We construct a model of revolution and transition to democracy under an individualistic and a collectivist culture. The … culture are more likely to end up adopting democracy faster than countries with a collectivist culture. Our instrumental … democracy, even after controlling for other determinants of democracy emphasized in the literature. We also give evidence that …

This paper investigates the endogenous emergence of democracy and rule of law in an economy where heterogeneous … conditional on beliefs about property rights enforcement. Democratization is endogenous, but the features of democracies are shown … to be crucially related to the conditions under which democratization initially takes place. Democratic transitions …

democracy during the following two years by around 3 percentage points. A 5% fall in income due to low rainfall raises the … probability of democratization by around 7 percentage points. We also find that rainfall does not affect transitions from … democracy to autocracy. …

This paper investigates the role of violent civil conflicts during the process of democratization for the quality of … different groups may engage in violent conflict in order to become the ruler predicts a crucial role of the democratization … scenario. A peaceful democratization leads to democracies with a high degree of civil liberties, reflecting a social contract …

We identify permanent democratic transitions during the Third Wave of Democratization and the nineties, when many … relatively stable democracy to autocracy and 6 episodes of small improvements in representative institutions. We also classify … prerequisites for democracy in these countries that enter the Third Wave as non-democracies. Examining initially autocratic …

Theory and empirics are ambiguous on the effect of democracy on growth. Cross-country studies find that democracy has … democracy. We reconcile this inconsistency by showing that the positive effect of political transition is a result of swift … regime change and not democratization. We identify and examine 90 successful, failed, and gradual transitions that have …

centralization and decentralization are suboptimal as long as political bargaining does not take place. With bargaining, however, the … first best can often be achieved under decentralization, but not under centralization. At the root of this result is the …

This paper integrates the distributive politics literature with the literature on decentralization by incorporating …. The efficiency of decentralization and the performance of 'constitutional rules' (such as majority voting) which may be … used to choose between decentralization and centralization are then discussed in this framework. Stronger externalities and …