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.
I agree, the good thing isn't breadth as such but the criteria. If some country only gives the franchise to noblemen with highly-respected families and established estates, that's going to be a problem because that leaves out huge parts of the country that have their own interests often opposed to the noble class.
"No representation without taxation" is an interesting idea. However, are you going to condition it on people who pay some tax, or net tax? If some tax, then everyone pays sales tax; and most people who work pay some income tax even if they get more back from credits like EITC and Child Tax Credit, so it's not clear that'll do much. If net tax, though, you're going to need to keep a lot of records and make a lot of calculations and definitions. What about people getting EITC? People getting tuition vouchers (for themselves or kids)? People employed as bureaucrats? People employed at government contractors like Boeing? You'll need to draw the line somewhere, and then keep enough records to prove where people are on the scale, and exactly where can be arbitrary.
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.
I agree, the good thing isn't breadth as such but the criteria. If some country only gives the franchise to noblemen with highly-respected families and established estates, that's going to be a problem because that leaves out huge parts of the country that have their own interests often opposed to the noble class.
"No representation without taxation" is an interesting idea. However, are you going to condition it on people who pay some tax, or net tax? If some tax, then everyone pays sales tax; and most people who work pay some income tax even if they get more back from credits like EITC and Child Tax Credit, so it's not clear that'll do much. If net tax, though, you're going to need to keep a lot of records and make a lot of calculations and definitions. What about people getting EITC? People getting tuition vouchers (for themselves or kids)? People employed as bureaucrats? People employed at government contractors like Boeing? You'll need to draw the line somewhere, and then keep enough records to prove where people are on the scale, and exactly where can be arbitrary.
I agree that it would be hard to apply in our society. We would need a society with a simpler system of taxation.