Traditional theories about how a state achieves a monopoly of violence are becoming increasingly strained as different forms of democracy have spread across the globe, and as shifting international norms change what is considered legitimate state action. This article assesses five state...

I examine the effects of disenfranchisement on voter behavior in a country with weak democratic institutions. In 2010, the U.S. intervened in Haiti's presidential election, advancing Michel Martelly over Jude Celestin, which disenfranchised Celestin's supporters. To find the causal effect of the...

This paper studies the strategic role of extremism within a two-country multi-stage game and shows that, in general, an equilibrium exists in which extremism is used by both rivals. We show that often changes in the environment affect the two countries differently. Specifically, as a country...

In spite of their growing importance in international trade as well as in bilateral and multilateral trade negotiations, services have only attracted limited attention from researchers interested in determinants of trade policies and trade cooperation. This paper seeks to account for countries'...

Democracies delegate substantial decision power to politicians. Using a model in which an incumbent can design, examine and implement public policies, we show that examination takes place in spite of, rather than thanks to, elections. Elections are needed as a carrot and a stick to motivate...

We investigate empirically how electoral democracy and judicial independence relate to personal freedom. While judicial independence is positively and robustly related to personal freedom in all its forms, electoral democracy displays a robust, positive relationship with only two out of seven...

Personal freedom is highly valued by many and a central element of liberal political philosophy. Although personal freedom is frequently associated with electoral democracy, developments in countries such as Hungary, Poland, Turkey and Russia, where elected populist leaders with authoritarian...

In "The Myth of the Rational Voter" Brian Caplan shows that voters entertain systematically biased beliefs on a number of essential issues of economic policy and concludes that this leads democracies to choose bad policies. We introduce the psychological concept of mental models to address...

A sizeable literature studies whether governments strategically interact with each other through policy-diffusion, learning, fiscal and yardstick competition. This paper asks whether, in the presence of direct democratic institutions, spatial interactions additionally result from voters' direct...

Democracies delegate substantial decision power to politicians. Using a model in which an incumbent can design, examine and implement public policies, we show that examination takes place in spite of, rather than thanks to, elections. Elections are needed as a carrot and a stick to motivate...