Several generations of scholarship have identified the medieval development of urban self-government as crucial for European patterns of state formation. However, extant theories, emphasizing structural factors such as initial endowments and warfare, do little to explain the initial emergence of institutions of urban self-government before CE 1200 or why similar institutions did not emerge outside of Europe. We argue that a large-scale collapse of public authority in the ninth and tenth centuries allowed a bottom-up reform movement in West Francia (the Cluniac movement), directed by clergy but with popular backing, to push for ecclesiastical autonomy and asceticism in the eleventh and twelfth centuries. These social realignments, facilitated by new norms about ecclesiastical office holding, stimulated the urban associationalism that led to the initial emergence of autonomous town councils. Using a panel data set of 643 towns in the period between 800 and 1800, we show that medieval towns were substantially more likely to establish autonomous town councils in the period between 1000 and 1200 if they were situated in the vicinity of Cluniac monasteries. These findings are corroborated by regressions that use distance from Cluny—the movement's place of origin—to instrument for proximity to Cluniac monasteries.

中文翻译：

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中世纪欧洲国家权力的崩溃、克卢尼奇改革运动和城市自治的起源

几代学者已经将中世纪的城市自治发展确定为欧洲国家形成模式的关键。然而，现存的理论，强调诸如初始禀赋和战争等结构性因素，几乎无法解释在公元 1200 年之前城市自治制度的最初出现，或者为什么类似的制度没有在欧洲以外出现。我们认为，9 世纪和 10 世纪公共权威的大规模崩溃使得西法兰克自下而上的改革运动（Cluniac 运动）由神职人员领导，但得到了民众的支持，从而推动了教会的自治和禁欲主义。十一世纪和十二世纪。这些社会重组，由有关教会职务的新规范促进，刺激了导致自治市镇议会最初出现的城市联合主义。使用 800 至 1800 年间 643 个城镇的面板数据集，我们表明，如果中世纪城镇位于 Cluniac 修道院附近，则它们更有可能在 1000 至 1200 年间建立自治市镇议会。这些发现得到了回归的证实，该回归使用与克鲁尼（运动的起源地）的距离来衡量与克鲁尼修道院的接近程度。