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Knutsen, C. H., Møller, J., & Skaaning, S-E. (2016). Going Historical: Measuring

Democraticness before the Age of Mass Democracy. International Political Science Review, 37(5), 679-689. DOI: 10.1177/0192512115618532

Publication metadata Title: Going Historical: Measuring Democraticness before the Age

of Mass Democracy

Author(s): Knutsen, C. H., Møller, J., & Skaaning, S-E.

Journal: International Political Science Review, 37(5), 679-689

DOI/Link: http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/0192512115618532

Document version: Accepted manuscript (post-print)

1

Going Historical:

Measuring Democraticness before the Age of Mass Democracy1

Carl Henrik Knutsen

Professor, PhD

Department of Political Science, University of Oslo

Moltke Moes vei 31

0851 Oslo, Norway

E-mail: c.h.knutsen@stv.uio.no

Jørgen Møller

Professor, PhD

Department of Political Science, Aarhus University

Bartholins Allé 7

8000 Aarhus C, Denmark

E-mail: jm@ps.au.dk

Svend-Erik Skaaning

Professor, PhD

Department of Political Science, Aarhus University

Bartholins Allé 7

8000 Aarhus C, Denmark

E-mail: skaaning@ps.au.dk

Carl Henrik Knutsen received financial support for the research from Research Council

Norway, [pnr 240505], and Jørgen Møller and Svend-Erik Skaaning received financial

support for the research from the Danish Council for Independent Research [11932]

1 The authors would like to thank John Gerring, Andrej Kokkonen, Gerardo Munck, Jan Teorell, and three

anonymous reviewers for valuable comments and suggestions.

2

Going Historical:

Measuring Democraticness before the Age of Mass Democracy

Abstract

Most studies of democratic developments are limited to the period after World War II.

However, political regimes varied according to different aspects of democracy long before the

establishment of modern liberal mass democracies. We come down strongly in favor of

collecting disaggregate and fine-grained historical data on democratic features. Based on a

distinction between competition, participation, and constraints on the executive, we discuss

previous attempts at historical measurement and address the specific challenges that pertain to

scoring political regimes in, first, the “long 19th century” and, second, medieval and early

modern Europe.

3

Introduction

Most of our inferences about comparative democratic development derive from a “biased

sample”, namely the period after 1945 (Boix 2011; Capoccia and Ziblatt 2010). There is an

increased recognition within political science that we can gain much from going further back

in time when attempting to draw inferences about the causes and consequences of political

institutions and regime types. This is reflected in several new data gathering projects that

attempt to measure the characteristics of political institutions, leaders, and events back into

the 19th century (e.g., Przeworski 2013; Goemans, Gleditsch and Chiozza 2009; Elkins,

Ginsburg and Melton 2009).

The much-discussed relationship between political institutions and economic

development illustrates the potential gains of employing historical data. Economic historians

have proposed that as recently as 1800, the major polities in North America, Latin America,

Western Europe, and East Asia – still predominantly agrarian – were on par regarding

economic development (Bulmer-Thomas 2014; Pomeranz 2000). Thenceforth they developed

along dissimilar trajectories, and today their average levels of income and social development

are worlds apart. Similarly, a reversal of fortunes occurred within Europe between the Middle

Ages and the Industrial Revolution, as the polities in Northern and Western Europe overtook

those in Southern and the Eastern Europe in terms of economic development (De Long and

Shleifer 1993).

These differing developmental trajectories correlate with salient institutional changes,

such as the abolishment of absolute monarchy and extensions of the franchise. More

generally, it is difficult to see how such divergences could owe to differences in culture or

natural endowments alone; prima facie the trajectories lend support to the importance of

political institutions (e.g., Acemoglu and Robinson 2012; North and Weingast 1989).

However, due to a dearth of historical data little is known empirically about which particular

4

institutions matter the most for spurring economic development. Only by going historical can

we obtain sufficient information to disentangle the causes and consequences of various

institutions from each other, and from potential confounders, and thereby rigorously examine

more exact institutional theories of development (or, for that matter, theories on other effects

or consequences of institutions).

These points have direct relevance for the measurement of democracy. Some scholars

argue that it is meaningless to talk about the degree of democracy for countries that do not

fulfill certain baseline criteria (see Collier and Adcock 1999). However, as Munck (2015)

argues, democratic quality is basically a matter of democracy level, and it thus makes sense to

measure democratic quality both for polities that have crossed the threshold of the category

of, say, polyarchy (Dahl 1971) and for those that have not. More particularly, we contend that

political regimes varied in “democraticness” long before the advent of modern liberal mass

democracies in the early 20th century (Doorenspleet 2000; Paxton 2000). These differences

can be mapped even in situations where no case in the sample is a full instance of democracy.

However, going historical does pose challenges. First, as we venture back in time,

information needed for measuring political institutions becomes scarcer. Second, we must

identify aspects of historical institutional variation that often differs from contemporary

institutional designs. Third, as most historians only cover singular cases and do not use a

more general vocabulary to describe these case-specific developments, we need to translate

this work into something that fits our predefined conceptual containers. Fourth, historians

often have an explanatory agenda of their own, meaning that a critical reading of patterns in

historiography is necessary (Lustick 1996).

The upshot of this is that attention must be focused on core aspects of democracy that

are measurable based on narrative works of historians and meaningful to assign scores to prior

to, say, equal and universal suffrage. Furthermore, we need to disaggregate such measures so

5

that particular regime characteristics can be traced, irrespective of whether or not the more

general whole – modern democracy – was present.

Various suggestions for how to pin down the core conceptual attributes of democracy

exist. The seminal one is Dahl’s (1971) distinction between contestation and inclusiveness

(see also Rokkan 1968). A number of scholars have added a third attribute termed “control”

(Lauth 2004), “consultation” (Mazucca 2010), “executive power” (Rokkan 1968), or

“constraints on the executive” (North and Weingast 1989; Acemoglu and Robinson 2012).

We structure our discussion of the historical measurement of democracy around these three

attributes, which we term Competition, Participation, and Constraints on the Executive

(henceforth Constraints). We address shortcomings of existing indicators and discuss ways of

coding additional features of competition, participation and constraints, first in the “long 19th

century” between the French Revolution and World War I, and, second, in medieval and early

modern Europe. To illustrate these recommendations, we provide two examples of specific

historical indicators and discuss how to code these.

The long 19th century

Competition

Elections of various kinds have a long history, and we find some early examples of alternation

between proto-parties, for instance between the “Hats” and “Caps” during the Swedish Age of

Liberty (1718-1772). But the long 19th century was the era in which regularized presidential

and parliamentary elections turned so competitive that they prompted transitions of power

from incumbents to the opposition across a wider range of countries. This happened in the

United States following a deeply divisive election of 1800, and by the 1830s alternations

occurred in Great Britain and parts of Latin America (Przeworski 2015). These developments

6

are covered in Przeworski’s (2013) PIPE dataset, while Vanhanen (2000) uses the largest

party’s seat share to measure competition from 1810.

However, other institutional aspects of 19th century elections, not covered by extant

datasets, affected the nature of competition. Incumbents frequently reduced the

competitiveness of elections through subtle strategies like intimidation and violence,

manipulation of voter registration and vote counting, or annulling inconvenient results

(Goldstein 1978; Posada-Carbó and Valenzuela forthcoming). For instance, 19th century US

elections were often marred by voter fraud and election violence, and the so-called “Rotten

Boroughs” existed in Britain until the Reform Act of 1832.

Finally, overt and covert repression of freedoms of expression, association, and

assembly also affect the competitiveness of political systems. A high reliability and cross-

country equivalence is difficult to achieve when measuring these more or less subtle

competition-reducing tactics. But based on historical material, it would still be possible to

code whether, for example, socialist groups were allowed to organize and whether criticism of

the government was restricted.

The Historical Varieties of Democracy project will use country-experts to code such

aspects of democracy – and numerous other aspects – in sovereign and some semi-sovereign

polities for 1789−1920. To establish cross-country equivalence, a detailed codebook with

anchoring vignettes and Bayesian measurement modeling will be employed (Knutsen et al.

2015). Historical V-Dem will extend the time series for variables already coded by V-Dem

(www.v-dem.net) for 1900-2012, and add a number of other variables relevant for 19th

century polities. To exemplify, Historical V-Dem will extend the V-Dem indicator on

freedom of discussion for men: “Are men able to openly discuss political issues in private

homes and in public spaces?”, ranging from 0 (not respected) to 4 (fully respected).

7

Figure 1 displays time-series (unadjusted raw-scores from one expert coder per country)

from two pilot countries, Colombia and Denmark. In the Danish case, the jump in 1848/9

reflects the introduction of a liberal constitution, while the drop in the late 1880s/early 1890s

takes place during years characterized by increased tension between the conservative

government and the liberal opposition. In Colombia, the first drop overlaps with the years

(1828-30) Bolívar enacted martial law and assumed dictatorial powers, the second drop in

1854 coincide with General Melo’s seizure of power, and the third downturn reflects

confrontation between Liberals and Conservatives demarcated by the introduction of a new,

centralized constitution in 1886 and a reform in 1910.

[Figure 1 about here]

Participation

The 19th century saw dramatic improvements in male franchise in many countries. Typically,

the franchise was restricted based on criteria such as ethnicity, income, and property

(Goldstein 1978). In some countries, such as the UK, the franchise was expanded in a

stepwise manner; in other countries, such as France, changes were more abrupt.

This important indicator of participation is measurable for 19th century polities.

Nonetheless, PIPE is the only source with two comprehensive indicators of suffrage

restrictions for parliamentary elections (lower chamber elections if more than one chamber).

One distinguishes between the following categories of franchise: none; estate; property only;

three different combinations of property, income, taxes, educational titles, exercise of

profession, and/or literacy; economically independents; and manhood suffrage. The other

captures whether other restrictions exist, based on ethnicity, territory, political observation,

religion, military/police personnel, slaves, priests/nuns, or property owners.

8

These restrictions are also captured by the Historical V-Dem project, which on top of

subjectively scored indicators (by country experts) includes a number of factual indicators.

The latter coding will move beyond the said PIPE indicators by also covering different

restrictions on suffrage for presidential and upper chamber elections (if applicable), and on

candidate eligibility.

However, even these detailed participation indicators only paint a rough picture of the

empirical variation in the long 19th century as there were other formal and informal barriers to

voter registration and to the actual voting. For example, election violence not only de facto

limited competition, but also reduced the ability of many citizens to partake in elections

despite de jure voting rights, as in the American South until the voting rights act of 1965.

Such restrictions are partly reflected in Vanhanen’s (2000) second democracy indicator, i.e.,

the percentage of the adult population that actually votes. However, this measure does not

provide information about the particular restrictions, and it may also tap other things.

One key aspect of many 19th century elections was their indirect nature, which affected

whether all individuals participated on equal terms. Voters first designated electors, who then

came together – often without clear restrictions or monitoring of which candidates to vote for

– to select representatives, inducing highly unequal distribution of influence between regular

voters and electors. One example is Norway, which maintained an indirect election system

until 1905. Furthermore, some systems applied weighting of votes, as exemplified by

Prussia’s three-class franchise system from 1849-1918 in which voters were divided into three

groups after taxes paid, giving disproportionate influence to wealthy citizens. Other examples

include Belgium, the UK, and New Zealand, where plural voting was credited to privileged

groups, and Sweden until 1866, where societal estate groups (noble, clerics, burghers, and

farmers) voted for representatives in different chambers. These aspects, too, can be coded

systematically based on historical sources, though informal limitations are difficult to score.

9

Constraints

A widely used cross-national measure, extending back to 1800, is Polity’s XCONST

indicator, tapping “the extent of institutionalized constraints on the decision-making powers

of chief executives” (Marshall, Gurr and Jaggers 2014: 23). XCONST ranges from 1

(“Unlimited authority”) to 7 (“Executive Parity or Subordination”), meaning that other

institutions, such as legislatures, parties, courts, or noble councils have equal or greater

effective authority than the chief executive in most policy areas.

The political histories of many European countries in the long 19th century demonstrate

the relevance of measuring this dimension as they can be interpreted as a battle between

opposition groups, often strongly represented in parliament, and the executive (the monarch

and his/her cabinet), with the former trying to obtain prerogatives in various policy areas and

control over the latter (Congleton 2010). One example is Norway’s drawn-out 19th century

fight over parliamentary control over the government, which was resolved in 1884 when the

King was forced to appoint a new government led by the liberal opposition. In Latin America,

fierce struggles – or the lack thereof – between different branches of government further

illustrate the importance of indicators reflecting constraints.

More generally, it is important to unpack the notions of parliaments; not only did their

powers vary; their composition and structure also differed from case to case. Although

XCONST captures some of these differences and developments, the diverse formal and

informal institutional set-ups and trajectories in the long 19th century also reveal its

limitations. We need more fine-grained institutional measures of the chief executive’s

relationship to the legislature, the judiciary, and implementing institutional bodies, including

election administration. This would also allow us to distinguish regimes where the executive

10

is mainly constrained by institutions representing broader population groups from constraints

induced by less representative institutions.

Medieval and early modern Europe

Scholars have traced features of competition, participation, and constraints all the way back to

the Middle Ages (e.g., Downing 1992; Finer 1997; Mazucca 2010). Most of this work relates

to medieval representative institutions. This is in many ways ideal, since pragmatic

considerations here chime with more substantive ones. Representative institutions were the

key aspect of the medieval regime form (Ertman 1997: 19), and the workings and

prerogatives of these institutions are among the best described features in a period with scarce

historical data because they have attracted ”perhaps more scholarly attention than any other

subject within the institutional history of medieval Europe” (Cerda 2011: 62).

Competition

Medieval and early modern parliaments did not rule themselves, but legislated together with a

monarch who exercised power (Myers 1975; Finer 1997). Although there was no genuine

electoral competition for executive power, there was some competition for succession to the

throne. Kokkonen and Sundell (2014) have coded succession orders in Europe between 1000-

1800 AD, distinguishing between (i) election/selection, (ii) agnatic seniority, and (iii)

primogeniture. There is obviously a qualitative difference in competition between the first

category and the two others. In some polities – e.g. Poland and Hungary – parliaments had the

constitutional prerogative to elect monarchs whenever one died; in other polities the choice

fell to parliament when a ruling line died out (Myers 1975; Stasavage 2010).

More generally, succession crises were often settled by parliament, even for

succession orders based on primogeniture (see e.g. O’Callaghan 1989). Thus, one can make

11

more fine-grained empirical distinctions in degree of competition over succession for each of

the three categories. Furthermore, one could envisage coding other aspects of

competitiveness, including the selection of representatives to parliaments and the designation

of positions within parliament. This would be much more difficult to score empirically, but

some headway could surely be made using historical sources.

Participation

The scope of representation in medieval parliaments can be scored along two dimensions,

namely the number of groups and the proportion of the population represented (see Myers

1975; Finer 1997). In some parliaments, only the high nobility and high clergy were

represented. This was particularly common in the early phases of representative institutions.

The usual pattern in Europe was thus one where the lower nobility and urban elites gained

representation over time. The result was normally a parliament including nobles, clergy, and

townsmen and divided into three different estates. But in some polities, including Denmark,

Sweden, the marsh areas of Northwestern Germany, and Alpine areas of Austria and

Switzerland, the free peasantry also sent representatives (Myers 1975).

So far, extant datasets have not covered these distinctions, although they are relatively

easy to code using historical sources and although they are likely to reveal interesting spatial

differences and temporal developments. For instance, the English knights of shires (lower

nobility) and burgesses (urban elites) were first present in parliament in the mid-13th century,

but were only regularly represented after 1300 (Maddicott 2010). In Castile, urban

representation became more restricted over time – as it did in Poland-Lithuania (O’Callaghan

1989; Myers 1975). In Denmark, the free peasantry lost the right to representation in 1600,

well before parliament was abolished in 1660. The population share represented in assemblies

also differed starkly. In Poland-Lithuania and the Republic of Venice, an estimated 8-12

12

percent of the population belonged to represented groups (nobles and citizens, respectively)

compared to 2-3 percent in England and France (Finer 1997: 1047). It should be possible to

score such differences in general degree of representation in an accrued fashion.

Constraints

Constraints on the executive varied a lot across European regimes before 1789. A crude

distinction has been made between absolutist and constitutionalist monarchies (e.g., Downing

1992; Ertman 1997). Recently, more fine-grained measures of parliamentary constraints on

rulers have been collected. Stasavage (2010), van Zanden et al. (2012), and Abramson and

Boix (2014) code the frequency with which parliaments were convoked across Europe from

the 12th century onwards. Stasavage (2010) has also coded other attributes of parliaments,

including rights to veto taxation and audit expenditure. Most of these indicators relate to

aggregate units. This is problematic because medieval political units were “composite states”,

which included a number of constituent units each with their representative institutions.

Likewise, units have typically been scored across relatively wide time periods. However, both

the constituent units and shorter time spans are increasingly being covered by data collection

efforts (see Abramson and Boix 2014).

The larger problem is that numerous relevant aspects of parliamentary prerogatives have

been ignored. With respect to constraints, the most fundamental distinction concerns whether

parliament was a permanent assembly the ruler had to convoke at regular intervals (say,

annually, biannually or triennially) or whether it was simply called at the ruler’s whim. This is

not scored in any of the above-mentioned datasets.

The main problem with coding this indicator is the difficulty of ascertaining when

assemblies are convoked due to formal rules specifying fixed convocations and when they are

called by rulers “on schedule” for other reasons. This speaks in favor of identifying instances

13

where monarchs grant fixed convocations. Coding such “constitutional breakthroughs”

enables us to, first, distinguish realms where rulers granted fixed convocations from those

where they did not, second, to distinguish between realms based on how often such formal

rules were specified, and, third, to distinguish periods before and after the introduction of this

fundamental prerogative within realms. Explicit pledges of fixed convocations are relatively

easy to identify, either by sifting relevant primary sources describing outcomes of assemblies

or – more realistically – scanning second hand sources of Historians. For instance, Kagay

(1981) provides narrative descriptions of all assemblies in the Crown of Aragon (Aragon,

Catalonia, and Valencia) during 1064−1327, making it possible to identify each assembly

where the Aragonese count-king pledged fixed future convocations.

[Figure 2 about here]

On this basis, Figure 2 reports both the tallies for frequencies of convocations and the number

of times the Aragonese count-kings conceded fixed convocations in the period 1100-1327. To

keep the figure simple the numbers aggregate all units in the composite realm of the Crown of

Aragon but they could easily be broken down on each of the subunits, including in particular

the kingdom of Aragon and the duchy of Catalonia. We see that the frequency of

convocations increase over time, but also that a kind of two-steps-forward-one-step-

backwards pattern characterize the data. Furthermore, it turns out that the granting of fixed

convocations took place in a relatively circumscribed period around 1300, marking the

transition to the age of the ‘pactist’ monarchy of the late crown of Aragon (Myers 1975: 62-5;

Kagay 1981: 384-5, 392). On the basis of these figures it is possible to identify the periods

where Aragonese count-kings where more constrained. Adding similar data for other realms,

a more general measure of constraints could be enlisted in large-N analysis.

14

Other prerogatives also merit attention. First are veto powers. In some parliaments, such

as in Poland and Aragon, each representative had a veto (in Poland the notorious liberum

veto), meaning that complete unanimity was required for decision making. In others, some

kind of majoritarian decision making seems to have prevailed. Regarding more specific

prerogatives, some assemblies were only consulted over taxation, whereas others won the

right to be consulted in all matters of royal government, including declaration of war. In many

places, changes in military service or appointments of royal officials likewise needed to be

consented to by parliament (e.g., Maddicott 2010: 180). Historians have also documented the

existence of freedom of speech of representatives in many medieval parliaments.

Yet other aspects of constraints could be mapped. In Catalonia after 1359, the so-called

Generalidad, a permanent committee of the corts, both collected and administrated taxes

(Kagay 1981: 212-43). Similarly, some monarchs recognized the right to resistance if

privileges such as exemptions from taxation or right to self-government were transgressed

(e.g., O’Callaghan 1989: 86). While it would be difficult to ensure high reliability, and many

political units would have missing data, many such prerogatives could be coded based on

qualitative distinctions.

Conclusions

The first country to introduce equal and universal suffrage for men and women was New

Zealand in 1893. However, there was large empirical variation in degrees of competition,

participation and constraints long before this, indeed, even before the French Revolution.

Historical work and some cross-country coding efforts – particularly for the 19th century

– detail this variation, making it possible to distinguish historical regimes according to the

degree of democracy or democratic quality. The omens here are promising as several ongoing

data gathering projects are likely to shed further light on many of these features. For instance,

15

Historical V-Dem will, as noted, contain both objective indicators of formal-institutional

features, and country-expert evaluations of the existence and functioning of formal and

informal institutions relevant for measuring competition, participation, and constraints.

So far, scholars have only scratched the surface with respect to coding aspects of

medieval and early modern representative institutions in Europe. Numerous additional aspects

pertaining to competition, participation and constraints could be coded based on historians’

narrative work, notably on medieval and early modern parliaments. New data on political

regimes in and before the long 19th century would enable us to better address various

empirical relationships, including those between political institutions and economic

development.

This can be illustrated by returning to the two specific indicators presented above. The

constraints imposed by medieval and early modern assemblies have been linked to historical

divergences in patterns of economic growth (North and Weingast 1989; Acemoglu and

Robinson 2012). However, by 1500 representative institutions existed across all of Western

Christendom. Thus, we need measures of the extent to which they constrained rulers in order

to analyze their effects on growth. Prior scholarship has used the frequency of convocations

as a proxy but the extent to which monarchs had pledged fixed convocations is another way of

capturing this, allowing for more precise analysis of the relationship between medieval

institutions and growth. This could inform the debate on the causes of the “reversal of

fortune” within Europe before the Industrial Revolution (see, e.g., De Long and Shleifer

1993).

Likewise, Historical V-Dem data pertaining to competition and participation for the 19th

century will provide variation to better evaluate competing accounts on why democracy

affects growth. Does democracy enhance growth mainly because it widens leaders’

supporting coalitions (e.g., Bueno de Mesquita et al. 2003) or because increased elite

16

competition incentivizes leaders to provide growth-enhancing policies (e.g., Lake and Baum

2001)? These data will also enable more valid assessments of theories proposing that more

specific institutional features, such as freedom of expression (Knutsen 2015), generate a

positive relationship between democracy and growth. This kind of analysis can help shed new

light on the “Great Divergence”, i.e., why the economies of Western countries outpaced those

of Asian autocracies after 1800.

17

Figures

Figure 1: Freedom of discussion for men in Denmark 1800−1920 and Colombia 1820−1920;

Source: Historical V-Dem Pilot data.

18

Figure 2: Frequency of convocations (lines) and frequency of royal pledges of fixed

convocations (bars), by decade, for the Crown of Aragon, 1100-1327

Note: The ‘1320s’ only extends to 1327. The numbers aggregate assemblies for Aragon, Catalonia, Valencia,

Aragon-Catalonia, and Aragon-Catalonia-Valencia.

19

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