This paper seeks to provide an improved understanding of the origins of democracy. It begins by developing a theoretical model to demonstrate how exogenous economic conditions can influence both the incentives to establish democratic institutions and the likelihood that such institutions...

Relatively liberal economic and political institutions emerged earlier in America than appreciated by most social scientists. They did not emerge in one great leap forward, but through a gradual process of experimentation, yardstick competition, and constitutional bargaining during the...

Does redistribution in democracies cater to the will of the majority? We propose a direct empirical strategy based on survey data that needs not assume that voters are guided by pecuniary motives alone. We find that most democracies implement the median voter's preferred amount of redistribution...

Do minorities fare worse under direct democracy than under representative democracy? We provide new evidence by studying naturalization requests of immigrants in Switzerland that were typically decided with referendums in each municipality. Using panel data from 1,400 municipalities for the...

AI is now an important component of sectors such as healthcare, agriculture, public administration and transportation, and is helping to address major challenges such as ageing and climate change. However, there is currently a lack of transparency in algorithmic governance systems, and this is...

Recent development cooperation with Guinea-Bissau, focusing on good governance, statebuilding and conflict prevention, did not contribute to democratization nor to the stabilization of volatile political, military and economic structures. The portrayal of Guinea- Bissau as a failed...

We document a sharp reversal in electoral participation between the North and the South of Italy after the 1912 enfranchisement which extended voting rights from a limited lite to (almost) all adult males. When voting was restricted to the elite, electoral turnout was higher in the South but...

Finance has become more a problem than a solution to what the world most wants: socially inclusive growth. It has become a source of crises that threaten the development of the real economy. It has escaped accountability to democratic institutions and often helped, instead, to influence and...

I subject some aspects of Roosevelt's "New Deal" to critical analysis, with particular attention to what is termed "liberal democracy". This analysis demonstrates the limits to reform, given the power of "vested interests" as articulated by Thorstein Veblen. While progressive economists and...

This paper examines the links between warfare, democracy, and government size over the long run, from the early nineteenth century to the present. We assemble new time series for government size for eight European countries. We then examine individual data trends using a combination of narrative...