Social and/or political involvement within the population is often argued to enhance public sector performance. The underlying idea is that engagement fosters political awareness and interest and increases the public?s monitoring ability. Still, although extensive voter involvement may put...

Members of parliament in many countries are legally permitted to execute (un)paid jobs in addition to their political mandate. It is often argued that such moonlighting activities are unproblematic for the chain of democratic delegation and accountability as long as outside interests/earnings...

German municipalities are expected to suffer from (often significant) population losses in the upcoming decades. We assess these local governments’ vulnerability to the fiscal consequences of this demographic decline through two means (using a sample of 1021 municipalities in the state of...

Studies of spatial policy interdependence in (local) public policies usually concentrate on the relations between jurisdictions within a single analysed region, and disregard possible extra-regional effects. This paper evaluates the validity of such restriction by studying German local...

Theoretical work based on social identity theory and in-group favoritism predicts that increased population diversity (e.g., due to immigration) reduces support for redistributive public policies. In this article, we add to the empirical literature testing this prediction in three ways. First,...