This paper exploits variations in the timing and size of oil discoveries to identify the impact of oil wealth on democracy. I use a unique dataset from the Association for the Study of Peak Oil and Gas and other sources describing worldwide oil endowment, exploration, discoveries, and oilfield...

An American political scientist and a Russian geographer, specialists in postcommunist political reform and Russian regional politics, respectively, adopt a subnational approach to democratization, measuring democracy in a standard fashion across 57 regions of Russia. They rate levels of...

This paper discusses libertarian (or soft) paternalism, as proposed among others by Thaler and Sunstein (2008). It is argued that libertarian paternalism should not be understood as an efficiency-enhancing, but as a redistributive concept. The relationship between libertarian paternalism and...

Nach dem Zusammenbruch der sozialistischen Systeme vollzogen die betroffenen Ländern Mittel- und Osteuropas in unterschiedlichem Tempo und sequencing den Weg zu Demokratie und einer marktwirtschaftlichen Wirtschaftsordnung. Die polit-ökonomischen Probleme bei der Durchsetzung der umfassenden...

This paper analyzes the inter-relations between economic and political processes during transition in 25 post-communist countries of Central and Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union. The main findings are the following: First, economic liberalization generally has positive effect on growth...

Following the collapse of the socialist systems the countries of Middle- and Eastern Europefollowed their way to democracy and a market economy with different speed and sequencing.The related political-economy issues gave rise to an ongoing debate on the question as towhether the introduction of...

This paper presents a classification of the political regimes based on their level of participation/inclusion and competition in the collective decision-making. We use the criteria developed to build a dataset for every currently independent country in the world for the period 1800-2006

This paper presents evidence from 29 postcommunist countries that the economic transition has been more successful than the political transformation in the quarter century since the fall of the Berlin Wall. The adoption of strong parliamentarian systems has countered the adverse effects of...

Recent debates over the relative importance of democracy and state capacity for human development have led to the prevailing view that a strong state must be built before the introduction of democracy. Our research challenges this ``sequencing approach'' in international development. Using a...