IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/jcecon/v53y2025i4p884-915.html

Did Industrialization increase support for the radical left? Evidence from the 1917 Russian revolution

Author

Listed:
  • Castañeda Dower, Paul
  • Markevich, Andrei

Abstract

We analyze the 1917 Constituent Assembly elections – the only free universal elections in Russia before the 1990s – to estimate the effect of industrialization on the radicalization of the electorate in a late industrializing economy. Our empirical strategy exploits IV estimation based on the proximity of Carboniferous strata and other initial conditions of industrialization. We find that a larger share of industrial workers increases voting for the radical left, and the effect is stronger in places that exhibited more pronounced features of late industrialization. We also show that industrialization increases electoral polarization rather than simply shifting the electorate to the left.

Suggested Citation

  • Castañeda Dower, Paul & Markevich, Andrei, 2025. "Did Industrialization increase support for the radical left? Evidence from the 1917 Russian revolution," Journal of Comparative Economics, Elsevier, vol. 53(4), pages 884-915.
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:jcecon:v:53:y:2025:i:4:p:884-915
    DOI: 10.1016/j.jce.2025.07.001
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0147596725000526
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1016/j.jce.2025.07.001?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to

    for a different version of it.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;

    JEL classification:

    • D72 - Microeconomics - - Analysis of Collective Decision-Making - - - Political Processes: Rent-seeking, Lobbying, Elections, Legislatures, and Voting Behavior
    • N44 - Economic History - - Government, War, Law, International Relations, and Regulation - - - Europe: 1913-
    • P26 - Political Economy and Comparative Economic Systems - - Socialist and Transition Economies - - - Property Rights

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eee:jcecon:v:53:y:2025:i:4:p:884-915. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.elsevier.com/locate/inca/622864 .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.