Good Lord, Bad Democrat: When Effective Autocracy Undermines Civic Capacity

Abstract

Do effective institutions under autocracy strengthen or weaken the foundations of democracy? This paper examines how competent governance in nondemocratic settings shapes long-run civic and political capacity. I study Japan’s feudal domains (1600–1868), where institutional design was highly uniform but administrative performance varied widely across rulers. Using newly digitized historical and municipal data, I trace how variation in the quality of Tokugawa governance influenced patterns of collective action and democratic behavior in the early twentieth century. I measure feudal competence using three historically grounded proxies: the frequency of peasant revolts per capita (social stability), the discount rate of domain-issued currencies (fiscal credibility), and the prevalence of Dutch-learning scholars (technological investment in modernization). These indicators are linked to two interwar outcomes: (1) village-level participation in rural development programs (1932–1937), which required local deliberation and coordination, and (2) support for anti-suffrage, fascist-leaning parties in the 1937 general election, reflecting skepticism toward mass democracy. To address endogeneity in domain performance, I exploit exogenous variation from the 1600 Battle of Sekigahara, which redistributed territories among clans and—under rigid caste constraints—fixed samurai-to-peasant ratios that determined long-run administrative density. The results reveal a paradox: regions once governed by capable lords later displayed lower civic initiative and higher authoritarian support. Effective autocratic governance delivered stability but reduced incentives to invest in collective organization, leaving communities orderly yet politically passive. The findings challenge the view that state capacity and democracy are always complementary, showing that strong states can generate their own democratic deficits.