Initial Conditions and the Evolution of Institutions, Chapter 3 & 4
Abstract: In this book, we explain how initial conditions including access to water transportation, climate and legal origins have shaped the evolution of legislatures and courts in the American States. In these two chapters, we focus on political institutions. In Chapter 3, we use panel methods that control for fixed effects and allow initial conditions to have time varying effects, and show that access to water transportation and climate have had a persistent influence on the evolution of political competition in state legislatures during roughly 1870-2000.In Chapter 4, we develop the occuupational homogeneity of elites hypothesis to explain political persistence. The testable prediction is that when state elites have very similar occupations, political competition will be weak; and, when state elites work in many professions, political competition will be strong. We measure the occupational homogeneity of state elites prior to the Civil War (1860) used detailed census data. Using water transportation as a source of exogenous variation, we show that elites in 1860 drive political compettion during 1866-2000. Even though the Civil War has shaped state politics, state elites prior to the Civil have also had a strong and persistent impact. Thus, our findings are consistent with the view that elites have a peristent influence on politics (see Acemoglu and Robinson, 2008; Engerman and Sokoloff, 1997 and 2000).
