Hämmar ojämlikhet i jordägande demokratiseringen? Fallet Preussen

 

 Bismarck i pickelhuva

det ser vi ju att det var jordojämlikheten/junkrarna som hämmade demokratiseringen i Preussen

Hämmar ojämlikhet i jordägande demokratiseringen? Detta är en klassisk fråga i diskussionen om politiska regimer, som upptagit kändisar som Tocqueville, Weber och Gerschenkron (den senares argument mer utvecklat av Barrington Moore). På 2000-talet har frågan plockats upp av politiska ekonomer som använder kvantitativa metoder: Aceomoglu och Robinson (2000), Boix (2003) med flera. Statsvetaren David Ziblatt går i sitt paper "Does landholding inequality block democratization?" från 2008 tillbaka till ett av de klassiska fallen som format debatten, inklusive hos Weber: Preussen. Ziblatts resultat och argument är att (a) ojämlikhet i jordägande spelar roll, även när man kontrollerar för inkomstojämlikhet, liksom Boix, Acemoglu och Robinson m fl skulle säga.* Men (b) också de politiska partierna spelar roll. Därmed förenar Ziblatt poängerna från de två stora skolorna i demokratiseringslitteraturen, den materialistiska som betonar klass och ojämlikhet, t ex Rueschemeyer Huber och Stephens (1992), och den som betonar partikonkurrens, t ex O'Donnell och Schmitter (1996).

I sin design avviker Ziblatts paper från den typiska jämförelsen mellan länder, åtta stycken som hos Moore eller ett stort antal med kvantitativa metoder som hos Acemoglu och Robinson eller Boix. Istället använder han lokala data och lokal variation inom fallet Preussen. För fallet Preussen menar han att idén om att mäktiga stora jordägare -- junkrar -- blockerade demokratin är i princip konsensus i den historiska litteraturen (t ex Kühne 1994, Laessig 1998, Retellack 2006). Detta argument, som väl ska göra hans egen undersökning mer originell, relativiseras dock av att han också lyfter fram att Jörg Rössel i Soziala Mobilisierung und Demokratie: Die preussischen Wahlrechtskonflikte 1900 bis 1918 (2005) och William Hagen i Ordinary Prussians (2002) båda testar såväl junkertesen som andra möjliga förklaringar. (s 619) Dessutom pekar han i en annan fotnot på att både Hagen (2002) och Patrick Wagner i Bauern, Junker und Beamte (2005) ifrågasätter den konventionella bilden av att junkrarna dominerade lokalsamhällena. I vilket fall så rundar han av sin litteraturöversikt med att säga att Preussen för ojämlikhet stoppar demokrati-tesen är ett "crucial case"/"most likely case" och därför viktigt att kolla på igen.** Närmare bestämt så är fallet en omröstning om utvidgning av rösträtten 1912. Med regressionsnalys på röstning i preussiska deputeradekammaren med deputerade från 276 valdistrikt visar han en stark negativ korrelation mellan ojämlikhet i jordägande och sannolikheten att rösta för utvidning av rösträtten. Data på jordojämlikhet tar han från Kaiserliche Statistische Amts folkräkning från 1898 som innehåller uppgifter om jordbruksstorlek för 1004 counties/Kreisen, varav 550 i Preussen (s 625). Ägandedata är alltså mer finfördelade än vad valkretsarna var, så Ziblatt räknar upp dem till valkretsnivå. I de 276 valkretsarna i Preussen är den genomsnittliga gini-koefficienten för jordägande 0.77, med en variation från 0.49 till 0.94. Han använder alltså jordägande också i urbana valkretsar (som i Berlin), och legitimerar det inte helt övertygande (s 627f). Hans mått på inkomstojämlikhet kommer från ekonomisk-historikern Oliver Grant och dennes bok Migration and Inequality in Germany 1870--1913 (2005).

Referens

Ziblatt, Daniel (2008) "Does landholding inequality block democratization? A test of the 'bread and democracy' thesis and the case of Prussia", World Politics.

Fotnot
*Så här förklarar Ziblatt Gerschenkron-Moore-skolan: de

"usually employs a comparative historical methodology to link landholding inequality and political regime. The innovation of this framework is that it does not view urban conflict between industrial employers and workers as decisive; rather, it emphasizes how preindustrial holdovers shape contemporary democratization efforts. While the argument was in large part intended to explain the political dynamics of twentieth-century Central Europe, where landed elites wielded immense authority into the modern age, it contained a broader argument that has found resonance in diverse settings. In their study of Latin America and Europe, Rueschemeyer, Stephens, and Stephens also emphasize the role of large landholders, arguing that democracy proceeded unfettered where small- and medium-scale agriculture was dominant but that the democratization of states with large landed estates tended to be blocked.15 Similar arguments have been made about how patterns of landholding and land reform shape democratization in both contemporary and historical cases, including twentieth-century Central America, Mexico, Chile, India, South Korea, and the Philippines, as well as historically in southern parts of the United States, southern Italy, and pre-Soviet Central Europe.
More broadly, embedded in this “older” variant of structuralism is the claim that democratization is hampered for two reasons when it is introduced into settings marked by high levels of rural inequality. First, landholding inequality, unlike income inequality, is a proxy for a particularly pernicious and robust form of preindustrial traditional social power in which prestige, power, and wealth are correlated, giving rise to social norms (for example, invidious hierarchy) that undercut democratization. Second, landholding inequality also gives those atop such hierarchies the resources or means to operate unchecked and thus the capability to block democratization efforts. Overall, where informal authority relations are hierarchical and invidiously unequal (as in areas with high landholding inequality), this argument asserts, democracy finds the terrain less fertile. In recent years, a second wave of research on inequality—especially rural inequality—has crept back into the comparative study of regimes, emphasizing an additional factor underpinning the negative relationship between landholding inequality and democratization. Political economists Acemoglu and Robinson17 and Boix18 do not emphasize the traditional social control dynamics entailed in high levels of rural inequality but argue instead that land inequality is relevant for regime outcomes because democratization is an indirect fight over redistribution, and land, as an immobile asset, triggers particularly strong resistance to democratization if unequally distributed. Inspired by the influential Meltzer-Richard model that has shaped political economists’ conceptions of redistribution,19 they ask: if the Meltzer-Richard model is at all plausible, why would the rich and powerful ever grant the right to vote to the poor, as that would thereby reduce the income of the median voter and increase the possibility that the rich would be “soaked” by the poor? As Boix has noted, in areas with low levels of asset mobility (for example, where land, minerals, or oil are major portions of total wealth), this question becomes even more striking because the constraining effect of inequality on democracy is even higher. When holders of capital are heavily reliant on a highly specific asset, the threat of expropriation is higher, as is elite resistance to democracy. “New structural” theorists offer slightly different answers to the puzzle of democratization when focusing on land inequality. First, in their most comprehensive work, Acemoglu and Robinson posit that the relationship between their aggregated concept of economic inequality and democratization resembles an inverted U-shaped curve: democratization is unlikely at both extremely high and extremely low levels of inequality but is most likely at moderate levels of inequality. By contrast, Boix, who focuses on both income inequality and land inequality, comes to a different finding. Using cross-national data reported by Vanhanen,22 Boix demonstrates that the percentage of total landholdings constituted by “family farms” (a proxy for rural inequality) shapes the likelihood of democratic transition: if a greater share of a nation’s agricultural land is owned as small family farms, democratic transitions are more likely. Finally, in their recent important empirical work, Ansell and Samuels highlight the differential effects of land inequality and income inequality and conclude that income inequality actually increases the chances of democratization, whereas, landholding inequality has a negative influence on democratization.23 Thus, we find ourselves back at the core point: the nature of the preindustrial social order, including in particular the pattern of landholding within a society, shapes democratization. Whether because of the clashing social norms of democracy and hierarchy inherent in conditions of high landholding inequality, or the high levels of social control entailed with high landholding inequality, or the heightened distributional conflicts triggered by democratization in such settings, there is a convergence in the cross-national literature that higher landholding inequality undercuts the probability of democratic transition"(s 615f)

Han citerar också Boix (2003): "The absence of landlordism constitutes a necessary precondition for the triumph of democracy".
**Om falldesignen hänvisar han till Gerring, Case Study Research (2006), Brady och Collier (red) Rethinking Social Inquiry (2004), och George och Bennett, Case Studies and Theory Development (2005). Och om att använda "new measures and new units" för att öka antalet teoretiskt relevanta observationer, King Keohane och Verba 1994. (s 620)

också bloggat om: Bronner och Skørge (2014) om norska rösträttsreformer 1873-84. Aidt och Jensen (2012) om revolutionära hot och demokratisering.

Se också symposiet om varför vi läser Barrington Moore idag från ett American Political Science Association-nyhetsbrev 2013 med Ziblatt, John Stephens med flera.