Enfranchisement, Intra-Elite Conflict and Bargaining

Does power sharing between competing elites result in franchise extension to non-elites? In this paper, we argue that competing, risk-averse elites will enfranchise non-elites as insurance against future, uncertain imbalances in relative bargaining power. We show that negligibly small changes in the bargaining power of non-elites, conditional on enfranchisement, via coalition formation, constrains the bargaining power of the stronger elite and result in discontinuous changes in equilibrium surplus division. Our results are robust to public good provision following enfranchisement when there is preference heterogeneity over the location of the public good across the different elites. We conclude with a comparative analysis of Indian democracy and show that our model is able to account for some of the distinctive features of Indian democracy.