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Loose cannons : war veterans and the erosion of democracy in Weimar Germany
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Koenig, Christoph (2015) Loose cannons : war veterans and the erosion of democracy in Weimar Germany. Working Paper. Coventry: University of Warwick. Department of Economics. Warwick economics research papers series (WERPS) (1079). (Unpublished)
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Official URL: https://www2.warwick.ac.uk/fac/soc/economics/resea...
Abstract
I study the effect of war participation on the rise of right-wing parties in Inter-war Germany. After the democratisation and surrender of Germany in 1918, 8m German soldiers of WWI were demobilised. I argue that defeat made veterans particularly sceptical about the new democratic state. Their return undermined support for democratic parties from the very beginning and facilitated the reversion to autocratic rule 15 years later. In order to quantify this effect, I construct the first disaggregated estimates of German WWI veterans since official army records were destroyed. I combine this data with a new panel of voting results from 1881 to 1933. Diff-in-Diff estimates show that war participation had a strong positive effect on support for the right-wing at the expense of socialist parties. A one standard deviation increase in veteran inflow shifted vote shares to the right by more than 2 percentage points. An IV strategy based on draft exemption rules substantiates my findings. The effect of veterans on voting is highly persistent and strongest in working class areas. Gains for the right-wing, however, are only observed after a period of Communist insurgencies. I provide suggestive evidence that veterans must have picked up especially anti-Communist sentiments after defeat, injected these into the working class and in this way eroded the future of the young democracy.
Item Type: | Working or Discussion Paper (Working Paper) | ||||
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Subjects: | H Social Sciences > HB Economic Theory | ||||
Divisions: | Faculty of Social Sciences > Economics | ||||
Series Name: | Warwick economics research papers series (WERPS) | ||||
Publisher: | University of Warwick. Department of Economics | ||||
Place of Publication: | Coventry | ||||
ISSN: | 0083-7350 | ||||
Official Date: | November 2015 | ||||
Dates: |
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Number: | 1079 | ||||
Number of Pages: | 73 | ||||
Institution: | University of Warwick | ||||
Status: | Not Peer Reviewed | ||||
Publication Status: | Unpublished | ||||
Date of first compliant deposit: | 27 January 2016 | ||||
Date of first compliant Open Access: | 16 February 2016 |
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