Lottery-Based Elections, Power Monopolization, and Urban Development: The Case of Swiss City-States, 1666-1794

• 成果类型: Article
• 署名作者: University of Zurich
• 刊物名称: JOURNAL OF ECONOMIC HISTORY
• ISSN/ISSBN: 0022-0507
• DOI: 10.1017/S0022050725100910
• 发表日期: 2025
• 页码: 767-805
• 关键词: economic-growth; Europe; institutions; Elite; GOVERNMENT; franchise; DEMOCRACY; REFORM; VOTE; rise

摘要

Early modern urban parliaments suffered an increasing monopolization of political power that hampered urban development. To combat power monopolization, some Swiss city-states reformed their election systems by randomly selecting political representatives from a pre-elected pool of candidates. We implement a difference-in-differences design and find that lottery-based election systems improved the equality of distribution of political seats within parliaments. Lottery-based elections also had positive effects on trade tax revenues, trade volumes, and infrastructure expenditures. We explain this finding by showing that lottery-based election systems fostered the election of merchants to top political positions.