The literature on institutional determinants of intra-state violence commonly asserts that the presence of multiple political parties reduces the conflict potential within countries; by co-opting oppositional groups into an institutionalized political arena, dissidents would prefer...

A country's form of government has important economic and political consequences, but the determinants that lead societies to choose either parliamentary or presidential systems are largely unexplored. This paper studies this choice by analyzing the factors that make countries switch from...

We analyze the relative importance of party ideology and rents from office in the formation of coalitions in a parliamentary democracy. In equilibrium, the types of coalitions that are formed may be minimal winning, minority or surplus and they may be ideologically `disconnected'. The coalitions...