This paper studies the effect of strengthening democracy, as captured by an increase in voting ri... more This paper studies the effect of strengthening democracy, as captured by an increase in voting rights, on violent civil conflict in nineteenth-century Colombia. Empirically studying the relationship between democracy and conflict presents an enormous challenge. First, there are a number of conceptual problems in defining and measuring democracy. Second, democracy and violent conflict in society are jointly determined. We take advantage of an experiment of history to examine the impact of one simple, measurable dimension of democracy (the size of the franchise) on conflict, while at the same time attempting to overcome the identification problem. In 1853, Colombia established universal male suffrage. Using a simple difference-in-difference specification at the municipal-level, we find that municipalities where more voters were enfranchised relative to their population experienced a sharper decrease in the likelihood of violent battles. The results are robust to including a number of ...
This paper studies the effect of strengthening democracy, as captured by an increase in voting ri... more This paper studies the effect of strengthening democracy, as captured by an increase in voting rights, on violent civil conflict in nineteenth-century Colombia. Empirically studying the relationship between democracy and conflict presents an enormous challenge. First, there are a number of conceptual problems in defining and measuring democracy. Second, democracy and violent conflict in society are jointly determined. We take advantage of an experiment of history to examine the impact of one simple, measurable dimension of democracy (the size of the franchise) on conflict, while at the same time attempting to overcome the identification problem. In 1853, Colombia established universal male suffrage. Using a simple difference-in-difference specification at the municipal-level, we find that municipalities where more voters were enfranchised relative to their population experienced a sharper decrease in the likelihood of violent battles. The results are robust to including a number of ...
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Papers by Diana Salazar