We examine the incentives of regions in a country to unite or toseparate. We find that smaller regions have greater incentives tounite, relative to larger regions. We show, however, that on thewhole, majority voting on separation and union generates excessiveincentives to separate. This leads us...

Previous theoretical and empirical research has shown that policymakers have an incentive to centralize government activities in order to weaken the com-petitive pressure of fiscal federalism. We propose and test a positive model of fiscal federalism in which centralization is less likely to...

Previous theoretical and empirical research has shown that policymakers have an incentive to centralize government activities in order to weaken the competitive pressure of fiscal federalism. We propose and test a positive model of fiscal federalism in which centralization is less likely to...

A crucial aspect of constitutional design is the provision of rules on how a constitution is to be amended. If procedures for constitutional amendment are very restrictive, changes will take place outside the constitution. These changes are likely to be against the citizens' interests and their...

Do minorities fare worse under direct democracy than under representative democracy? We provide new evidence by studying naturalization requests of immigrants in Switzerland that were typically decided with referendums in each municipality. Using panel data from about $1,400$ municipalities for...

This paper examines the effect of local political decision-making institutions (i.e., direct democracy vs. representative democracy) on citizens' preferences toward public spending. Exogenous variation in institutions comes from a regression discontinuity design, which exploits a discrete change...

This paper explores the connection between the initiative process - the most potent form of direct democracy - and social issues by examining laws on seven social issues in all 50 American states. Initiative states are 18 percent more likely than noninitiative states to choose a conservative...

Realignment in California comes at a time when the state's prison system is expensive and overcrowded; the response has been to re-evaluate and reconfigure the way counties use state prisons. This paper illustrates the way in which similar problems and solutions were present at the state's...