No abstract

The Dataset of Historical Elections in Catalonia covers the most detailed information available for elections that took place in Catalonia during the period 1890–1923. It describes all the specificities of a unique dataset encompassing census tract electoral returns, together with candidate-level data and GIS information. This note presents the context of the electoral data by describing the electoral system and political characteristics of Catalonia and Spain for the period of interest. This dataset expands information regarding electoral data in Catalonia for the period, which until now was only available at the electoral district level. Micro-level electoral data has been collected from multiple different sources ranging from official gazettes, original electoral tallies preserved in a wide range of archives, and secondary sources. This note descriptively presents the data to show its reuse potential for a large array of social scientists interested in historical, political, economic, or demographic processes that took place at the early 20th century. This new dataset has a large potential for future social science research on electoral behavior or party system formation and can be employed to better understand how social processes influenced politics and vice versa.

What are the origins of elite splits? Why do regional elites break away from central elites and develop regional parties? This paper contends that intra-elite differences are more likely to be politicized when an economic shock exacerbates pre-existing asymmetric economic preferences and disadvantaged elites can mobilize the electorate on the basis of identity. I employ constituency-level data from Catalonia spanning the late 19th and early 20th century to test which factors influenced regional elite decisions to form a regional elite political party. To understand elite divisions, I exploit a historical exogenous trade shock and its asymmetric impact within Catalonia, and the availability of identity-based mobilization agents. The results show that regional elite splits took place in areas more affected by the 1898 colonial trade shock and where elites had larger mobilization capacity.

No abstract