Drawing on the history of statebuilding in Western Europe, fiscal sociology has proposed the existence of a mutually reinforcing effect between the emergence of representative government and effective taxation. This paper looks at the case of Benin, a low-income West African country that...

Many students of public policy acknowledge the clash of values that defines the conflict between environmentalists and their opponents. However, less work has been done to examine ways in which the clash of values - represented in disparate discourses of nature - among environmentalists...

Attention of the public is scarce and channeled by the mass media. This creates opportunities for informational rent-seeking. Governments are in a favorable position for grasping media rents as they can regulate the media. However, the extent of regulation and, thus, the agenda-setting power are...