Entrenched: Elite Capture and Social Mobility

New democracies often inherit entrenched political or economic elites who retain substantial influence over policymaking.

This project studies a number of systematic and idiosyncratic shocks to such elites and examines whether these critical junctures affect the persistence and decline of their economic and political power.

It is pertinent to economists and political scientists and contributes to ongoing debates regarding social mobility and elite capture.I propose to study these topics within the historical context of Prussia, where the landed nobility formed an entrenched elite wielding enormous power throughout the 19th century.

In the 20th century, they faced substantial economic and political disruptions (disempowerment in a revolution, death in two world wars, and displacement from their estates), yet arguably remained highly influential.I will create a novel panel dataset, digitized from primary and secondary sources, documenting ownership and size of the universe of ca. 22,000 large landed estates from 1871 to 1945.

This core dataset will be augmented with individual-level data on incumbents in various non-elected offices in the public administration and archival data on social ties among the elite.

In combination, these data enable the analysis of the social mobility and political influence of the landed elite with unprecedented detail, using institutional and idiosyncratic shocks to the elite for causal inference.WP1 (disempowerment) studies the impact of democratic transitions, which entail a de facto decline in the political value of land ownership, on the social mobility and political power of the elite.

WP 2 (death) studies how individual shocksthe death of a family member in military serviceaffect the social mobility and ability to shape the political process of the elite.

WP3 (displacement) studies the role of social ties in the elite's social mobility and potential elite capture post-WWII, following their forced relocation to West Germany.