This paper examines the impact of policymakers' horizon on the sustainability of international cooperation. We describe a prisoners' dilemma game between two infinitely-lived countries run by policymakers. We show that re-election incentives can act as a discipline device, making it easier to...

Democracies rarely engage in conflicts with one another, though they are not averse to fighting autocracies. We exploit the existence in many countries of executive term limits to show that electoral accountability is the key reason behind this "democratic peace" phenomenon. We construct a new...

We present a model of electoral competition in which parties act as brands and use competition to select their candidates. We show that the forces that shape the competition between party representatives and independents rationalize the positive correlation between inequality and polarization...