Suffrage in the New World

Research Paper # 101216

African-American Studies
Economics
Political Science

A literature review of the correlation between economic development and suffrage across North America.

1,118 words () | 5 sources | MLA | 2008 | United States

Published on: Feb 21, 2008

Paper Summary:

This paper examines how the extension of suffrage affected long-term economic development in the America's vis-a-vis wealth distribution and political influence. It looks at the U.S. democratic model as a paradigm explaining why economic elite might choose to award universal suffrage. The paper concludes that the U.S. eventual granting of, what they deemed to be universal suffrage, was due to the machinations of the political elite and that universal suffrage never existed in any real sense until later in the 20th century, contrary to popular opinion.

Outline:
Article Summary
Literature Review
Analysis

From the Paper:

"Even after universal suffrage for both women and blacks in America were granted, it was not until the mid 1960s that many legal and regulatory barriers that prevented many women and blacks from voting were struck down in the Supreme Court of that country (Perelman 149). The only conclusion that can be made regarding this development is that even in the U.S. the political elite did not freely choose to award universal suffrage in that country's beginning nor even in its later developmental stages. This seems to be a point that Engerman and Sokoloff completely overlook in their research regarding economic development through institutional control and granting of suffrage. "

Sample of Sources Used:

Barker, Hannah, and Simon Burrows, eds. Press, Politics and the Public Sphere in Europe and North America, 1760-1820. Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press, 2002.
Daunton, Martin, and Matthew Hilton, eds. The Politics of Consumption: Material Culture and Citizenship in Europe and America. Oxford, England: Berg, 2001.
Engerman, Stanley & Kenneth Sokoloff. "The Evolution of Suffrage Institutions in the New World." The Journal of Economic History, 65/4(2005): 891.
Fraser, Wayne. The Dominion of Women: The Personal and the Political in Canadian Women's Literature. New York: Greenwood Press, 1991.
Perelman, Michael. The Invention of Capitalism: Classical Political Economy and the Secret History of Primitive Accumulation. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2000.