Does Industrialization Cause Democratization? Quasi-Experimental Evidence from the Norwegian Industrial Revolution"

Magnus Rasmussen, University of Oslo
Tore Wig, University of Oslo
Sam Vaan North, Harvard University

Prominent theories of the origins of democracy suggests that industrialization was a driving force for democratization in the 19th and early 20th century. Testing this hypothesis has remained challenging, however, as within-country data on democracy is largely missing while causal identification is difficult to achieve on the country-level. We circumvent these problems by focusing on whether Norwegian MPs from more rapidly industrializing constituencies were more likely to vote for democratic reforms over the 1879 to 1913 period. For causal identification we exploit that Norwegian municipalities with a greater geographical potential for hydropower were significantly more likely to industrialize after the introduction of hydroelectricity. To examine causal mechanisms, we collect geocoded data on the existence and composition of mass political protests.

No extended abstract or paper available

 Presented in Session 111. Contentious Politics