Efforts to explain why incumbent elites would ever extend voting rights to non-enfranchised groups, especially from a rational-choice perspective, typically focus on class-based extensions. In a recent paper, Racial Restrictions on Voting: Evidence from a NewPan-Anglophone Dataset, 1730-2000, Dhammika Dharmapal (Berkeley), draws on a unique Pan-Anglophone dataset to extend the current literature by expanding the inquiry to include race-based extensions over time.
The paper levers a dataset that codes the presence of racial restrictions on the electoral franchise ("RREFs") in 130 jurisdictions located in different parts of the world over the period 1730- 2000. The dataset focuses on English-speaking colonies of settlement that are or were associated with the British Empire and/or the US. Colonies of settlement are jurisdictions where permanent European settlers constituted a significant element at some time in the jurisdiction’s history (even if they were a numerical minority). The data reveal extensive variation in RREFs over time and across jurisdictions and exhibit a cyclical pattern in sharp contrast to the continuous decline in class-based voting restrictions. An excerpted abstract follows.
"A substantial literature studies franchise extension, focusing primarily on class-based – rather than race-based – voting restrictions. This paper constructs and analyzes a novel dataset that codes the presence of race-based restrictions on voting in 130 jurisdictions (primarily English-speaking subnational jurisdictions with substantial power to determine their electoral law) over 1730-2000. It documents extensive variation in these restrictions over time and across jurisdictions, exhibiting a cyclical pattern in sharp contrast to the continuous decline in class-based voting restrictions. To explain this variation, the paper uses a framework that emphasizes the distinction between centralized imperial control and the empowerment of local European settlers.... These results are robust to controlling for the existence and abolition of property (and other economic) qualifications for voting. They are consistent with a framework in which an imperial or federal government is less subject to capture by local settler elites, and thus more likely to promote franchise extension."