3 - HISTORICAL EVIDENCE

Summary

This chapter moves away from the large econometric tests undertaken in Chapter 2. Instead, it examines the democratization process within two countries: the cantons of Switzerland from the late Middle Ages until the mid-nineteenth century and the states of the United States from colonial times until the mid-twentieth century. These two cases are examined mainly to determine the interests and strategies of different political actors and economic sectors in the choice of political regimes and therefore to overcome the limitations of purely statistical work.

The choice of these two countries seems advisable for at least three reasons. First, making good one of the criteria emphasized in standard scientific research (Cook and Campbell 1979), they add external validity to the statistical results. Whereas the statistics show the model to be accurate at the national level, the comparative analysis of Swiss cantons and American states shows that the model matches the evolution of subnational territories too. Second, both Switzerland and the United States, which were based on confederal or loose federal arrangements for relatively long periods of history, showed the kind of wide variation in democratic practices and structural conditions needed to trace the social conditions that underlie different franchise regimes. Finally, both countries remained, for very different reasons, substantially aloof from world politics and the impact of international wars. Its nearly insular geography sheltered the United States from the waves of European revolutions. The status of neutrality, guaranteed by all the great European powers, ensured Switzerland the minimal autonomy it needed to develop its own political institutions.