Motivated by a novel stylized fact - countries with isolated capital cities display worse quality of governance - we … democracies, the threat of insurgencies is not a binding constraint, and the model predicts no correlation between isolated … ways: broader power sharing (associated with better governance) means that any rents have to be shared more broadly, hence …

Do foreign educated individuals play a role in promoting democracy in their home country? Despite the large amount of … foster democracy in their home countries. Using a unique panel dataset on foreign students starting from 1950, I show that … indeed foreign-educated individuals promote democracy in their home country, but only if the foreign education is acquired in …

of outsiders is small we show that this results in a tendency to hegemony. In a simple example in which institutions …

Social institutions were often founded by the elite to avoid social upheavals. Institutions helped mitigate the threat … cultural and social factors. The differences in Chinese and English social institutions explain why England became the first …