Institutional Change and Elite Persistence:
The 19th Century Caribbean Colonies∗
Christian Dippel†
May 16, 2012
Preliminary - Comments Welcome
Abstract
This paper studies endogenous institutional change in 14 British Caribbean colonies
in the 19th century. It highlights the fact that long run differences in colonial institutions were not always determined when European first settled. Rather, representative
institutions in the Caribbean colonies were identical to those in North America and
Australia for over 200 years and were only curtailed or abolished in the second half
of the 19th century. I show that the abolition of representative institutions can be
explained as local planter elites’ response to political competition from a rising smallholder middle class. Public expenditure data shows that when local elites ceded their
formal legislative powers to the colonial administration, policies actually tilted in their
favor. Complete data on all elected and nominated colonial politicians shows that a
high degree of persistence in the identity of local legislators, particularly those affiliated with plantation interests, could explain why the de facto political influence of
local elites was unaffected by their cession of de jure powers. In combination, the evidence shows that in the Caribbean context non-inclusive institutions developed not
at the time of settlement but late in the process because geographic circumstance had
generated an unequal wealth distribution which elites tried to protect in a changing
economic environment.
Keywords: Economic Development, Elite Persistence, Political Inequality, Institutions, Franchise Extension.
∗
I thank Dan Bogart, Lisa Blaydes, Mauricio Drelichman, Gilles Duranton, Naomi Lamoreux, Gary Libecap, Peter
Morrow, Dan Trefler and Warren Whattley for valuable discussions and insightful comments
†
UCLA Anderson School of Management (email: [email protected])
1
Introduction
Historical colonialism was an important natural experiment both in and of itself and because it
can help to identify the causal effect of institutions on long run development. The view in many
seminal papers in the institutions literature is that European settlers arriving in the New World set
up varying institutions because they faced widely differing initial conditions in different colonies.
These institutions were persistent and therefore continue to play an important role in determining differences in economic development in former colonies to the present day (Acemoglu et al.
(2001), Acemoglu et al. (2002), Engerman and Sokoloff (2002)).1 A stylized distinction can be made
between initial institutions that were “inclusive,” in the sense of maximizing a social welfare function that gave everyone roughly equal weight, and those that were “extractive,” in the sense of
giving higher or exclusive weight to the objectives of only a small elite (Acemoglu and Robinson
(2011)). The former were set up where Europeans themselves settled an area in large numbers, the
latter were set up where Europeans settled in small numbers to rule over indigenous peoples or
imported slaves.
There is broad agreement on the role that initial conditions played in the institutions Europeans
implemented as well as on the long run consequences of these institutions. However, empirical
measures of concrete colonial institutions and evidence for their degree of persistence is sparse.2
The contrast between the British colonies in the Caribbean and in the “Neo-Europes” of Australasia and North America provides an illustration of why this is important. The two sets of colonies
are easily juxtaposed, one having had high initial indigenous population density, high European
settler mortality and geography suitable for large scale plantation crops, the other low indigenous
population densities, moderate levels of settler disease and a geography most suitable for constant
returns smallholding crops. Levels of corruption and institutions protecting property rights in the
Caribbean today are far worse than those in North America, Australia and New Zealand. There
are compelling reasons to conclude that this economic and institutional divergence can be traced
to Europeans setting up extractive initial institutions in one place and inclusive ones in the other.
1
There are some differences in emphasis. For instance, Engerman and Sokoloff (2002) stress that initial conditions
determine the path of institutional development rather than just a set of initial institutions that were set up only once
and then persisted.
2
Some recent exceptions that study concrete colonial institutions are Iyer and Banerjee (2005) and Dell (2010). However, the emphasis is on the persistent effects of initial institutions rather than on the persistence or change.
1
Surprisingly, the constitutional arrangements of the British Caribbean colonies were practically identical to those of the British colonies in North America, Australia and New Zealand for
over 200 years after the first North American and Caribbean colonies were founded. Focusing
on representative institutions in particular, the Caribbean and Neo-European colonies shared the
“old representative system” in which locally elected parliaments put clear checks and balances
on the executive branch of the government represented by the colonial governor (Wight (1952)).
An institutional divergence occurred only in the second half of the 19th century when democratic
institutions in the Caribbean went into decline while those in the Neo-Europes prospered.
Because of the unobservable heterogeneity associated with comparing institutional trajectories
between Caribbean and Australasian colonies, this paper focuses only on the 14 British Caribbean
colonies over the period 1838 to 1894, for which I found excellent archival data. Only withincolony changes in institutions over time and differences in the timing of these changes are used
for identification. In addition, some intervening variables exist annually at the level of the voting
district within each colony, increasing the cross-sectional sample size from 14 to 126.
In 1838, two years after slavery ended in the British empire, all 14 British Caribbean colonies
had identical institutional arrangements. However, between 1854 and 1890, local parliaments
in 11 of the 14 voted to abolish themselves and become either fully or mostly appointed by the
executive branch of government. These self-imposed limitations on the power of local parliaments
were supported by local elites although they seriously curtailed their de jure powers relative to the
colonial government. First, I test whether this systematic abolition of representative institutions
- rather than constituting a power grab by the colonial administration - can be explained as a
defensive response by local elites to an emergent smallholder middle class of freed slaves, which
was threatening to gain influence in parliament. Secondly, I study the consequences of these
constitutional changes. There is broad agreement among economic historians that direct colonial
rule was on the whole better for colonial subjects than indirect colonial rule, because the latter
empowered and entrenched the local elites through which the Crown governed (Lange (2004),
Iyer (2010)). The constitutional changes I study in this paper are in effect switches from indirect
to direct colonial rule and could therefore be expected to have brought beneficial outcomes for the
rural poor, more so as the stated objective of the colonial administration was to do just that.3 In the
3
Some historical narrative on this is provided in Section 3.2.
2
third part of the paper, I use voting district level data on the identity of all elected and nominated
politicians in all 14 colonies over the entire period 1838 to 1900 to directly study the degree of
persistence of old elites after the abolition of representative institutions.
In the first part, I find that, at the colony level, the timing of constitutional changes away from
the representative system is explained both by the expansion of the franchise and increases in
political turnover in local parliaments. Variation in the expansion of the franchise and increased
political turnover are explained by the interaction of cross-colony variation in sugar-intensity and
an exogenous decline in sugar prices. I provide qualitative and quantitative evidence that this was
driven by a differential contraction of the plantation economy and resulting expansion of agricultural smallholdings. Because Caribbean constitutions tied the right to vote to land ownership at
relatively low levels, the expansion of smallholding meant expansion of the franchise and the entrance of political newcomers into the local assemblies. Evidence at the level of the voting district
within each colony shows that this pattern was strongest in districts where the plantation system
was most vulnerable to the economic shocks. Together these patterns strongly suggest that the
constitutional changes were a defence against the entry of a new political class that threatened
incumbent planter interests. When I investigate the effect of switches towards direct colonial rule
on the composition of public expenditure, I find that they robustly led to increased coercive expenditure for police and prisons and decreased public expenditure going towards education. This
finding is completely contrary to the conventional wisdom on direct colonial rule and suggests
that planter elites were retained significant insider access to the colonial administration and were
able to continue to shape policy making after switching to direct colonial rule. In the third part
of the identification strategy, I show evidence of a high degree of persistence in the identify of the
people in the legislative chambers before and after a constitutional change. Persistence is even
stronger when looking at political dynasties rather than individual politicians. Mapping politicians to districts allows me to assign to each political dynasty a measure of the degree to which
it represented the plantation interest. I show that appointed politicians after the constitutional
changes disproportionately represented the plantation interest. This further suggests that planter
elites maintained their insider access to the colonial administration and therefore continued to set
public spending to their benefit.
This paper adds to a body of empirical studies of endogenous institutional change. These
3
studies do not challenge the view that institutions are often persistent but rather seek to refine it
by showing under what circumstances institutions do change and by adding shifting economic
rents and politics as a more variable factor to the theory of institutions. Recent studies in this
vain include Rajan and Zingales (2003), Acemoglu et al. (2005), Jha (2010) and Puga and Trefler
(2011). Rajan and Zingales (2003) provide reduced-form evidence that exogenous improvements
in global financial markets helped to break down barriers to financial development erected by local
incumbents. Acemoglu et al. (2005) document how the opportunities afforded by 16th century
Atlantic trade empowered merchant classes against the monarchy in some European countries
which set the stage for the important 17th century institutional innovations in England and later
other parts of Europe. Jha (2010) shows how pro-trade economic interests motivated many of the
parliamentarians challenging the king’s absolutist power in the political struggle that preceded
England’s Glorious Revolution of 1688. Puga and Trefler (2011) document how the incumbent
Venetian merchants welcomed a new class of mobile merchants who complemented the sedentary
incumbents in taking advantage of opportunities from trade with the Arab world starting around
1050. This period of upward social mobility was short-lived and followed by the economic and
political entrenchment of the new merchants and the erection of barriers to entry from around
1250 and institutional and economic decline.
In its focus on representative institutions, this paper speaks to the literature explaining the
19th century franchise expansion in much of Europe and the Neo-Europes because it provides
an important contrast to the overall picture of the expansion of the franchise, of state capacity
and of broad-based education elsewhere (Engerman and Sokoloff (2005), Aidt et al. (2006)). Bourguignon and Verdier (2000) assume that the franchise is tied to education and show that when
elites reap sufficient economic gains from broad-based education, they are willing to pay the price
of extending the franchise. In Acemoglu and Robinson (2000) and Acemoglu and Robinson (2001)
elites extended the franchise in the face of a threat of revolt by the disenfranchised poor. Economic
growth increases the cost of revolts which increases the bargaining power of the poor in forcing enfranchisement, seen as the most credible commitment to future redistribution. By contrast, Lizzeri
and Persico (2004) argue that in 19th century England the threat of revolt was small and that enfranchisement was initiated by a non-monolithic elite, with wealthy capitalists sharing common
ground with laborers so that enfranchisement allowed for a powerful political coalition against
4
the protectionist landed gentry. Nikolova (2009) provides evidence that labor scarce frontier elites
in the American colonies used generous franchise rules to attract immigrants from Europe. In the
British Caribbean many of these channels were turned off: Economic elites did not seek to attract
migrants other than through indenture and had no shared economic interests with the working
poor. The threat of revolt, however, was a major concern for Caribbean elites. The difference may
have simply been that outside of the colonial setting there was no equivalent to a switch towards
direct colonial rule to obscure elitist policies.4 In documenting de-facto elite persistence under the
mantle of de jure institutional change, this paper also provides an illustration for the idea formalized in Acemoglu and Robinson (2006, 2008) that elites can increase informal collective action to
substitute for reductions in their formal privileges, leading to a pattern of “simultaneous change
and persistence in institutions.”5 This distinction between formal and informal influence matters
because it can rationalize how institutional changes can appear to be inconsequential even when
institutions seem to matter a lot.
In the following, Section 3.2 provides historical background on the representative institutions
of the British Caribbean, Section 3 discusses data sources and presents descriptive statistics, Section 4 presents research design and results and Section 5 concludes.
2
Historical Background
In total, there were 17 British Caribbean colonies which were founded in three waves: Antigua,
the Bahamas, Bermuda, Barbados, Honduras, Jamaica, Montserrat, Nevis, St. Kitts and the Virgin
Islands were the original colonies founded in the early 17th century. Dominica, Tobago, St. Vincent
and Grenada were annexed from France at the end of the Seven Year War in 1765 (Ragatz (1928),
p.112). The late-comers were Trinidad, ceded by Spain in 1797, St. Lucia, ceded by France in 1803,
and Guyana, ceded by the Dutch in 1803. These three are not part of this paper because they were
formed under direct colonial rule, which means first that they were different from the beginning
of the sample and second that there was no local elective element whose development could be
4
The historical evidence for this interpretation is discussed in Section 3.2.
Count Tancredi expressed this succinctly in Giuseppe di Lampedusa’s novel The Leopard: “If we want things to stay
as they are, they will have to change.”
5
5
compared to the other 14.6
Table 1 shows these dates plus additional information. The Caribbean colonies were originally
formed by European smallhold tobacco farmers and obtained a representative system in much
the same way as the original American colonies did around the same time; through local elites
demanding representation with the main aim of controlling local taxes (Taylor (2002, p. 246)).
While the three more recent colonies were formed under direct colonial rule because the British
colonial administration had started to assert more authority over its colonies, the established 14
colonies retained the representative system they had obtained in the 17th century until the second
half of the 19th century. Under this “old representative” system, locally elected assemblies held
wide-ranging powers relative to the colonial administrators constituting the executive branch of
government (Wight (1952)). The “assemblies seriously curtailed the powers of the governors in
the colonies” (Morrell and Parker (1969)) and as a result the Caribbean planter elites “jealously
guarded their privileges against interference by the colonial adminstration” (Wrong (1923)). Most
importantly, local assemblies controlled public finance, which gave them the ability to set taxes
and veto the governors by blocking the budget (Morrell and Parker (1969)).
The franchise in the Caribbean as elsewhere in the British colonies was tied to land ownership.7
The legacy of its smallhold origins meant that the amount of land required for the franchise was
relatively small; with a land holding of 10 acres sufficient for the right to vote in most cases.8 When
sugar was introduced in Barbados in 1640 it quickly proved far more profitable than tobacco and
by 1700 large-scale sugar plantations had completely displaced tobacco throughout the Caribbean
(Dunn and Parker (1972)). This economic shift led to a huge concentration in wealth and land and
drove many white Caribbeans to the new American colonies in Carolina (Taylor (2002, ch. 11)). As
a result of white out-migration and large slave imports throughout the 17th and 18th centuries, the
franchise in the Caribbean became heavily concentrated in the hands of few voters at the time of
abolition. As Wrong (1923) writes, “it was distinctly the exception for a member of the legislature
to be returned by more than 10 votes.” However, land holdings required for the right to vote
6
Trinidad and St.Lucia were pure Crown Colonies. Guyana did inherit a system with some representative element
from the Dutch but this system was very convoluted and does not compare easily with the simpler representative
institutions in the rest of the British empire (?).
7
The practice of freeholding, which tied voting rights to land ownership originated in medieval Britain and was
common to many British colonies (Engerman and Sokoloff (2005)).
8
Franchise rules are reported in the Colonial Blue Books, my main source of data.
6
remained strikingly low relative to the concentration of land ownership.
Soon after abolition, the colonial administration authorized the sale of unalienated Crown land
in the West Indies. While many obstacles were erected to the sale of Crown lands, squatting on
unused land was common and also gave legal title to land after a specified period Craton (1997,
p. 390).9 In addition to Crown land, and probably much more important, a secular decline in
sugar prices from the mid 1830s to the mid 1850s lead to the abandonment of much marginal
plantation land.10 According to Higman (2001) the result was a “spectacular growth in the extent
of smallholding after 1838.” This expansion of smallholding was accompanied by an expansion
of the franchise to an emergent agricultural middle class of freed slave smallholders which was
increasingly becoming a force in Caribbean politics. Holt and Lammers (1992) recounts an episode
form Jamaica:
“Baptist ministers tried to mobilize the dormant black electorate. They encouraged
their members to purchase freeholds and register to vote during the early 1840s. In
1844, governor Elgin called for early elections to blunt the registration drive. Yet, when
the new assemblymen convened, there were five new colored faces among them.”
Burroughs (1999) sums up the sentiment that pervaded planter-dominated assemblies throughout
the Caribbean at the time:
“Against a backdrop of economic decline in the sugar plantations, the planters steadily
lost their political dominance. As disputatious Assemblies were infiltrated by men of
color independent of the plantation economy, the planters recognized their predicament”
While coercive measures such as the eviction of squatters were used to some extent, it seems
that Caribbean elites were unable to effectively halt this franchise expansion. In part, this was
because planters’ fiscal capacity and therefore coercive apparatus was constrained by depressed
profits. Another impediment to overtly coercive measures lay in demographics. The black share
of the population was everywhere above 95 % in the Caribbean. This was a major difference to
9
In the Bahamas for instance, an important legal obstacles was that the assembly introduced high minimum purchase requirements for Crown land.
10
The fragmentary available data suggests land was abandoned and sold both through plantations shrinking and
through plantations going out of business as a whole.
7
the Postbellum US South and no equivalent to the “white terror” or Ku Klux Klan would have
been possible in the Caribbean. More subtle measures such as the literacy tests and poll taxes
used in the Postbellum US South were also not available because they would have attracted the
anger of London abolitionists. Discrimination in franchise rules based on color were not possible
for the same reason. Lowes (1994, ch. 5) for instance writes that a “because of pressures from the
Colonial Office, a comfortable translation of pre-emancipation legal distinctions into distinctions
of skin color was not possible.” Planters’ choices were therefore quite limited. They could not
coercively suppress the franchise but letting it expand meant giving up their dominance of local
politics. The response of the planter elites was to change the constitutions of their colonies to
abolish the elected legislature altogether.11 This was not an isolated decision by one colony: Of
the 14 colonies governed under the old representative system in 1838, 11 transitioned towards
Crown Colony status between 1854 and 1890 (Wrong (1923)).12
Ashdown (1979, p. 34) interprets these constitutional changes in the following way:
“The colonies gave up their elected assemblies voluntarily, for in most cases the white,
privileged classes preferred direct imperial government to the government of the colored classes who were slowly obtaining greater representation in the legislative councils.”
It is possible that the colonial administration also increased their pressure for more direct colonial
rule as they saw the economic base of the local elites getting eroded. Lowes (1994, p. 35) argues
that local elites did not welcome increased interference by the colonial administration but:
”[The planters] knew they faced [...] the demand of an increasingly restive nonwhite
middle class for a voice in island affairs. In the end, it was the latter that proved the
greater fear and they voted themselves out of office.”
The first question this paper asks is whether the timing of the abolition of representative institutions is consistent with an explanation in which local elites tried to preempt freed slaves from ob11
When the elected legislature was fully abolished, the colony switched to Crown colony rule. In practice, most
colonies first switched to a semi-representative system in which half of the legislature was appointed by the Crown,
and later adopted full Crown Colony status in which the legislature was entirely appointed by the Crown. This is
detailed in the data section.
12
There is evidence that the colonial administration exerted pressure on the local assemblies to vote for these constitutional changes (Lowes (1994)). It is possible that this partly explained the timing of constitutional changes if the
colonial administration was similarly concerned about an expansion of the franchise to freed slaves. But this merely
re-defines the elite to encompass the colonial administration.
8
taining parliamentary powers. The second question is what the effect of these changes was. Qualitative comparisons within the Caribbean certainly suggest that direct colonial rule benefited the
rural poor, being associated with more public good provision and less coercion. Laurence (1971,
p. 16,23,53) for instance, writes that “in Trinidad, the Crown disallowed attempts [by planters]
to forbid immigrants from leaving the estates” and argues that “conditions in [Crown colonies]
were much better as her planters never enjoyed the same influence over local government [as in
other Caribbean colonies].” Dookhan (1977, p. 70) also suggests that the provision of education
was superior in Crown Colonies.13 While these comparisons are between the 14 colonies studied
here and the three that were always under Crown rule, the colonial administration’s stated objective and their public statements about the old representative system suggested that switching
towards Crown rule should have similarly benefitted the rural poor. Henry Taylor, supervisor of
West Indian affairs at the colonial office, said to the British cabinet that “[the assemblies are] eminently disqualified for the great task of educating and improving a people newly born to freedom”
(Wrong (1923)).The stated aim for direct colonial rule in the Caribbean was to institute public policies geared towards developing an independent smallholders society and improvements in public
good provision for education (Wrong (1923, p. 78-79)).
While it is an empirical question that I will address in the Section 4, the qualitative evidence
does not suggest that the abolition of the old representative system led to more broad based policies. One hundred years after most of these changes, Wallace (1977) writes that “in few places
does the dead hand of the past lie as heavily on the present as in the Caribbean,” Galloway (2005,
p. 154) writes that “not much had changed in these islands from 1838 to 1900,” and Craton (1988,
p. 165) recounts how in the 19th century “each major inquiry into the British West Indies [...] noted
with amazement that nothing had been changed since the last report.”
13
The idea that planters would depress the provision of public goods is consistent both with a simple money-saving
motive or with a dynamic consideration in which planter elites depressed education to reduce peasants’ options outside
of the plantation system. Bobonis and Morrow (2010) provides evidence of this during the 19th century coffee boom in
Puerto Rico.
9
3
Data and Descriptive Evidence
3.1
Data Sources
The main source of data for this paper comes from the Colonial Blue Books. The Blue Books were
statistical reports issued every year by every colony to the colonial office in London. The Blue
Books start in the 1820s and become a good source of data in the mid 1830s. Before the Blue Books
became a publication in the 1880s, there were only 2 copies of each Blue Book. One copy was sent
to London where it is today kept in the National Archives and one was retained in the issuing
colony. The Blue Books contain data on the political franchise (the number of registered and
actual voters at the voting district level over time), the first and last names of all elected politicians
by district as well as all nominated politicians over the entire period and data on the composition
of public expenditure for each colony over time. The timing of the constitutional changes is listed
in Wrong (1923) and was cross-checked with the composition of legislative chambers into elected
and nominated segments as reported in the Blue Books.
In addition, I obtained some cross-sectional data for the beginning of the sample from ? and
variation in slave density at the time of abolition at the voting district level from Higman (1995).
3.2
Descriptive Evidence
I begin by providing several pieces of evidence from raw data that are consistent with the hypothesis of a defensive abolition of representative institutions. Figure 1 shows the structure of the data.
Over the whole panel, there are 517 observations in the old representative system. Ten colonies
switch the semi-representative system and stay in it for an average of twelve years.14 One colony,
Jamaica, switches to full Crown colony rule directly. Figure 2 depicts a histogram of first constitutional changes, i.e. towards the semi-representative in ten cases and to Crown colony rule in
one.15
The stylized causal channel suggested by the historical evidence in runs as follows: End of
14
This process was quite heterogenous: four colonies switched to full Crown colony rule within thee years while two
remain in the semi-representative system until 1894.
15
Figure 3 depicts a histogram of all instead of first constitutional changes towards Crown Colony government.
Clearly visible is a wave of switches to semi-representative government (in red) that precedes the wave of switches
to Crown Colony rule (in green). Table 1 provides for each colony the exact dates at which it operated under each form
of constitutional rule.
10
slavery & lower sugar prices −→ bankrupt/abandoned plantation lands −→ smallhold expansion −→ franchise expansion −→ (expected) political competition −→ preemptive constitutional
change. This multi-stage process was inherently slow-moving and it is apparent that the start of
the big declines in sugar prices preceded the constitutional changes by about two decades. Figure 2 points to the potential importance of the Caribbean Incumbered Estate Act (IEA). The IEA was
an important piece of legislation that allowed planters to sell their estates without carrying over
their debts (encumbrances). While many estates probably went bankrupt or were abandoned in
the two decades before 1854, their owners would have been reluctant to sell if their encumbrance
exceeded the value of their estates. The potential importance of the IEA is illustrated by the sale of
Arnos Vale estate in St Vincent. Arnos Vale sold for 10000 pounds on November 1, 1959. This was
the highest sales price ever obtained in an IEA court but was not anywhere near enough to cover
its encumbrance of 30000 pounds (Beachey (1978)). The historical record is clear that land sales
at a large scale only gained momentum with the introduction of the IEA (Craton (1997), Green
(1991)). Lowes (1994, p. 21) for instance documents that in Antigua, in the 8 years after the IEA
was passed, 37 percent of all plantation land changed hands. In addition to the process being slowmoving, systematic data is lacking on some of the intervening variables on abandoned estates and
smallhold expansion. The 1854 IEA therefore provides an important element of sharpness to this
process that I exploit in Section 4.
Using data on the number of registered voters from the Blue Books, Figure 4 documents that the
franchise expanded considerably in the years prior to the constitutional reforms. Time is depicted
in event time, normalizing the year of first constitutional reform to 0. To parse out cross-sectional
differences, I normalize the data on voters by each colony’s average number of voters. This implies the vertical scale is meaningless but all observations are comparable to each other. A second
piece of evidence suggesting that rising political competition drove the abolition of the assemblies
comes from the stability in the composition of the elected legislatures themselves. Using data on
the individual members of each legislature in the year prior and the year after each election, I
calculate the share of seats after each election that went to incumbents as an inverse measure of
political turnover.16 Figure 5 maps this measure against event time, where each observation is
16
It would be ideal to directly measure the entry of newcomers. Puga and Trefler (2011) for instance can calculate
the arrival rate of “new families” into medieval Venetian politics. I tried this. However, because this requires having
an existing stock of families and because my data starts only 20 years before the constitutional changes begin, arrival is
11
again one election.17 The data is again normalized to each colony’s average so that time-invariant
cross-sectional differences are parsed out and all observations can be pooled. Consistent with
the evidence on the timing of franchise expansion and the proposed channel that the newly enfranchised voters voted primarily for new politicians, Figure 5 shows that incumbency decreased
monotonically in the years prior to regime switches.
In combination, the time-paths of sugar-prices, franchise expansion, political turnover and
regime switches documented in Figures 2 to 5 provide strong support for the hypothesis that local
parliaments were abolished to preempt rising political competition. In the following I estimate
the postulated causal links underlying these raw data plots.
4
Identification Strategy and Results
4.1
4.1.1
Identification Strategy
Defensive Constitutional Changes?
Testing the whole causal chain through regressions is difficult because I do not observe the intervening steps on abandoned plantation lands and smallhold expansion. In addition, the slowmoving nature of the process means that it is not at all clear with what lag declines in the sugar
price should affect the expansion of the franchise and political turnover. I do gain some sharpness in this process because the introduction of the IEA in 1854 gives me a clear pre and post
period. In addition, Table 1 reveals a very bimodal sugar-intensity or sugar-dependence across
the colonies. Eleven colonies are complete sugar-colonies, while three produce almost not sugar.18
sugar
> 80%) and
I can therefore interact the post-1854 indicator two cross-sectional indicators D( exports
sugar
< 10%) which gives the data a lot more sharpness. Nonetheless, I do not get enough
D( exports
power for an IV strategy so instead I pursue an identification strategy in which I estimate a “quasi
first stage” which relates the measures of political turmoil to the underlying economic shocks
and a “quasi second stage” which regresses the timing of the abolition of local assemblies on the
mechanically very high but declining steeply in the beginning of the sample when turnover is actually lowest.
17
The number of observations in Figure 5 is substantially larger than in Figure 4 because political franchise data
started to be reported only in 1854 whereas I was able to calculate turnover as early as 1838.
18
While Bermuda, Bahamas and Honduras were not sugar plantation colonies, they still had slave population shares
of 95 per cent or more before 1838.
12
measures of political turmoil. The “quasi first stage” regression takes the form
(1)
Tit = αtimet + βXit + φi + it
where the measure of political turmoil Tit , either
#IncumbentSeats
#AllSeats
or log(voters), is regressed on
either a linear time trend or a post-1854 dummy. To check whether more sugar-intensive colonies
are more affected by the postulated mechanism, I can interact the time effects with the crosssugar
sugar
> 80%) and D( exports
< 10%).19 In addition, I can check whether
sectional indicators D( exports
the effect of an expanding franchise on the political system varied across these cross-sectional
differences by regressing
#IncumbentSeats
#AllSeats
sugar
on log(voters) interacted with the indicators D( exports
>
sugar
80%) , D( exports
< 10%)
The “quasi second stage” regression takes the form
(2)
CCit = βTit−1 + γXit + φi + φt + it
where the dependant CCit is an indicator that takes 1 if colony i switches towards direct colonial
rule. The main regressor of interest is Tit−1 , the lagged value of
#IncumbentSeats
#AllSeats
or log(voters).
Lagging Ti is reasonable because constitutional changes took a considerable amount of planning.
I include colony fixed effects φi as well controls for time-trend or in the stringent specification
year fixed effects φt . In addition, I test a specification in which I relate CCit to linear time trends
sugar
or a post-1854 indicator interacted cross-sectionally with the two indicators D( exports
> 80%) and
sugar
D( exports
< 10%). The coefficients on these interactions can be thought of as an “quasi intentions-
to-treat” (ITT) effect because they measure how exposed a colony was to the underlying economic
mechanism described.
The data is set up as duration data so that each colony exhibits either a series of zeros only (if it
never switches) or a series of zeros followed by a single 1 after which the data ends. I analyze only
the first switch towards direct colonial rule, which means I treat Jamaica’s direct switch to Crown
colony rule the same as the other ten colonies switch to semi-representative government. I also
disregard the eight later switches from semi-representative to Crown colony rule. This is done for
sugar
The three colonies with D( exports
< 10%) = 1 are in a sense a control group for the postulated treatment. Of the
three, two did not change their representative system and in none of them were any estates sold through the IEA courts.
19
13
expositional simplicity. Hazard rate models can incorporate these different switches and I present
hazard model results in the Appendix in Table 8. Because transitions could occur in any given year
including those between elections, every colony year is an observation in the regressions although
political regressors only get updated in election years. For instance, if there was an election in
1860 and one in 1865, then both the incumbency and political franchise data are constant between
1860 to 1864. For transparency, this is illustrated in Table 2.
The analysis of constitutional changes necessarily has to take place at the colony level but
for the intervening forces of political turmoil I can move to the sub-colony voting district level.
The motivation for this from historical accounts of where the expansion of smallholding was
most prevalent. In the voting districts in which sugar plantations were highly productive, reduced estate profits did not lead to the abandonment of plantation lands and ensuing expansion
of smallholding. In the voting districts unsuitable for sugar production, there were no sugar plantation lands to go abandoned. The implication is that most of the traction for my postulated channel should come out of the “marginal” estate districts, which were suitable enough to be sugardominated in good times but not in the bad times after 1838 (Holt and Lammers (1992), Higman
(2001)). This implies an inverted-U relationship between my postulated channels of smallhold
and franchise expansion and the plantation intensity of a district. The only measure of plantation intensity for which I could find data at the district level is data on the number of slaves in
1834 from Higman (1995). However, for Jamaica, Hall (1959) collected data on both the number
of plantations in 1834 as well as the expansion of smallholding from 1834-1844. This allows me
to check two critical aspects of the story: One, I can check whether slave-intensity, which I have
for all colonies at the voting district level, is a good proxy for plantation-intensity. Second, I can
check whether there is an inverted U relationship between slave-intensity and smallhold expansion for Jamaica specifically, before testing for an inverted-U relationship between slave-intensity
and both franchise expansion and political turnover. Figure 6 plots the Hall data on estates for Jamaican voting districts against the Higman data on slave intensity. The relationship appears fairly
tight so that slave-intensity seems a reasonable proxy for the sugar-productivity of a voting district. Figure 7 plots plots the Hall data on the expansion of smallholding against the Higman data
on slave intensity. The inverted-U relationship seems fairly strong, which supports the idea that
districts of intermediate slave-intensity were the ones most prone to land redistribution caused by
14
a decline in the sugar economy.
4.1.2
Effect of Constitutional Changes
Next, I turn to estimating the effect of switches towards Crown Colony rule. The outcome data
that I have is the composition of public expenditure for different purposes. I estimate
pgit = βCCit + γXit + θt + φi + it
(3)
where pgit is the log of either total public expenditure or public expenditure specifically for education or police and prisons, CCit is an indicator for either semi-representative or Crown Colony
rule, Xit are other time-variant controls, colony fixed effects φi soak up any cross-sectional timeinvariant variation in public expenditure and year fixed effects θt soak up any trends in public
administration or expenditure that were common to all British Caribbean colonies. When pgit is a
specific part of public expenditure, Xit contains other public expenditure to control for the budget.
4.1.3
Evidence for Elite Persistence
I can directly document the degree of elite persistence across regime switches by use. I investigate separately the degree of persistence in the elected element for switches from the representative to the semi-representative system and the persistence in the nominated element after
regime changes. I first look at the elective element. This analysis covers only the ten colonies that
switched from the old representative to the semi-representative system and only spans those years
they spent in either of those two systems. Jamaica is not in this because it switched to full Crown
colony rule directly and therefore has not electoral data after the switch. I regress log(voters) and
#IncumbentSeats
#AllElectedSeats
on the constitutional change to see whether the abolition of the old representative
system either slowed the expansion of the franchise or reduced political turnover.
Then I look at the appointed element of the legislatures after the abolition of the old representative system. One interesting measure to calculate is the share of appointed legislators whose
families used to have representatives under the representative system. This is a direct measure of
the survival of old families, although it is of course imperfect as it includes new non-plantation
politicians that had won a seat before the constitutional changes. Another interesting measure is
15
the degree to which the surviving families (i.e. those I see before the constitutional changes) represent the plantation interest disproportionably. To do this, I can calculate for each political dynasty
the slave-density of the average voting district they represented, averaging over all voting districts
in all years under the old representative system. I then average this measure for every appointed
chamber over all those appointed legislators who came from established political dynasties. When
I normalize the resulting figure by the colony’s average slave density, the resulting ratio represents
the degree to which an appointed legislature over-represents the plantation-interest.
4.2
Results
4.2.1
Defensive Constitutional Changes?
Table 3 shows the results of estimating equation (1), the “quasi first stage”. Column 1 starts by
showing that the political franchise was significantly expanding over time within each colony. In
columns 2-4 i investigate incumbency defined at the individual level, in columns 5-9 I do the
same at the dynastic level. Incumbent-Share2 is defined as the share of legislators from families
that were around in the previous chamber.20 Because of the prevalence of political dynasties in
the Caribbean, Incumbent-Share2 is a better measure of elite persistence. Columns 2-3 and 6-7
relate Tit to time trends, columns 4-5 and 8-9 relate it to franchise expansion.21 Columns 3 and 6
show that incumbents actually became more entrenched after 1854 in the non-sugar control group.
Elected chambers after 1854 had on average a 13 percent higher share of incumbent politicians
than before. Column 8 shows that the expansion of the franchise did increase the franchise and
column 9 shows that this effect is entirely explained by the affected sugar-colonies.
Table 4 shows the results of estimating equation (2), the “quasi second stage”. Columns 15 and 6-10 relate the probability of switching towards direct colonial rule to the two measures
of incumbency, controlling for a variety of time trends. Columns 11-12 relates the probability of
switching towards direct colonial rule to the expanding political franchise. The results on incumbency are very significant and robust. Within colonies, the probability of switching, conditional
20
For instance, Francis Trimingham represented the voting district of Paget in Bermuda from 1836 to 1843. He was
followed by James H. Trimingham who takes his seat for Paget and sat in the Assembly until its abolition in 1867. In
Incumbent-Share, this counts as turnover, in Incumbent-Share2 it does not because the seat remained occupied by the
same family.
21
N drops because the franchise data starts only in 1854
16
on not having switched before, is about 2 percent lower in any given year if incumbency is 10
percent higher.22 Introducing year fixed effects, the most stringent specification because of the
clustering of switches apparent in Figure 2, more than halves these coefficients but they remain
highly significant.23
In the following, I test whether this pattern in Figures 6 and Figure 7 plays out in the full
data-set. Table 5 reports results for estimating equation (1) at the voting district level, allowing for
differential effects for different types of voting districts. Informed by the historical literature, I define 4 types of voting districts: Urban districts, rural districts with no plantations, with marginal
plantations and with productive sugar plantations. The thresholds for the three types of rural
districts are less than 200 slaves per square mile for non-plantation and more than 400 for productive plantations. This is based on the categorization that Higman (1995) uses based on his own
continuous data on slave-density.
In columns 1-2 I regress incumbency only on colony fixed effects and either a linear time trend
(column 1) or a post-1854 indicator, interacted with the cross-colony indicator for sugar or not
sugar. This merely serves to show that the broad pattern in Table 3 holds at the parish level: The
political system in the non-sugar places is more stable than in the sugar places over time.24 In
columns 2-4, I add cross-parish variation. Within a colony, the urban districts and the marginal
sugar-districts display significantly less political stability the the non-sugar and the very productive sugar districts which systematically have an around 8 percent higher likelihood that a given
politician already occupied their seat in the previous electoral cycle. This result remains robust
to including a separate year trend or a separate post-1854 effect for each individual colony in
columns 5-6. Together, the parish level results are consistent with what one would expect, taking
as given the historical accounts on parish-types and the evidence from Jamaica in Figures 6 and 7.
4.2.2
Effect of Constitutional Changes
Table 6 reports results of estimating equation (3). In columns 1 - 4, I run regressions on total public
expenditure. In columns 5 - 8, I run regressions on public good expenditure on education specifically. In columns 9 - 12, I run regressions on coercive expenditure. That is, expenditure on prisons
22
Having colony fixed effects mean that none of the coefficients identify of the three never-switchers.
It is not obvious that year fixed effects are justified in this context however.
24
It is also more stable in the cross-section which is captured in the colony fixed effects not reported here.
23
17
and police. Columns 1,5,9 include no time trends, columns 2-3,6-7,10-11 introduce a linear and
then a quadratic time trend and columns 4,8,12 control for all time trends non-parametrically with
year fixed effects. The estimates change with the the different time trend specifications. For total
public good expenditure, column 1 seems to confirm the idea that Crown Colony status leads to
increases in public expenditure. However, columns 2 and 3 show that this is likely entirely explained by a positive correlation with time trends of increasing public expenditure. When these
are controlled for, the effect first disappears and is then even reversed. In column 4, the most flexible specification, the effect disappear. Overall, there is no convincing evidence that total public
expenditure increased with regime switches towards Crown Colony rule. The results on educational spending and coercive spending are much more clear-cut: Educational spending decreased
and coercive spending increased with switches towards Crown Colony rule. This is completely
contrary to the conventional wisdom that Crown Colony government shielded the people against
elite policies. In the Appendix in Table 9 I test for a differential effect for semi-representative and
for Crown Colony government but find no evidence that these two were significantly different
form each other. In combination with the previous results, this suggests that elites retained and
possibly even strengthened their influence over the political decision making process.
4.2.3
Evidence for Elite Persistence
Table 7 regresses the two measures of political turmoil, log(voters) and
#IncumbentSeats
,
#AllSeats
on the
change towards direct colonial rule. For incumbency both at the individual (column 4-6) and
the family level (column 7-9), there is no evidence of an effect of constitutional changes, But for
log(voters), I find some evidence that the constitutional changes reduced participation. This decline in voter participation was not driven by regulatory changes as the franchise rules stayed the
same across the regime changes everywhere. A possible explanation is that there was a lower
incentive to vote as the legislative reforms reduced the influence voters had.
I find stronger evidence for the persistence of elites in the appointed element of the legislature.
I calculate the share of appointed legislators whose families used to have representatives under
the representative system and normalize time to the year of the switch towards direct colonial
rule. Pooling these shares across the eleven colonies that switched, the blue line in Figure 8 shows
that more than 80 percent of appointed legislators came from established political dynasties that
18
had been present in the old legislatures. Next, I calculate for each appointed chamber its implicit
“slave-density” as described in Section 4.1.3 and average this across the colonies. The resulting red
line in Figure 8 depicts the degree of over-representation of the plantation-interest. This is striking:
The implicit “slave-density” of the appointed legislatures is more than twice and at times almost
three times as high as it would be if former legislators had been nominated from a representative
cross-section of each colony’s voting districts.
5
Discussion and Conclusion
This paper begins by documenting a unique series of 19th century constitutional changes that successfully restricted parliamentary powers in the face of a buoyant emergent smallholder class of
new voters. This historical episode provides an important counterexample to the broad trends of
franchise expansion and increases in parliamentary powers during the 19th century. It also provides a unique opportunity to study the political economy of the colonial institutions, which are
often thought to be an important determinant of long run post-independence economic development. I endogenize these constitutional changes and show that they were a response by planter
elites to the entry of a new political class whose objectives ran counter to the plantation economy.
I further provide evidence on public expenditure which suggests that old planter elites became
more successful in influencing policy after they gave up de-jure powers, a pattern strongly suggestive of increased collective action and insider access to governance. To study insider access
directly, I provide evidence on elite persistence using data on the identity of all elected and nominated politicians in the elective chambers before and after the constitutional changes. In combination, these finding illuminate the economic and political motivations behind a unique and
important series of 19th constitutional changes. They illustrate the workings of the colonial political economy and provide and important provide an explanation for how a small minority in the
British Caribbean could continue to maintain control over economic and political resources after
more than 95 percent of the population had been freed from slavery.
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22
Figure 1: Structure of Constitution Data
Figure 2: First Constitutional Changes
23
Figure 3: All Constitutional Changes
Figure 4: Franchise Expansion in “Event-Time”
24
Figure 5: Incumbency-Persistence in “Event-Time”
Figure 6: Relation of Slaves and Estates
25
Figure 7: 1834 Slave-Intensity and 1834-1844 change in smallholding
Figure 8: The identity of nominated legislators
26
Table 1: Comparison Table
Colony
Initial
Population
Initial Sugar
% of Exports
Area (sqkm)
Initial
Density
Year
Founded
Year
Semi-Repr.
Year
Crown Col.
Antigua
35188
93
281
125
1632
1868
1898
Bermuda
8862
0
53
167
1612
Bahamas
20203
10
13461
2
1650
Barbados
105812
94
431
246
1629
Dominica
16207
81
754
21
1763
1867
1898
Grenada
17751
96
344
52
1763
1877
1879
Br Guyana
66561
80
10750
6
1803
1803
Honduras
8235
0
22966
0
1638
1871
381951
74
11100
34
1655
1867
Montserrat
6647
96
102
65
1634
1863
1868
Nevis
7434
95
93
80
1623
1867
1879
St Lucia
17005
79
620
27
1803
St Kitts
21578
99
191
113
1628
1867
1879
St Vincent
26659
96
389
69
1763
1868
1876
Tobago
11456
100
300
38
1763
1875
1878
Trinidad
34650
88
4787
7
1797
Virgin Islands
7471
95
153
49
1672
Jamaica
1803
1797
1855
1868
2 transitions are out of the present sample: Antigua and Dominica 1898. The 3 initial Crown colonies Br Guyana, St Lucia and
Trinidad play almost no role in any of the empirics in this paper. Source of Transition Timing: Wrong (1923) and Colonial Office
List. Source of Other Data: Colonial Blue Books
Table 2: Illustrating Panel-Construction
Colony
Year
Election
Incumbent-Share
ln(voters)
L.Incumbency
L.ln(voters)
Antigua
.
.
.
.
.
.
Antigua
.
.
.
.
.
.
Antigua
1854
0.75
1.58
Antigua
1855
0.75
1.58
Antigua
1856
0.7
1.6
Antigua
1857
0.7
1.6
Antigua
1858
0.7
1.6
Antigua
1859
0.7
1.6
Antigua
1860
0.7
1.6
Antigua
1861
0.65
1.7
Antigua
1862
0.65
1.7
Antigua
1863
0.65
1.7
Yes
Yes
0.7
1.6
0.65
1.7
27
28
Yes
244
0.95
0.014**
(0.006)
(1)
ln(voters)
Yes
460
0.48
0.001
(0.002)
0.043
(0.039)
(2)
Yes
460
0.49
0.029
(0.044)
0.125**
(0.050)
-0.001
(0.002)
(3)
Yes
244
0.58
-0.112
(0.067)
0.001
(0.002)
(4)
Incumbent-Share
Yes
244
0.59
-0.111
(0.064)
0.16
(0.197)
0.001
(0.002)
(5)
Yes
460
0.45
0.001
(0.002)
0.014
(0.032)
(6)
Yes
460
0.47
-0.005
(0.038)
0.127**
(0.046)
0.001
(0.002)
(7)
Yes
244
0.53
-0.121*
(0.065)
0.002
(0.002)
(8)
Incumbent-Share2
Yes
244
0.55
-0.120*
(0.061)
0.243
(0.201)
0.001
(0.002)
(9)
All s.e. are clusterd at colony-level, * significant at 10%; ** significant at 5%; *** significant at 1%. The Panel is restricted to contain
only the years before a colony transitioned towards Crown Colony status. Dependent Incumbent-Share is between 0 and 1. So a
coefficient -0.113* on log(voters) implies that a doubling of the franchise (100 percent increase) lowers the share of incumbents who
get elected by 11 percentage points.
col-FE
Observations
R-squared
D(no-sug) ∗ ln(voters)
D(sugar) ∗ ln(voters)
ln(voters)
D(no sugar)*post1854
D(sugar)*post1854
post1854
year
Dependent:
Table 3: ”Quasi First Stage”: Relating Incumbency, the Franchise and the IEA
29
Yes
460
0.09
460
0.08
0.066***
(0.015)
-0.215***
(0.054)
(2)
Yes
0.002**
(0.001)
-0.202***
(0.056)
(1)
460
0.09
Yes
0.001
(0.001)
0.047*
(0.022)
-0.214***
(0.055)
(3)
460
0.09
Yes
0.039*
(0.020)
-0.006
(0.036)
0.002
(0.001)
-0.205***
(0.057)
(4)
Yes
Yes
460
0.16
-0.081***
(0.031)
(5)
460
0.08
Yes
0.002**
(0.001)
-0.223***
(0.068)
(6)
(7)
460
0.09
Yes
0.064***
(0.014)
-0.226***
(0.063)
D(CC = 1)
460
0.09
Yes
0.001
(0.001)
0.041*
(0.020)
-0.227***
(0.065)
(8)
460
0.09
Yes
-0.003
(0.036)
0.031
(0.019)
0.002
(0.001)
-0.219***
(0.071)
(9)
Yes
Yes
460
0.16
-0.080***
(0.029)
(10)
231
0.07
Yes
0.039
(0.048)
(11)
231
0.08
Yes
0.008
(0.061)
0.002
(0.002)
(12)
All s.e. are clusterd at colony-level, * significant at 10%; ** significant at 5%; *** significant at 1%. The data is set up as duration-data, i.e. each colony’s dependant D(CC = 1) is
either a series of 0’s or a series of 0’s followed by a single 1. The indicator post1854 switches on with IEA in 1854. D(sugar) and D(no sugar) are indicators for whether a colony is a
sugar-colony or not.
col-FE
year-FE
Observations
R-squared
D(no sugar)*post1854
D(sugar)*post1854
post1854
year
ln(voters)
L.Incumbent-Share2
L.Incumbent-Share
Dependent:
Table 4: Linear Probability of Constituional Change (Linear Duration-Model)
30
1,503
0.23
Observations
R-squared
1,503
0.23
Yes
post1854
0.188
(0.050)**
-0.002
(0.019)
(2)
1,503
0.24
Yes
year
0.005
(0.001)**
0
(0.001)
0.045
(0.055)
0.073
(0.028)*
0.081
(0.023)**
1,503
0.24
Yes
post1854
0.187
(0.029)**
-0.002
(0.028)
0.046
(0.054)
0.073
(0.028)*
0.081
(0.023)**
Incumbent-Share
(3)
(4)
1,503
0.25
Yes
year
Yes
0.046
(0.037)
0.075
(0.034)*
0.08
(0.028)**
(5)
1,503
0.26
Yes
post1854
Yes
0.046
(0.037)
0.074
(0.034)*
0.08
(0.028)**
(6) )
D(No Sugar Parish) = 1 if 1834-slave-densityis less than 200 slaves per sq-mile. D(Productive Sugar Parish) = 1 if
1834-slave-densityis more than 400 slaves per sq-mile. D(Productive Sugar Parish) is the omitted category
Yes
year
0.005
(0.001)**
0
(0.001)
(1)
Colony FE
T:
T*(colony FE)
D(Productive Sugar Parish)
D(No Sugar Parish)
D(Urban Parish)
D(no sugar-colony)*T
D(sugar-colony)*T
Dependent
Table 5: Voting Districts Table
31
(2)
Year-FE
Colony-FE
Observations
R-squared
log(Total Other Exp.)
Year squared
Year
log(Population)
D(Changed Constitution)
No
Yes
448
0.96
0.471***
(0.053)
1.918***
(0.162)
(3)
No
Yes
448
0.97
0.087
(0.058)
1.051***
(0.162)
0.026***
(0.002)
No
Yes
448
0.97
-0.139**
(0.054)
1.190***
(0.141)
4.661***
(0.386)
-0.001***
(0.000)
Dep: log(Total Exp)
Single Indicator for Changed Constitution
(1)
Yes
Yes
448
0.98
-0.04
(0.058)
1.139***
(0.138)
(4)
0.908***
(0.072)
No
Yes
448
0.91
(6)
(7)
No
Yes
448
0.93
0.420***
(0.080)
0.037***
(0.004)
-0.388***
(0.084)
No
Yes
448
0.93
-3.306***
(0.709)
0.001***
(0.000)
0.532***
(0.081)
-0.258***
(0.086)
(8)
Yes
Yes
448
0.94
0.547***
(0.086)
-0.232**
(0.094)
Dep: log(Education-Exp.)
0.068
(0.081)
(5)
Table 6: Public Good Provision Around Constituional Changes
0.346***
(0.056)
No
Yes
448
0.93
(10)
(11)
No
Yes
448
0.93
0.495***
(0.071)
-0.012***
(0.004)
0.467***
(0.081)
No
Yes
448
0.93
-0.397
(0.705)
0
(0.000)
0.512***
(0.078)
0.482***
(0.086)
(12)
Yes
Yes
448
0.93
0.555***
(0.086)
0.457***
(0.097)
Dep: log(Coercive Exp.)
0.323***
(0.069)
(9)
Table 7: Trend-break in Incumbency and Franchise after Constituional Change
Dependent:
post-CC
year
ln(voters)
Incumbent-Share2
(1)
(2)
(3)
(4)
(5)
(6)
(7)
(8)
(9)
-0.518*
(0.260)
0.017*
(0.009)
-0.308
(0.234)
-0.021
(0.046)
0.002*
(0.001)
-0.002
(0.054)
0.013
(0.061)
0.035
(0.029)
-0.021
(0.046)
0.002
(0.001)
0.002
(0.035)
-0.011
(0.053)
0.002
(0.001)
0.428
(0.251)
-0.507*
(0.263)
0.015
(0.009)
0.221
(0.246)
0.021
(0.032)
-0.011
(0.053)
0.002
(0.001)
-0.02
(0.036)
Yes
389
0.84
Yes
389
0.85
Yes
568
0.43
Yes
568
0.42
Yes
568
0.43
Yes
568
0.39
Yes
568
0.38
Yes
568
0.39
post1854
col-FE
Observations
R-squared
Incumbent-Share
Yes
389
0.85
All s.e. are clusterd at colony-level, * significant at 10%; ** significant at 5%; *** significant at 1%.
A
Appendix-Tables
32
33
(2)
446
11
1
Year-FE
Colony-FE
Observations
R-squared
log(Total Other Exp.)
Year squared
Year
log(Population)
D(Crown Colony)
D(Semi-Representative)
No
Yes
448
0.96
0.431***
(0.059)
0.528***
(0.064)
1.846***
(0.168)
(3)
0.099*
(0.060)
0.055
(0.071)
1.068***
(0.164)
0.026***
(0.002)
No
Yes
448
0.97
-0.134**
(0.056)
-0.153**
(0.064)
1.198***
(0.142)
4.654***
(0.386)
-0.001***
(0.000)
Dep: log(Total Exp)
No
Yes
448
0.97
554
19
1
554
19
1
-4.504***
(1.626)
0.147**
(0.063)
Anderson-Gilles
-3.997***
(1.532)
2202
19
3
2202
19
3
-2.887**
(1.447)
-0.331***
(0.090)
MRM
-3.847**
(1.713)
(4)
(5)
Yes
Yes
448
0.98
-0.03
(0.058)
-0.075
(0.069)
1.162***
(0.141)
No
Yes
448
0.92
0.897***
(0.073)
-0.002
(0.090)
0.141
(0.091)
(7)
No
Yes
448
0.93
0.417***
(0.080)
0.037***
(0.004)
-0.374***
(0.088)
-0.415***
(0.097)
No
Yes
448
0.94
-3.374***
(0.713)
0.001***
(0.000)
0.528***
(0.081)
-0.229**
(0.091)
-0.303***
(0.097)
(8)
Yes
Yes
448
0.94
0.537***
(0.086)
-0.199**
(0.098)
-0.288***
(0.106)
Dep: log(Education-Exp.)
(6)
Table 9: Public Good Provision Around Constituional Changes
Separate Indicators for Semi-Representative and Crown Colonial Status
(1)
446
11
1
-4.158***
(1.207)
0.207**
(0.105)
Cox Prop Haz
-3.929***
(1.239)
All s.e. are clusterd at colony-level, * significant at 10%; ** significant at 5%; *** significant at 1%.
In the Cox Proportional Hazard, only one transition can be modeled. This method therefore uses the
same data as the linear probability one in the mina body of the text. In the Anderson-Gilles model,
several transitions can be modeled so that switches from semi-representative to Crown rul can be
incorpoarted together with switches to semi-representative rule. However, each transition is treated
as the same. Anderson-Gilles is agnostic on a colony transitioning twice. In th Marginal Risk Model
(MRM), several transitions can be incorporated and each type of transition is treated as different.
Observations
No(Transitions)
Types(Transition)
year
L.Incumbent-Share
Table 8: Duration Analysis
0.389***
(0.056)
No
Yes
448
0.93
(10)
(11)
No
Yes
448
0.93
0.491***
(0.071)
-0.009**
(0.004)
0.532***
(0.083)
0.300***
(0.096)
No
Yes
448
0.93
-0.549
(0.700)
0
(0.000)
0.516***
(0.077)
0.555***
(0.088)
0.318***
(0.100)
(12)
Yes
Yes
448
0.93
0.553***
(0.085)
0.511***
(0.098)
0.296***
(0.114)
Dep: log(Coercive Exp.)
0.448***
(0.075)
0.166**
(0.079)
(9)