October 06, 2009  Drawing from cases of alleged electoral fraud in Imperial Germany, Harvard Professor Daniel Ziblatt examined the role of landholding inequalities in shaping democracy in a recent talk at the Institute. Linking his findings to current democratic struggles, Ziblatt said that democratic institutions can be “captured” by elites far more easily when landholding inequality is rampant.

“Socio-economic inequality does subvert fairness of elections – even in presence of formal democratic procedures,” he said, laying out the main conclusion of his forthcoming paper, “Democratization and the Problem of Electoral Fraud: Lessons from European History.” 

The new paper follows ample research conducted by Ziblatt on state-building, democratization and federalism, especially in Europe.

Though centered on rural Germany between 1871 and 1914, findings from his paper can be useful in addressing how new democracies face high levels of electoral fraud.
“It is often presumed that political institutions, once adopted… shape outcomes,” Ziblatt said. But in budding democracies, “back sliding” remains frequent despite seemingly established democratic political institutions. 

During the time frame he examined, 13 national parliamentary elections were conducted, and 974 of the 5,152 elected seats in the Imperial German Parliament were subject to fraud investigation. 

Much of the discussion was centered on the detailed findings of his paper – from a landowner who both ran for office and manned the election booth, to the numbers of electoral petitions filed by a particular precinct. Ziblatt chose to research Imperial Germany because of its paradox; it had a functioning direct democracy – though votes were only cast by men – yet it remained a profoundly hierarchical society. 

“Germany had a uniform set of democratic institutions,” he said, and then pointed to a projected diagram mapping the various electoral precincts. “Yet democratic practice varied from place to place in Germany – the question is why was this the case?” 

Ultimately, Ziblatt said a strong link was found between inequality in landholding and electoral fraud, a relationship he described as initially “abstract.” But many of his case studies revealed the permeability of the border between landowner and government official, a link he described as increasing the probability of fraud. 

Examining violations of democracy in Europe also serves to counter the myth that establishing an electoral system in the continent was a smooth endeavor, Ziblatt added. “We tend to focus on the people that we like, the hero of the stories,” he said. “We don’t focus as much on the opponents of democratization.”

And, counter-intuitively, it may be a fallacy to label the conservative parties – the highest perpetrators of fraud, according to Ziblatt’s research – as inhibitors of democracy, he said, because their acts advanced the practice of fraud investigation, a central component of an effective democracy. 

Similar tactics are visible in the contemporary world, Ziblatt said. “It’s not so unfamiliar – I hope [the study] travels.”  

Ziblatt, the Paul Sack Associate Professor of Political Economy at Harvard University, spoke at the Watson Institute as part of the Colloquium on Comparative Research.

By Watson Institute Student Rapporteur Alexandra Ulmer ‘11