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 --...

The volume of theoretical literature seeking to explain public-debt accumulation has exploded in recent years as debt crises have emerged in many nations. However, empirical evaluation of political-economy theories has, unfortunately, lagged somewhat that of the standard...