007 A catalogue record for this publication is available from the British Library Library of Congress cataloguing in publication data Boix, Carles. Democracy and redistribution /. p. cm. (Cambridge studies in comparative politics) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0-521-82560-1 ISBN 0-521-53267-1 (pb.) 1. Democratization. 2. Political development. 3. Economic development. I. Title. II. Series. JC423.B6255 2003 3209.6 dc21 2002041689 isbn 978-0-521-82560-3 Hardback isbn 978-0-521-53267-9 Paperback Cambridge University Press has no responsibility for the persistence or accuracy of URLs for external or third-party internet websites referred to in this publication, and does not guarantee that any content on such websites is, or will remain, accurate or appropriate. Information regarding prices, travel timetables, and other factual information given in this work is correct at the time of first printing but Cambridge University Press does not guarantee the accuracy of such information thereafter.
Contents List of Figures List of Tables Acknowledgments page viii x xiii INTRODUCTION 1 1 A THEORY OF POLITICAL TRANSITIONS 19 APPENDIX 1.1 APPENDIX 1.2 PROVING THE RESULTS OF THE INITIAL GAME 60 ALTERNATIVE EXPLANATIONS FOR THE DEVELOPMENT- DEMOCRACY CORRELATION 63 2 EMPIRICAL EVIDENCE 65 APPENDIX 2.1 LIST OF POLITICAL REGIMES 98 3 HISTORICAL EVIDENCE 110 4 THEORETICAL EXTENSIONS: GROWTH, TRADE, POLITICAL INSTITUTIONS 130 5 DEMOCRACY AND THE PUBLIC SECTOR 171 6 THE STATE, THE THREAT OF EXPROPRIATION AND THE POSSIBILITY OF DEVELOPMENT 204 7 CONCLUSIONS 233 References 241 Index 253 vii
Figures 1.1. Choice of Political Regime in a Two-Class Model page 30 1.2. Equilibria of the Game as a Function of Inequality and Country Specificity of Wealth 35 1.3. Choice of Political Regime in a Three-Class Model 48 1.4. Changing Income Distributions 50 1.5. Class-Based Alliances versus Sector-Based Alliances 55 2.1. Number and Proportion of Democracies in the World, 1800 1994 67 2.2. Democratic Transition in Sovereign Countries 69 2.3. Democratic Transitions Coinciding with Independence 70 2.4. Democratic Breakdowns in Sovereign Countries 72 2.5. Authoritarian Rule Coinciding with Independence 73 3.1. Democracy in Switzerland before 1830 114 3.2. Inequality and Type of Assets in Switzerland in the 1830s 114 3.3. Suffrage Restrictions in American States in 1910 124 3.4. Size of Rural Sector and Wage Differentials in the United States in 1919 125 4.1. Economic Growth and Democratic Pacts 134 4.2. The Absence of Space for Democratic Pacts 136 4.3. Distribution of Population According to Average Per Capita Income of Country of Residence 158 4.4. The Game of Independence 166 5.1. The Evolution of Public Revenue as an Interaction of Economic Development and Political Regime 186 5.2. The Evolution of Public Revenue as an Interaction of Economic Development and Democratic Participation 188 viii
List of Figures 5.3. The Evolution of Current Transfers and Subsidies as an Interaction of Economic Development and Political Regime 198 5.4. The Evolution of Public Transfers and Subsidies as an Interaction of Economic Development and Democratic Participation 199 ix
Tables 2.1. Regime Transitions, 1950 90 page 79 2.2. Predicted Probability of Regime Transition by Per Capita Income and Income Inequality, 1950 90 83 2.3. Predicted Probability of Regime Transition by Education Levels and Income Inequality, 1950 90 85 2.4. Predicted Probability of Regime Transition by Size of Agricultural Sector and Income Inequality, 1950 90 86 2.5. Predicted Probability of Regime Transition by Size of Oil Sector and Income Inequality, 1950 90 87 2.6. Estimating the Probability of Political Transition, 1850 1980 91 2.7. Predicted Probability of Regime Transition by Urban and Industrial Structure and Distribution of Property, 1850 1980 93 2.8. The Causes of Civil Wars, 1950 90 95 2.9. The Causes of Civil Wars, 1850 1980 96 3.1. Electoral Restrictions and Presidential Turnout in the United States in 1920 127 4.1. Observed Probability of Democratic Breakdown by Electoral Laws and Economic Conditions, 1850 1990 146 4.2. Observed Probability of Democratic Breakdown by Presidentialism and Economic Conditions, 1850 1990 154 4.3. Observed Probability of Democratic Breakdown by Federalism and Economic Conditions, 1850 1990 157 4.4. Regional Gini Coefficients in 1993 159 4.5. Annual Probability of a Democratic Breakdown as a Function of Constitutional Structures, 1950 90 160 4.6. Annual Predicted Probability of Democratic Breakdown by Type of Constitution, 1950 90 161 x
List of Tables 4.7. Annual Probability of a Democratic Breakdown as a Function of Constitutional Structures, 1850 1980 163 4.8. Annual Predicted Probability of Democratic Breakdown by Type of Constitution, 1850 1980 164 5.1. Public Revenue of General Government as Percentage of GDP, 1950 90 185 5.2. Public Consumption of General Government as Percentage of GDP, 1960 99 192 5.3. Total Expenditure of Central Government as Percentage of GDP, 1970 99 194 5.4. Nonmilitary Expenditure of Central Government as Percentage of GDP, 1985 97 195 5.5. Subsidies and Transfers of Central Government as Percentage of GDP, 1970 99 197 5.6. Wages and Salaries of Central Government as Percentage of GDP, 1970 99 201 6.1. The Level of Rent Appropriation by Political Regime and Newspaper Readership, 1980 90 209 6.2. The Level of Rent Appropriation by Types of Authoritarian Regime and Democracy, 1980 90 213 6.3. The Level of Rent Appropriation by Concentration of Wealth and Political Regimes, 1980 90 215 xi
Acknowledgments This book has benefited from comments by Alícia Adserà, James Alt, Delia Boylan, Jeff Campbell, Matt Cleary, Gösta Esping-Andersen, Lloyd Gruber, Jonathan Guryon, David Laitin, José María Maravall, Luis Medina, Susan Pratt, Adam Przeworski, Ignacio Sánchez-Cuenca, Carey Shugart, Duncan Snidal, James Snyder, Andy Sobel, Susan Stokes, Lora Viola, Michael Wallerstein, Lisa Wedeen and Christa van Wijnbergen. I also thank participants in seminars at Fundación Juan March, Madrid; Washington University; the University of Chicago; Harvard-MIT Positive Political Economy Workshop; McGill University; Kellogg Institute for International Studies, Notre Dame University; UCLA; Ohio State University; CIDE, Ciudad de México; Stanford University; and Yale University. My deepest gratitude goes, however, to Luis Garicano, with whom I wrote the baseline model described in Chapter 1. Finally, I wish to acknowledge the financial support of the Franke Institute for the Humanities at the University of Chicago. The Institute freed me from teaching in the academic year 1999 2000 under the assumption I would be writing on a different project: I hope that, despite my change of plans, the result is worth their investment. xiii