This paper provides a theoretical analysis of civil society activism and development. In a one period static model, the Government of a backward region attempts to acquire land for a development project in exchange for compensation. Citizen-activists observe a noisy signal about the size of...

We study classist societies where the middle class fight over redistribution of public funds with the marginalized and over social policies with the elites. We show that such societies are often deprived of well-defined majoritarian preferences, underscoring the importance of the party system....

This paper starts with the observation that almost all military dictatorships that democratize become presidential democracies. I hypothesize that military interests are able to coordinate on status-preserving institutional change prior to democratization and therefore prefer political...

This study analyzes the dynamic impact of democratization on receipt of foreign aid. Since the 1990s, this relationship has been increasingly important, given the end of the Cold War and the related turn to good governance, increased pressure from donor publics for political conditionality, and...

This contribution studies the influence of poor politico-economic factors, unfavorable demographic conditions, state failure, modernization, secularization, globalization and the perceived dependency of the Islamic world from the West on the onset of armed Islamist activity for 155 countries...

At least since 1750 when Baron de Montesquieu declared “peace is the natural effect of trade,” a number of economists and political scientists espoused the notion that trade among nations leads to peace. Employing resources more efficiently to produce some commodities rather than others is...