A benchmark result in the political economy of taxation is that the degree of redistribution is positively linked to income inequality. However, empirical evidence supporting such a relationship turns out to be mixed. This paper shows how these different empirical reactions can be rationalized...

The Russian political party system has developed through a tumultuous era, progressing from extreme fragmentation to a smaller, more stable number of parties. Much of this change was engineered by elites and especially by President Putin, leading to the question of whether the result is a normal...

In their seminal work, The Calculus of Consent (1962), Buchanan and Tullock develop a decision model which embodies fundamental relation­ships relevant to institutional choices. However, the Buchanan-Tullock model remains "general," thus inviting others to specify details and to develop...