The Decline and Rise of Democracy Quotes

“Unlike systems of household registration in earlier eras, the hukou system is not used as a basis for taxation. Its principal use is instead to maintain order by creating a de facto restriction on freedom of movement—individuals can only receive social benefits in the area where they are registered.”
― David Stasavage, The Decline and Rise of Democracy: A Global History from Antiquity to Today

“When Europeans first came to learn of the imperial examination system, they expressed their admiration for it. This was true of Matteo Ricci, the Jesuit missionary who provided one of the earliest and most detailed European accounts of life in China. In later centuries Europeans drew on the Chinese experience as they constructed meritocratic recruitment systems of their own.”
― David Stasavage, The Decline and Rise of Democracy: A Global History from Antiquity to Today

“Excavations at the ancient Sumerian city of Ur reveal that 85 percent of texts record some sort of an economic transaction. Therefore, writing evolved to meet the demands of a growing economy as well as a growing state tax apparatus.”
― David Stasavage, The Decline and Rise of Democracy: A Global History from Antiquity to Today

“It was thought that as society grew richer, people would be in a stronger position to demand democracy. It was also thought that growth could only be maintained with political liberalization. Neither of these predictions has proven true, or at least not so far.”
― David Stasavage, The Decline and Rise of Democracy: A Global History from Antiquity to Today

“Across the broad sweep of human history, societies either were governed autocratically by someone who disposed of a state bureaucracy or had something resembling early democracy where the state was absent, power was decentralized, and their overall size was likely to be small. The idea that one could sustain a democracy in a polity as large as the thirteen American colonies, combined with a central state, was unprecedented”
― David Stasavage, The Decline and Rise of Democracy: A Global History from Antiquity to Today

“The legislation of Leo VI completed a process by which the former Roman Empire in the West and the empire in the East went in opposite directions with political development.”
― David Stasavage, The Decline and Rise of Democracy: A Global History from Antiquity to Today

“The message of this chapter has been that the advance of civilization often acted to undermine early democracy. It did so whenever new or improved technologies reduced the information advantage that members of society had over rulers.”
― David Stasavage, The Decline and Rise of Democracy: A Global History from Antiquity to Today

“我們還得時時提醒自己，即使現代民主能夠順利存續，也不表示人民認為這種讓「五千菁英」管理「五百萬人民」的方式，真的已經夠好。我們該思考的，不只是民主能不能存活下去，還得去問目前的民主能不能讓人滿意。”
― David Stasavage, The Decline and Rise of Democracy: A Global History from Antiquity to Today

“歷史告訴我們，現代民主是一個至今都未完成的實驗，從很多意義上來說，光是這種制度能夠正常運作，就已經很不可思議。還記得在美國通過憲法之後不久，約翰．泰勒怎麼說嗎？他擔心兩年一次的國會選舉，只不過是一閃而逝的「政治痙攣」、只不過是「嘲弄人民在政治上多麼無力的一天」，只要過了這一天，「五百萬人民」的命運就再次落回「五千菁英」的掌控之中。泰勒認為要保障民主，就得強化地方自治的控制力，讓人民更常參與政治，與代議士更常聯繫。”
― David Stasavage, The Decline and Rise of Democracy: A Global History from Antiquity to Today

“Wealth inequality did eventually drop, but not as a result of democracy. It was instead wartime events, economic crisis, and also possibly underlying technological changes that led to this shift. History suggests that even in a full democracy, the risk that the 5,000 will dominate is much greater than the threat that the 5,000,000 will expropriate the 5,000.”
― David Stasavage, The Decline and Rise of Democracy: A Global History from Antiquity to Today

“It also fits with a surprising—and more general—pattern identified by the political scientist Michael Albertus. It turns out that autocratic governments are more likely to implement land reforms than are democratic governments.”
― David Stasavage, The Decline and Rise of Democracy: A Global History from Antiquity to Today

“same underlying factor of labor scarcity contributed both to the granting of political rights to whites and to the enslavement of Africans.”
― David Stasavage, The Decline and Rise of Democracy: A Global History from Antiquity to Today

“Westerners have sometimes seen China as an aberration—or to use a phrase that carries the culturalist baggage of an older era, as a case of “oriental despotism.” China is instead best seen as a completely alternative path of political development. It is the most enduring case of the bureaucratic alternative, and so we should consider the evolution of the Chinese state from the earliest dynasties,”
― David Stasavage, The Decline and Rise of Democracy: A Global History from Antiquity to Today

“measurement,”
― David Stasavage, The Decline and Rise of Democracy: A Global History from Antiquity to Today

“Within the SCCS societies there is a striking correlation between the prestige that warriors enjoyed and the presence of early democracy. We see in Figure 3.3 that when warriors were accorded great prestige, the likelihood of having council governance was about twice as high as when warriors were accorded no particular prestige.”
― David Stasavage, The Decline and Rise of Democracy: A Global History from Antiquity to Today

“early democracy and early autocracy were two alternative paths of political development, then the next question is what led a society down one path as opposed to the other. I will argue in this chapter that early democracy was more likely to prevail when rulers were uncertain about production, when people found it easy to exit, and finally when rulers needed their people more than their people needed them.”
― David Stasavage, The Decline and Rise of Democracy: A Global History from Antiquity to Today

“History suggests that even in a full democracy, the risk that the 5,000 will dominate is much greater than the threat that the 5,000,000 will expropriate the 5,000.”
― David Stasavage, The Decline and Rise of Democracy: A Global History from Antiquity to Today

“the Postal Service Act of 1792, the Congress instead opted for the opposite strategy. There would be a subsidy whereby any newspaper could be delivered virtually anywhere in the territory for the cost of one penny.”
― David Stasavage, The Decline and Rise of Democracy: A Global History from Antiquity to Today

“The best explanation for European firearms development may lie in the fierce interstate competition that gripped the continent for half a millennium leading up to 1815.”
― David Stasavage, The Decline and Rise of Democracy: A Global History from Antiquity to Today

“Between 1600 and 1750 the firing rate for French troops using their muskets increased by a factor of ten.46 This amounts to an annual rate of labor productivity growth of 1.5 percent, something we might expect to see in a modern advanced economy during an economic expansion.”
― David Stasavage, The Decline and Rise of Democracy: A Global History from Antiquity to Today

“When Hernán Cortés and his army encountered the Aztecs, they discovered a society that had a more sophisticated system of agricultural production and taxation than existed in his native Spain. But the Spaniards had guns, and the Aztecs did not.”
― David Stasavage, The Decline and Rise of Democracy: A Global History from Antiquity to Today