The Origins of Elite Persistence: Evidence from Political Purges in post-World War II France
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Authors
Aidt, T.
Lacroix, J.
Meonx, P-E.
Publication Date
2022-05-18Series
Cambridge Working Papers in Economics
Publisher
Faculty of Economics, University of Cambridge
Type
Working Paper
Metadata
Show full item recordCitation
Aidt, T., Lacroix, J., & Meonx, P. (2022). The Origins of Elite Persistence: Evidence from Political Purges in post-World War II France. https://doi.org/10.17863/CAM.86217
Abstract
This paper studies a new mechanism that allows political elites from a non-democratic regime to survive a democratic transition: connections. We document this mechanism in the transition from the Vichy regime to democracy in post-World War II France. The parliamentarians who had supported the Vichy regime were purged in a two-stage process where each case was judged twice by two different courts. Using a difference-in-differences strategy, we show that Law graduates, a powerful social group in French politics with strong connections to one of the two courts, had a clearance rate that was 10 percentage points higher than others. This facilitated the persistence of that elite group. A systematic analysis of 17,589 documents from the defendants' dossiers is consistent with the hypothesis that the connections of Law graduates to one of the two courts were a major driver of their ability to avoid the purge. We consider and rule out alternative mechanisms.
Keywords
Purges, Political transitions, Elite persistence, Connections
Identifiers
CWPE2232
This record's DOI: https://doi.org/10.17863/CAM.86217
This record's URL: https://www.repository.cam.ac.uk/handle/1810/338810
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