Enlightenment Under Autocracy: The Origins of Liberalism in China
Abstract: This paper investigates how ideas influence political institutions over time, focusing on Wang Yangming’s philosophy and its impact on Chinese political development. Wang’s teachings emphasized individual moral autonomy and the belief that moral authority resides within each person, challenging the hierarchical and authoritarian structures of Confucian orthodoxy. By analyzing historical texts, validated through a semantic similarity measure comparing key concepts to Yangming’s writings, and employing an instrumental variable approach, we estimate the causal impact of the diffusion of Yangming’s ideas on reformist political activity during the Ming Dynasty. Our findings indicate that regions more exposed to Wang Yangming’s ideas were significantly more likely to produce leaders associated with the Donglin Movement (1604–-1627), a reformist faction advocating for moral governance and accountability. The IV strategy leverages two exogenous sources of variation—Wang’s same-year examination cohort and proximity to public lectures—to address concerns about endogeneity. These results underscore the role of intellectual movements in fostering political reform, even within autocratic contexts, and highlight the enduring influence of ideas on institutional development. (co-author: (with Xizi Luo)
Melanie Xu is an Assistant Professor of Economic History at the London School of Economics and Political Science.
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