Calendrier du 27 février 2019
Economic History Seminar
Du 27/02/2019 de 12:30 à 14:00
Salle R1-09, Campus Jourdan, 48 boulevard Jourdan, 75014 Paris
WULFERS Alexander (University of Oxford)
The Marriage of Iron and Rye Reunited? The Shift towards Protectionism in the Weimar Republic and the Political Economy of German Trade Policy”
The interwar period was a time of rising protectionism, especially in Germany where a brief period of reconciliation with its neighbours and a moderately liberal trade policy in the 1920s was succeeded by a radical shift to high tariffs and, ultimately, a struggle for autarky under National Socialism. This shift stands at the end of a long struggle between different interest groups, most notably the protectionist agricultural lobby and more export-oriented new industrial sectors like electronics and chemicals. This paper investigates to what extent the clash at the lobbyists’ level is also reflected in voting behaviour. I examine, based on detailed county-level data on the economic structure of German industry and agriculture, whether a right-wing shift in electoral result corresponds to a stronger radicalisation of some groups relative to the overall population, both between sectors and within the agricultural sector between livestock and grain farmers.