Collective Action and Representation in Autocracies: Evidence from Russia’s Great Reforms

Abstract

We explore the relationship between capacity for collective action and representation in autocracies with data from Imperial Russia. Our primary empirical exercise relates peasant representation in new institutions of local self-government to the frequency of peasant unrest in the decade prior to reform. To correct for measurement error in the unrest data and other sources of endogeneity, we exploit idiosyncratic variation in two determinants of peasant unrest: the historical incidence of serfdom and religious polarization. We find that peasants were granted less representation in districts with more frequent unrest in preceding years—a relationship consistent with the Acemoglu-Robinson model of political transitions and inconsistent with numerous other theories of institutional change. At the same time, we observe patterns of redistribution in subsequent years that are inconsistent with the commitment mechanism central to the Acemoglu-Robinson model. Building on these results, we discuss possible directions for future theoretical work.

The Slow Road from Serfdom: Labor Coercion and Long-Run Development in the Former Russian Empire

“…Using our two preferred sources (numerator and denominator), the weighted mean of the serfdom variable is approximately 36.5%. Markevich and Zhuravskaya (2018) and Castaneda Dower et al (2018) utilize essentially the same variable in their district-level analyses, with the former relying on a slightly smaller sample. Our note on the share of peasants who were serfs in the Introduction -slightly less than 45% -reflects a rough estimate derived from the relevant provincial numbers in Table 1 of Markevich and Zhuravskaya (2018).…”

The Economic Effects of the Abolition of Serfdom: Evidence from the Russian Empire

“…We also rely on the historical distribution of monasterial serfs for our instrumental variable strategy, but our identification assumptions are weaker due to the panel nature of the data we use, which allows controlling for province-specific trends. Other relevant contributions to the empirical literature on the history of the Russian Empire are Mironov and A'Hearn (2008);Nafziger (2012) ;Finkel, Gehlbach, and Olsen (2015); Castañeda Dower et al (2018) ;Chernina, Castañeda Dower, and Markevich (2014); Castañeda Dower and Markevich (2017);. 9 We describe qualitative historical evidence of the changes in the Russian countryside after the emancipation in the online Appendix.…”

Autocratic Rule and Social Capital: Evidence from Imperial China

“…12 See Giuliano and Nunn (2013), Galor and Klemp (2017), Bentzen, Kaarsen, and Wingender (2017), and Dower, Finkel, Gehlbach, and Nafziger (2017) for recent research on the roots of democracy and autocracy. Important treatments include Tullock (1987), Wintrobe (1998), andMesqita, Morrow, Siverson, andSmith (2003).…”