When individuals’ utility is a convex combination of their income and their concern at having a low relative income (the weights attached to income and to the concern at having a low relative income sum up to one), the maximization of aggregate utility yields an equal income distribution. This...

This paper contributes to explaining variation in violence in post-independence East Africa. By focussing on Tanzania and Uganda, our comparative "most-similar-cases" research design ensures significant across- and within-case variation in violence against relatively similar background...

It stands to reason that social unrest does not erupt out of the blue. Although there are a great many reasons why social dismay might descend into social disorder, only few yardsticks or indices can plausibly be used to gauge the potential for social unrest (PSU). If policy makers want to...

This paper calls attention to the instrumental role of democracy and press freedom in combating corruption. As opposed to an autocracy with no or limited press freedom, a free press in a democracy can inform voters about the corruption of political representatives, and voters in turn can punish...

How can an escalation of tensions between the major ethno-religious groups be avoided in a democratizing Iraq? The first section explains why and under which conditions democratization may stir up, rather than palliate ethnic conflicts: when networks of civil society organizations have not yet...

The present paper investigates how ethnic violence and civil war in Sri Lanka have affected local property rights institutions . I use local case studies to analyze the institutional relations and alliances between civilians and combatants in the emergent society of violence that shapes local...

This paper analyses the reform progress made in the energy-rich states of the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS), Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan (AKTU for short) and contrasts their development to that in the resource-poor countries at the CIS periphery. The main...

This paper studies the consequences of certain widespread policies for the quality and sustainability of growth. These policies cause economic inefficiency, environmental destruction and increased poverty. The paper develops a political economy model to show why the existence of such policies is...

Over the last two decades, many countries around the world have been enthusiastically embarking on the path of decentralization. Decentralization has been advocated as a powerful means to improve the provision of health care services and health outcomes in developing countries. However, due to a...

The problem I want to examine is how to characterize the relationship between ethnicity and federalism in Nigeria. I want to illustrate how the dynamics of ethnicity, by which I mean its manipulation as a political resource of conflict and accommodation by the political elite, has shaped the...