This paper argues that uncertain or random voter turnout plays a key role in mediating conflicts of interest between voters and politicians on the one hand and heterogenous groups of voters on the other. Random voter turnout creates an incentive for politicians to seek con- sensus because it is...

Coups d'etat continue to be common around the world, often leading to changes in leaders and institutions. We examine the relationship between military spending and coups and find that (i) successful coups increase military spending by more than failed attempts, and (ii) coups are more likely...

No voters cast their votes based on perfect information, but better educated and richer voters are on average better informed than others. We develop a model where the voting mistakes resulting from low political knowledge reduce the weight of poor voters, and cause parties to choose political...

This paper studies the relationship between corruption and sustainable development in a sample of 110 countries between 1996 and 2007. Sustainability is measured by growth in genuine wealth per capita. The empirical analysis consistently finds that cross-national measures of perceived and...

We study the e¢ cient allocation of spending and taxation authority in a federation in which federal politicians are exposed to electoral uncertainty. We show that centralization may, but need not, result in a loss of electoral accountability. We identify an important asymmetry between positive...

The literature on the rational political business cycle suggests that politicians systematically manipulate economic and fiscal conditions before elections to increase their chance of gaining reelection. Most tests of this theory look for evidence of pre- election distortions in fiscal policy....

In a representative democracy, voters can use elections to protect their property by holding politicians accountable for the tax policies they implement while in office. This paper demonstrates that performance voting can - partly or wholly - solve the capital levy problem. We characterise the...

This paper evaluates the extent of regulation in a democracy with political corruption. Elected politicians can restrict entry of firms in exchange for bribes from entrepreneurs. Full liberalisation implies free entry and allocative efficiency and is supported by a majority of voters. Voters...

This paper presents an argument in favor of foreign lobbying. We show how foreign lobbying can help internalize cross national externalities and promote social objectives.

Most of the voting models restrict themselves to the analysis of symmetric equilibria, i.e. equilibria in which ‘similar’ voters make ‘similar’ voting decisions. In this paper we investigate this assumption under costly plurality voting. In any pure strategy equilibrium, if two active...