Essays in Political Economy and Economic History

This thesis consists of three self-contained papers that examine how information and ideologies serve as coordinating forces during episodes of political and social transformation.

The first paper studies how shifts in public sentiment can trigger mass mobilization, using the Finnish Civil War of 1918 as a natural experiment. I show that the abrupt abolition of Russian imperial censorship in 1917 produced a sharp surge in oppositional newspaper rhetoric, which in turn accelerated rebel mobilization. Drawing on data on local newspaper subscribership together with newly digitized rebel interrogations, I show that oppositional rhetoric shifted beliefs about the prospects of collective success, while social pressure transformed these beliefs into mass mobilization. Mobilization spread dynamically through local peer networks, with early ideologically motivated participants forming a revolutionary vanguard followed by broader conformist participation. Government repression, however, exerted a powerful demobilizing effect that public opposition could not offset.

The second paper investigates how elite networks can drive nation building from above, focusing on the nineteenth century Fennoman movement in Finland. Using newly constructed biographical and student register data, we build historical elite networks and trace the diffusion of nationalist ideology among Swedish speaking elites. We show that more central elites were the first to adopt Finnish identity markers, and that nationalist adoption spread through their social ties. At the local level, municipalities with stronger Fennoman elite presence experienced greater finnicization of names, higher nationalist party support, more Finnish language schooling, and increased protest activity in the early 1900s. These findings demonstrate how elite led cultural projects can reshape popular identity and generate lasting institutional change.

The third paper examines how school institutions affect identity formation in Navarre, Spain. Exploiting a 1986 reform that differentially expanded access to Basque-language schooling across neighboring zones, we show that the policy substantially increased Basque proficiency but had divergent effects on identity and social cohesion. Where schooling limited segregation, greater language exposure strengthened Basque identity. Conversely, where families could sort into separate language tracks, increased proficiency coincided with heightened outgroup alienation and a balkanization of social networks. These dynamics resulted in entrenched electoral polarization, with treated cohorts driving a persistent 50-50 split between nationalist and non-nationalist blocs. Survey evidence reveals that school-based segregation spills over into both offline friendships and online social media, suggesting that everyday contact is a crucial mechanism for building a common identity and preventing social fragmentation.