We explore how modern autocrats win elections by inducing employers to mobilize their employees to vote for the regime and thereby subvert the electoral process. Using two original surveys of employers and workers conducted around the 2011 parliamentary elections in Russia, we find that just...

Political and economic outcomes depend, in part, on the quality of the officials making policy. Many scholars argue that the free and fair elections are the best method for selecting competent officials. Others, however, argue that elections can lead to the selection of amateurs, demagogues, and...

How important are bureaucrats for the productivity of the state? And to what extent do the tradeoffs between different policies depend on the implementing bureaucrats' effectiveness? Using data on 16million public procurement purchases in Russia during 2011–2016, we show that over 40 percent...

Scholars have identified many ways that politicians use carrots, such as vote buying, to mobilize voters, but have paid far less attention to how they use sticks, such as voter intimidation. We develop a simple argument which suggests that voter intimidation should be especially likely where...

How much of the variation in state effectiveness is due to the individuals and organizations responsible for implementing policy? We investigate this question and its implications for policy design in the context of public procurement, using a text-based product classification method to measure...

Elite cohesion is one of the fundamental pillars of authoritarian regime stability. Defections from the ruling coalition can signal regime weakness, embolden the opposition, and, sometimes, lead to regime collapse. Using a unique dataset on 4,313 regional legislative candidates from Russia's...