This paper analyzes Japan's 1993 general election and the impact it had on the political culture of the nation. The paper begins by analyzing the dominance and corruption of the Japanese Liberal Democratic Party prior to the election, before explaining the factors behind the electoral victory of...

Some societies appear to be better equipped than others to implement efficiency enhancing policy reforms and to deliver positive results out of their implementation. Our model presents an under-examined element of policy reform and institutional quality, showing how the characteristics of the...

Rational choice models predict that political competition and political participation have opposite effects on the size of government. We investigate these theories using data from a panel of 18 Latin American countries during the 20th century. Our research builds evidence for the prediction...

We examine how democracies choose their amount of checks and balances (C&B). For this purpose, we consider a simple model of political competition with costly policy reforms. The cost of a marginal reform is determined endogenously at the constitutional phase-i.e. before policies are...

For a long time, a key condition for Stabilization and Association Agreement (SAA) to entry into force was the implementation of the European Court for Human Rights (ECtHR) in the case of Sejdić-Finci v Bosnia and Herzegovina (B&H) and Zornić v B&H. According to the judgment of the ECtHR, the...

Proponents of drug decriminalization typically emphasize the reform’s utilitarian potential to reverse mass incarceration trends, reduce racial disparities within the justice system, and minimize the economic costs associated with drug enforcement. However, decriminalization has an additional,...