Crop yield and democracy

Abstract

How does the historical legacy of agriculture affect democratic traditions in contemporary societies? This paper provides empirical evidence that inherent crop yield and democracy exhibit an inverted U-shaped relationship. This finding is supported by cross-country data from up to 147 countries, 186 pre-colonial societies, and the U.S. states. The relationship thus exhibits a highly persistent pattern. Crop yield is measured by kilocalories per hectare per year under rain-fed conditions, which has the advantage of being highly exogenous. The hump-shaped relationship holds up to a battery of robustness tests.