Machine generated contents note: 1 INTRODUCTION -- 1.1 Overview -- 1.2 The Democratic Commitments to Government -- Involvement in the Macroeconomy -- 1.3 The Evolution of the Policy Commitments and of -- A/acroeconomic Performance -- 1.4 Explaining Policy and Outcome Variation across --...

In the postwar era until recently, public-transfer shares of GDP have risen dramatically in every developed democracy. Much positive theory purports to explain this development as a direct consequence of differing distributions of political (votes) and economic (money) resources. This literature...