Events

The Glorious Revolution That Wasn’t: Rural Elite Conflict and Demand for Democratization

Social conflict theory holds that democratization is most likely when an incumbent rural elite is challenged by a rising urban bourgeoisie. While this framework accounts for historical patterns of democratization in industrializing autocracies in the Global North, it is less well suited to explaining the emergence of democratic demands in agrarian autocracies in the Global South. In this Quantitative History Webinar, Mohamed Saleh of the London School of Economics and Political Science will examine demands for democratization in the Egyptian parliament before the British occupation in 1882. Using a new dataset of MPs and the universe of parliamentary minutes from 1868 to 1882, Mohamed Saleh and his co-authors use text analysis, differences-in-differences models, and machine learning to test whether rural intra-elite economic conflicts in MP home districts can lead to meaningful calls for democratization in parliament by rural middle-class MPs. Their findings suggest that rural intra-elite competition over labor and land catalyzed demands for oversight (constraints) on the executive and issuance of a new constitution from rural middle-class MPs. Although these demands were suppressed by the British occupation in 1882, their study sheds light on how meaningful demands for democratization emerged in an authoritarian parliament in a non-industrialized agricultural economy that is comparable to other cases in the Global South during the first wave of democratization.

Mohamed ‘s co-author: Allison Spencer Hartnett (University of Southern California)

Discussant: Max Yu Hao (Peking University)

Live on Zoom on December 7, 2023
16:00 Hong Kong/Beijing/Singapore
08:00 London | 17:00 Tokyo | 19:00 Sydney

The Quantitative History (QH) Webinar Series aims to provide researchers, teachers, and students with an online intellectual platform to keep up to date with the latest research in the field, promoting the dissemination of research findings and interdisciplinary use of quantitative methods in historical research. The QH Webinar Series, now entering its fourth year, is co-organized by Centre for Quantitative History at the HKU Business School and International Society for Quantitative History in partnership with Hong Kong Institute for the Humanities and Social Sciences. The Series is now substantially supported by the Areas of Excellence (AoE) Scheme from the Research Grants Council of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region, China (Project No. [AoE/B-704/22-R]). 量化歷史網上講座系列由香港大學陳志武和馬馳騁教授聯合發起，旨在介紹前沿量化歷史研究成果、促進同仁交流，推廣量化方法在歷史研究中的應用。本系列講座由香港大學經管學院量化歷史研究中心和國際量化歷史學會承辦，及香港人文社會研究所全力支持。從2023年開始，系列得到中國香港特別行政區研究資助局卓越學科領域計劃的重要資助 (項目編號[AoE/B-704/22-R])。

Conveners:
Professor Zhiwu Chen
Dr. Chicheng Ma