Group-based identity undermines democracy by impeding democratic change of government. A substantial literature has therefore studied how to make democracy consistent with group identity. We contribute to this literature by introducing the role of group decisiveness into voting incentives and...

Group-based identity undermines democracy by impeding democratic change of government. A substantial literature has therefore studied how to make democracy consistent with group identity. We contribute to this literature by introducing the role of group decisiveness into voting incentives and...

This paper surveys selected themes in the political economy of policymaking in Latin America, with an emphasis on recent research focusing on actual decision and implementation processes, and on the political institutions and state and social actors involved in those processes. In particular,...

This paper introduces preliminary evidence from a cross-country database of policy characteristics and potential uses of that database. While most databases have emphasized either the content of policies (e.g., size of government deficits) or countries&' formal institutions (e.g., political...

We examine whether government ideology was correlated with the growth in military expenditure in Germany over the period 1951-2011. By using various measures of government ideology, the results do not show any effect. The exception is an ideology measure based on the Comparative Manifesto...

Economists, and also economic research institutes, differ in their attitudes towards desirability of economic policies. The policy positions taken can often be determined by ideology. We examine economic policy positions by investigating minority votes in the Joint Economic Forecast of German...

This paper surveys selected themes in the political economy of policymaking in Latin America, with an emphasis on recent research focusing on actual decision and implementation processes, and on the political institutions and state and social actors involved in those processes. In particular,...

The capacity to sustain policies over time and the capacity to adjust policies in the face of changing circumstances are two desirable properties of policymaking systems. The veto player approach has suggested that polities with more veto players will have the capacity to sustain policies at the...

This paper develops a framework for analyzing different policymaking styles, their causes and their consequences in Latin America, finding that lower institutionalization and greater use of alternative political technologies (APTs) are more likely the lower the cost of using these technologies,...

Using a representative survey of German university students, we confirm that proclaimed support for environment protection policies depends on socio-cultural factors and political ideology. Unlike most related studies for other countries, we find that the environmental policy stance of German...