When Inclusive Institutions Failed: The Democratic Revolutions of the Fourteenth Century

How does a polity shift from institutions that privilege an elite to those that are more inclusive and with what consequences for development? One possibility is that success in creating inclusive state institutions depends on how a society itself is organized. While Europe’s democratic revolutions of the nineteenth century, led by broad based political parties, are well known, its earlier democratic revolutions of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, led by urban craft guilds, have received less attention. Guilds were a fundamental feature of European society with some resemblances to lineage and kin groups. I consider the impact of these guild revolutions on economic development, proxied by population growth. In a differences in differences setting I show that when governing council membership was widened to include craft guilds, cities experienced lower rates of population growth compared with cities that were controlled by a narrow merchant oligarchy. I then show that there is no correlation between guild control and population growth in cities that experienced failed guild revolts. This suggests it was institutional change that mattered and not simply that revolts caused disruption.