Have you read Peasants into Frenchmen? I'm reading it now and it's pretty informative (although lots will be lost on a person who doesn't know French geography)
I'm not so sure about breadth of franchise being a measure of how good a polity is. At the very least, there might be an optimal breadth, with either small or larger voting percentage being a bad thing. Though it might be a question not of numerical proportion but of the criterion for granting franchise. I rather favor the idea that the people who pay taxes should have a vote and the people who don't pay taxes should not; that lessens the risk of government being turned into a large-scale scheme of theft.
Have you read Peasants into Frenchmen? I'm reading it now and it's pretty informative (although lots will be lost on a person who doesn't know French geography)
No I haven't, but it looks interesting; thanks for the rec!
I'm not so sure about breadth of franchise being a measure of how good a polity is. At the very least, there might be an optimal breadth, with either small or larger voting percentage being a bad thing. Though it might be a question not of numerical proportion but of the criterion for granting franchise. I rather favor the idea that the people who pay taxes should have a vote and the people who don't pay taxes should not; that lessens the risk of government being turned into a large-scale scheme of theft.