Organic food standardization is an increasingly important strategy for dealing with consumer concerns about the environment, animal welfare, health, and the economic structure of food production. But the ways in which this consumer-oriented strategy is introduced, organized, and debated vary...

Policymaking in Peru over the last 25 years has been largely dominated by the Executive, and has been influenced by a variety of structural and political factors as well as by the personal ambitions of presidents and the public perception of crisis. With few exceptions, neither the Congress nor...

The author studies the effect of state legislative assembly elections, on the policies of state governments in 14 major states of India, from 1960 to 1996. She identifies the effect of the timing of elections using an instrument for the electoral cycle that distinguishes between constitutionally...

The author surveys the empirical literature on the political economy of agricultural protection. He uses a detailed data set of agricultural Political Action Committee (PAC) contributions over five U.S. congressional election cycles over the 1991-2000 period to investigate the relationship...

The effect of the distribution of political rights on income inequality has been studied both theoretically and empirically. The authors review the existing literature and, in particular, the available empirical evidence. The literature suggests that formal exclusion from the political process...

Broad consensus exists that the ability of political actors to make credible commitments is key to development. An important and little-explored determinant of the credibility of political commitments is the existence of organizations that facilitate citizen collective action to sanction...

The authors examine a unique public spending program that is proliferating across developing countries, the constituency development fund, to investigate when legislators exert more effort on behalf of their constituents. Using data from India, they find that legislator effort is significantly...

According to a theoretical model, school autonomy and parental participation in schools, can increase student learning through separate channels. Greater school autonomy increases the rent that can be distributed among stakeholders in the school, while institutions for parental participation...

The initiation in criminal activities is, typically, a young phenomenon. The study of the determinants of entry into criminal activities should pay attention to major events affecting youth. In many countries, one of these important events is mandatory participation in military service. The...