Harvard Seminar on Positive Political Economy

The Faculty of Arts and Sciences and The Institute for Quantitative Social Science at Harvard University are sponsoring a seminar on formal and quantitative political research. The Program on Positive Political Economy (PPE) supports research-related activities that integrate the study of economics and politics, whether by studying economic behavior in the political process or political behavior in the marketplace. In general, positive political economy is concerned with showing how observed differences among institutions affect political and economic outcomes in various social, economic, and political systems and how the institutions themselves change and develop in response to individual and collective beliefs, preferences, and strategies. All interested faculty and students are invited to attend.Professor Oeindrila Dube of UChicago will be presenting, "Queens."Abstract:A large scholarship claims that states led by women are less conflictual than states led by men. However, it is theoretically unclear why female leaders would favor more conciliatory war policies. And, it is empirically challenging to identify the effect of female rule, since women may gain power disproportionately during periods of peace. We surmount this challenge by exploiting features of hereditary succession in European polities over the 15th-20th centuries. In this context, women were more likely to acquire power if the previous monarch lacked a male first-born child, or had a sister who could follow as successor. Using these factors as instruments for female rule, we find that queenly reigns participated more in inter-state conflicts, without experiencing more internal conflict. Moreover, the tendency of queens to participate as conflict aggressors varied based on marital status. Among unmarried monarchs, queens were more likely to be attacked than kings. Among married monarchs, queens were more likely than kings to participate as attackers and fight with allies. These results are consistent with an account in which marriages strengthened queenly reigns, both because of alliances, and because queens utilized their spouses to help them rule. Kings, in contrast, were less inclined to utilize a similar division of labor. This asymmetry in how queens utilized male spouses and kings utilized female spouses increased the relative capacity of queenly reigns, enabling them to pursue more aggressive war policies.** We Reserve the right to change the room location.