Historical Representative Assembly Experiences and Constitutionalism Today

Abstract

Successful constitutionalism is characterized by de jure Constitutional provisions de facto binding political agents. A growing literature seeks to quantify cross-country variation in Constitutional compliance and explore its determinants (e.g., Law & Versteeg 2013; Gutmann et al. 2022; Voigt 2021). We explore long-institutional memories of representative assemblies as a determinant. We employ Bologna Pavlik and Young’s (2020, 2021) measure of medieval/Early Modern assembly experiences. Assembly experiences are positively associated with Constitutional compliance. However, breaking them down into tax veto and spending prerogative experiences, the former is positively related to compliance; the latter is negatively related.

Keywords: constitutional economics, constitutionalism, representative assemblies, medieval and Early Modern, limited government

JEL Classification: P00, P16, P48, H1, N40