Constitutionalization, democratization, the welfare state: Leading voices in the social sciences explain these historical phenomena as concessions made by elites in response to social unrest. This “threat of revolution hypothesis” is highly plausible, but cannot be conclusively proven empirically. In light of this challenge, a research team including members from Bonn has broken new ground.
Together with Dr. Konstantin Chatziathanasiou (University of Münster) and Prof. Dr. Michael Kurschilgen (UniDistance Suisse), JProf. Dr. Svenja Hippel has experimentally investigated the motivating effect of the threat of upheaval. In a laboratory study, participants were assigned different privileges, resulting in players with low and high status. In the subsequent non-simulated economic games, the “elites” benefited more. The researchers then varied whether the other players had the opportunity to “overthrow” the system and whether the “elites” could avert the “overthrow” through transfer payments. However, most “elites” acted more short-sightedly than expected and lost their positions. While this does not refute the historical “threat of revolution hypothesis,” the underlying behavioral assumption can no longer be upheld across the board.
The study, titled “Does the Threat of Overthrow Discipline the Elites? Evidence from a Laboratory Experiment,” has now been published in the prestigious Journal of Legal Studies at the University of Chicago Law School. A preprint version is freely available here. The published version is freely available via the University of Bonn’s network.