What is it about?
This paper examines the role of landholding inequality in facilitating the repression of Social Democrats in Imperial Germany between 1878 and 1890. It argues that liberal deputies from areas characterized by high landholding inequality came under more pressure to support repressive legislation of Social Democrats in 1878. Analyzing an original constituency-level dataset, it finds that landholding inequality is significantly correlated with liberal votes for the repressive Antisocialist Law in the Reichstag.
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Why is it important?
Many authors argue that the power of landed elites was a major factor preventing democratization in Germany before World War One. This paper explores how this power was brought to bear on liberal Reichstag deputies and resulted in their support for repressive, anti-democratic legislation in the 1870s.
Perspectives
This paper makes a contribution to the ongoing debates around the role of inequality in preventing democratization in Imperial Germany.
Henry Thomson
Arizona State University
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This page is a summary of: Landholding Inequality, Political Strategy, and Authoritarian Repression: Structure and Agency in Bismarck’s “Second Founding” of the German Empire, Studies in Comparative International Development, June 2014, Springer Science + Business Media,
DOI: 10.1007/s12116-014-9159-x.
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