IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/now/jnlhpe/115.00000014.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Slavery, Political Attitudes and Social Capital: Evidence from Brazil

Author

Listed:
  • François Seyler

Abstract

This paper investigates the long-term influence of slavery and its abolition on development, social capital, and political attitudes in Brazil. I show that slavery and support for coercive institutions — measured by legislators' voting decisions on emancipation related bills at the end of the 19th century — had a persistent negative effect on development, as measured by GDP, poverty, and inequality. Focusing on social capital as a persistence mechanism, I show that the evidence is consistent with slavery and support for coercion having durably negatively affected social capital. In particular, individuals living in historically slavery-intensive municipalities with stronger support for coercive institutions exhibit lower levels of generalized trust today, and are more likely to be less supportive of democracy and to have weaker beliefs on corruption.

Suggested Citation

  • François Seyler, 2021. "Slavery, Political Attitudes and Social Capital: Evidence from Brazil," Journal of Historical Political Economy, now publishers, vol. 1(3), pages 377-409, November.
    • Handle: RePEc:now:jnlhpe:115.00000014
    DOI: 10.1561/115.00000014
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1561/115.00000014
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1561/115.00000014?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
    ---><---

    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:now:jnlhpe:115.00000014. 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: Lucy Wiseman (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.nowpublishers.com/ .

    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.