We examine the relationship between parliamentary seats and cabinet posts in European governments between 1946 and 2001. Our specification improves on past studies in two respects. First, it derives and uses the voting weights of the underlying coalition formation games. This reduces the...

We study an under-utilized source of data on legislative effectiveness, and exploit its panel structure to uncover several interesting patterns. We find that effectiveness rises sharply with tenure, at least for the first few terms even after controlling for legislators institutional positions,...

Why might citizens vote against redistributive policies from which they would seem to benefit? Many scholars focus on "wedge" issues such as religion or race, but another explanation might be geographically-based patronage or pork. We examine the tension between redistribution and patronage with...