• DOI:10.1017/S0007123415000101
Corpus ID: 17112994

Destined for Democracy? Labour Markets and Political Change in Colonial British America

@article{Nikolova2015DestinedFD,
  title={Destined for Democracy? Labour Markets and Political Change in Colonial British America},
  author={E. Nikolova},
  journal={British Journal of Political Science},
  year={2015},
  volume={47},
  pages={19 - 45}
}

• E. Nikolova
• Published 2015
• Economics
• British Journal of Political Science

In this article a new explanation for the emergence of democratic institutions is proposed: elites may extend the right to vote to the masses in order to attract migrant workers. It is argued that representative assemblies serve as a commitment device for any promises made to labourers by those in power, and the argument is tested on a new political and economic dataset from the thirteen British American colonies. The results suggest that colonies that relied on white migrant labour, rather… Expand

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