What explains the variety of political behavior observed across the Arab world in recent years? We model political participation as a continuum from non-violent to violent activities where the chief purpose of political action is to signal discontent. The credibility of those signals, however,...

Dictatorships do not survive by repression alone. Rather, dictatorial rule is often explained as an authoritarian bargain by which citizens relinquish political rights for economic security. The applicability of the authoritarian bargain to decision-making in non-democratic states, however, has...

Do democracies suffer higher inflation than non-democracies? We identify two competing hypotheses regarding the impact of democracy on inflation. In the "populist" approach, inflation is the result of public demands for transfers financed by the inflation tax, suggesting that electoral...