Most efforts to detect the consequences of divided government in German federalism by analyzing legislative statistics have been unsuccessful. Therefore, there is still much debate in Germany about the gridlock potential of divided government, as there is in the United States. Using a...

This paper seeks to explain how courts in new and vulnerable democracies acquire legitimacy and thus become credible actors able to facilitate or even foster the consolidation of democracy. It analyses the case of the Constitutional Court of Benin (CCB), demonstrating that governmental...

The German Basic Law is open for an interpretation that would allow the Constitutional Court to test the normative adequacy of most statutes. If the court does, it could be modelled as the supervisor of the legislator, i.e., of the agent of the people. The model predicts collusion between the...

This paper shows that the availability of dual citizenship, or here Overseas Citizenship of India (OCI), leads to higher naturalization rates in the country of residence. The analysis is based on three distinct naturalization rates, calculated on the basis of annual immigration flows and...

This paper starts from four observations: (1) voter turnout is declining in established democracies; (2) low turnout means socio-economically unequal turnout; (3) compulsory voting is an effective means to increase turnout; (4) even low-turnout countries, however, have neither introduced nor...