Medieval constitutionalism plus light war mobilization jointly produced European democracy

Evidence

At the basic level, Downing identifies two main causes that are individually necessary and jointly sufficient for liberal democracy: (1) medieval constitutionalism, i.e., an institutional heritage that included representative assemblies and other constitutional features and (2) the absence of military revolution, i.e., little or no domestic mobilization of resources for war-fighting purposes during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. In his words, “To put the argument in its barest form, medieval European states had numerous institutions, procedures, and arrangements that, if combined with light amounts of domestic mobilization of human and economic resources for war, provided the basis for democracy in ensuing centuries” (1992, 9). — Gary Goertz, Social Science Concepts and Measurement, 1597

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to Charles Tilly’s argument that war-making made states and shaped their domestic institutions, and to Barrington Moore’s no-bourgeoisie-no-democracy thesis.
• SEED: An essay could ask why European representative assemblies survived only where rulers could not tax and conscript at scale — democracy as a byproduct of fiscal weakness.