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Political Dynasties in Defense of Democracy: The Case of France’s 1940 Enabling Act

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 March 2023

Jean Lacroix Open the ORCID record for Jean Lacroix [Opens in a new window] ,
Pierre-Guillaume Méon  and
Kim Oosterlinck Open the ORCID record for Kim Oosterlinck [Opens in a new window]
Jean Lacroix
Affiliation:
Associate Professor, Université Paris-Saclay – RITM, 54 boulevard Desgranges Sceaux, Sceaux 92330, France. E-mail: jean.lacroix@universite-paris-saclay.fr.
Pierre-Guillaume Méon
Affiliation:
Professor, Université libre de Bruxelles (ULB), Brussels, Belgium. E-mail: p-guillaume.meon@ulb.be.
Kim Oosterlinck*
Affiliation:
Professor, Université libre de Bruxelles (ULB), 50 Avenue Roosevelt, CP 114/03, Brussels 1050, Belgium.
*
E-mail: Kim.Oosterlinck@ulb.be
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Abstract

The literature has pointed out the negative aspects of political dynasties. But can political dynasties help prevent autocratic reversals? We argue that political dynasties differ according to their ideological origin and that those whose founder was a defender of democratic ideals, for simplicity labeled “pro-democratic dynasties,” show stronger support for democracy. We analyze the vote by the French parliament on 10 July 1940 of an enabling act that granted full power to Marshall Philippe Pétain, thereby ending the Third French Republic and aligning France with Nazi Germany. Using data collected from the biographies of parliamentarians and information on their voting behavior, we find that members of a pro-democratic dynasty were 9.6 to 15.1 percentage points more likely to oppose the act than other parliamentarians. We report evidence that socialization inside and outside parliament shaped the vote of parliamentarians.

Type
Article
Information
The Journal of Economic History , Volume 83 , Issue 2 , June 2023 , pp. 359 - 397
Copyright
© The Author(s), 2023. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of the Economic History Association

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Footnotes

We thank Toke Aidt, Gianmarco Daniele, Giuseppe De Feo, Francois Facchini, Jon H. Fiva, Olle Folke, Benny Geys, Katharina Hofer, Krisztina Kis-Katos, Tommy Krieger, Thomas Piketty, Johanna Rickne, James Rockey, Daniel M. Smith, Peter Solar, seminar participants at Brandeis University, the University of Göttingen, the University of Hamburg, the University of Leicester, and the University of Marburg, as well as participants of the Interwar Workshop - London School of Economics and Political Science, of the Meeting of the European Public Choice Society in Rome, of the Silvaplana Workshop in Political Economy, of the Workshop on Political Economy - University of Groningen, and of the Beyond Basic Questions Workshop for comments and suggestions. This project was supported by the Agence National de la Recherche (ANR), Project POLECOWW2 ANR-21-CE41-0015. We are also indebted to Olivier Wieviorka for insights concerning the historical and archival parts of this project and for giving us access to the data he collected. We also wish to thank the editor, Dan Bogart, as well as two anonymous referees, for their insightful comments.

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