New publication by Jonas Geweke and Katja Rost: «Lottery-Based Elections, Power Monopolization, and Urban Development»
The study explores the consequences of aleatoric governance in Swiss city-states during the 17th and 18th centuries . The authors find that city-states that implemented lotteries for political elections saw greater equality in political representation, more merchants in power, and better urban development outcomes compared to those that did not.
A new research article has been published:
«Lottery-Based Elections, Power Monopolization, and Urban Development: The Case of Swiss City-States, 1666–1794»
Jonas Geweke and Prof. Dr. Katja Rost.
First published online July 10, 2025 in The Journal of Economic History.
Read full article here:https://doi.org/10.1017/S0022050725100910
Abstract:
Early modern urban parliaments suffered an increasing monopolization of political power that hampered urban development. To combat power monopolization, some Swiss city-states reformed their election systems by randomly selecting political representatives from a pre-elected pool of candidates. We implement a difference-in-differences design and find that lottery-based election systems improved the equality of distribution of political seats within parliaments. Lottery-based elections also had positive effects on trade tax revenues, trade volumes, and infrastructure expenditures. We explain this finding by showing that lottery-based election systems fostered the election of merchants to top political positions.
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