We consider a canonical two-period model of elections with adverse selection (hidden preferences) and moral hazard (hidden actions), in which neither voters nor politicians can commit to future choices. We prove existence of electoral equilibria, and we show that office holders mix between...

We develop a dynamic political economy model in which investment in the state capacity to levy taxes and deter crime is a policy variable, and we study the evolution of state capacity when policy is chosen by an elite. We show that democratization in the sense of expansion of the elite leads to...

In an election over two policies, public mood swings whereby voters move ideologically towards a particular policy should never hurt its electoral performance. We find that this fundamental monotonicity property of preference aggregation cannot be guaranteed in the presence of a commercial...