International environmental agreements (IEAs) are increasingly important in a globalized economy. The aim of our paper is study the effect of political pressure groups-lobbies on the size and stability of IEAs. To this purpose we use the framework of two-level games to explain how national...

Lobbying by pollution firms is commonly viewed as having a negative impact on the stringency of environmental policy. We ask whether lobbying instead can bring about stricter environmental policy, and how imperfect property rights affect the policy outcome. We study the effects on the...

Studies of the stability of international environmental agreements (IEAs) assumed a benevolent government who maximizes social welfare. The aim of our paper is to develop a theoretical framework in which the Government’s decisions are influenced by green and producer lobbies. To this end, we...

In this chapter we are addressing the numerous cases of government failures in countries with transit economies and weak democratic traditions when the state is called upon to provide “pure public goods” (defense, security, and justice). In other words, the subject matter of this chapter...

Free, independent and hard-hitting media can play an important role in curbing corruption. Media in Uganda has enjoyed considerable freedom in this regard since Museveni came to power in 1986. The evolving power structure and a changing media landscape, however, have presented both challenges...

Legal provisions that protect politicians from arrest and prosecution exist throughout much of the modern democratic world. Why, and with what effects, do societies choose to place their politicians above the law? We examine the institution of immunity both theoretically and empirically. Our...

The Supreme Court has long held that campaign finance regulations are permissible for the purpose of preventing corruption or the appearance of corruption. Yet the implied hypothesis that campaign finance reforms are effective tools for combating public corruption has gone essentially untested....

We investigate the influence of electoral rules and voter information in elections on voting outcomes and the quality of public officials, using new data on state court judge elections in 39 states in the U.S. from 1990 to 2010. We find, first, that voting is very partisan in partisan judicial...

There is a growing literature on the causes and consequences of corruption. A common and often unsubstantiated assertion is that countries which exhibit a low level of political competition are more likely to suffer higher levels of corruption. In this paper we examine the effects of corruption...

This paper empirically analyzes how political factors affect the deployment of renewable energy (RE) sources and compares it to other economic, energy and environmental drivers that have received greater attention in the literature so far. The sample encompasses the EU countries bound to attain...