Nimbyism is widely thought to arise from an inherent tradeoff between localism and efficiency in government: because many development projects have spatially concentrated costs and diffuse benefits, local residents naturally oppose proposed projects. But why cannot project developers (with large...

Sovereignty is necessary for peaceful cooperation, supporters argue, because a unified actor must enforce legal procedures. This argument rests upon an epistemic claim: Agreement over legal procedures is only possible if all individuals adhere to the interpretation of a single actor. But this is...

Fundamental political change often occurs gradually, and it is therefore important to understand the strategic underpinnings of gradual institutional change. This paper presents a game in which players are entirely strategic and share proposal power, while showing how one player can gradually...

In most electoral agency models, the principal observes an increasing signal of the agent's effort. But in enforcement contexts, the signal may be nonmonotonic. This is the case if the principal observes enforcement actions rather than underlying violation incidents (e.g., crime or infections)....

The primary approach to studying lobbying assumes that it allows interests to provide information to politicians. Literature has largely focused on the strategies that lobbyists can use to overcome the problem of credible communication under misalignment of preferences. This appears at odds with...