Peasants and Parliaments: Institutional Foundations of Agrarian Reform in Eighteenth-Century Eastern Europe
2026-07-31
abstract: An influential literature attributes Europe’s economic precocity to what might be termed “good” institutions, such as representative assemblies, which shielded property from governmental predation. This account fails to contend with the diversity of property rights in preindustrial Europe, many of which, like serfdom, were obstacles to growth. The author proposes a role for some—but not all—early representative assemblies in fostering growth by eliminating these “bad” property rights. An assembly’s capacity to extinguish property rights is a product of its decision-making efficiency, which in turn is associated with majority voting and centralized agenda control. The author tests these claims through a controlled comparison of progrowth agrarian reforms in the Russian Baltic province of Livonia and the Danish-ruled duchies of Schleswig and Holstein between 1795 and 1805, finding that the Livonian diet’s efficient organization was key to the successful transformation of serfdom. This analysis suggests that we must evaluate preindustrial representative institutions on the basis of their capacity to orchestrate complex exchanges of property rights and rents.