Industrialization and Democracy

Abstract

abstract: This article provides a new theory about the relationship between economic development and democracy. The author argues that a larger share of employment in manufacturing—that is, a higher level of industrialization—makes mass mobilization both more likely to occur and more costly to suppress. This in turn increases the power of the masses vis-à-vis autocratic elites, making democracy more likely. Novel manufacturing employment data for 145 countries over 170 years (1845–2015) suggest that industrialization is strongly correlated with democracy, even after accounting for income, equality, education, and urbanization. Unlike with many other socioeconomic determinants, the effect of industrialization is robust to country and time fixed effects, occurs on both transitions to and consolidations of democracy, is present in both the short and long run, and is equally large after 1945. Results from a novel instrument and several sensitivity analyses suggest that the correlation is unlikely to be spurious.