Why do some democratic governments react weakly to terrorism, while apparently similar regimes react harshly? More generally, what are the determinants of governments' reaction to terrorism? And, what are the determinants of terrorism and of its dynamic? In this paper we focus on domestic...

The literature on the functioning of autocracies has not analyzed the consequences of the fact that policies have multiple dimensions and that these dimensions are perceived with different bias by people. This fact is obviously more striking in autocracies where the public perception of...

Why was the Chinese State able to promote economic growth during the reform era, yet has been unable to do so over the previous 30 years? In this article, we focus on a specific aspect of the question, which will contribute to the development of a more comprehensive explanation: the specific...

Citizens political participation to protests is a crucial issue for any political system, whether democratic or autocratic. Political systems have different ways of dealing with citizens’ protests, determining cost and benefit of public dissent, responding to public requests and allowing...

Citizens' political participation in protests is a crucial issue for any political system, whether democratic or autocratic. Political systems have different ways of dealing with citizens' protests, determining the cost and benefit of public dissent, responding to public requests, and allowing a...

This study aims to investigate the demographic, social, and economic drivers of rising abstention and populist electoral success in Italy in 2018. The Italian case is unique in the euro area because, in the political elections of 4 March 2018, two parties usually identified as left-wing and...

The aim of this paper is to provide a specific point of view on the protests that have characterized the Arab countries from December 2010 and are still going on. To understand some of the reasons behind these events, I propose a sequential game with asymmetric information on the likelihood of...

There are two main categories of antiterrorism policies - active and defensive. Active measures target the terrorists directly, and by weakening their ability to operate, are a sort of public good. On the other hand, defensive measures try to protect a potential target. Unilateral defensive...

Why was the same state in China able to promote economic growth in the reform era but not in the previous thirty years? In this paper we focus on a specific aspect that might help the search for a comprehensive explanation: the specific institutional arrangement that induced autocratic...