Firstly, two seemingly unrelated topics of Russian politics are investigated. It is shown that under expected utility maximization the assumptions of an unbiased oil forward market and a risk-acceptant attitude (strictly convex utility function) of president Putin are sufficient to explain...

The paper inquires why in some countries traditionally ruled by absolute monarchs the monarchy survived in the form of constitutional monarchy but not in others. It considers constitutional monarchy as a negotiated settlement between the king and a liberal opposition to share office rents, while...

The domain of possible power assignments within a multicameral government is multidimensional and essentially continuous. This allows policymaking authority to be divided in many ways and also allows constitutional exchange to take place along many margins of power. This internal market for...

This paper seeks to provide an improved understanding of the origins of democracy. It begins by developing a theoretical model to demonstrate how exogenous economic conditions can influence both the incentives to establish democratic institutions and the likelihood that such institutions...

The World Economic Forum recognizes that while restrictions on energy affect water systems and vise versa, energy and water policy are rarely coordinated. The International Panel on Climate Change predicts that wet places will become wetter and dry places will become dryer. Transboundary water,...

Climate resilient communities can be achieved with the support of global research, development, deployment, and diffusion of environmentally sound low GHG emission technologies and processes. Technology cooperation should lower emissions remaining mindful of biodiversity, ecosystem services and...

Robert Dahl asked, How Democratic is the United States Constitution? (2001). To address this question, Dahl embraces majoritarian democracy as his normative standard. Because the framers designed the U.S. Constitution with a wide array of constraints on majorities, Dahl’s answer is, not very....

In practice one rarely observes pure forms of dictatorship that lack a council, or pure forms of parliament that lack an executive. Generally government policies emerge from organizations that combine an executive branch of government, the king, with a cabinet or parliamentary branch, the...

Why are we rich and others poor? What is preventing the less-developed countries from catching up with the more developed? How did we become rich? Underlying these questions are more fundamental ones: What is the nature of economic progress? What are its causes? I seek the answers to these...

The main objective of the paper is to use the following terms of Daron Acemoglu and James Robinson - Despotic, Real, Paper, Shackled Leviathans - to check and evaluate the state of democracy, governance and social power in Central and Eastern European Countries (CECCs). Six states were included...