A “largely theocratic society” (LTS) is defined as one in which the main purpose of government is religious and some coercion is used to serve it. Such societies exist at least in the imagination and discourse of some people. The focus is on LTS in which the major religious roles are...

In this this paper we combine economic factors that have strong trends and political factors that are stationary in a dynamic, empirical model of the evolution of public policy over a very long period in a stable democracy. The role of variation in the intensity of political competition is the...

The introduction of income taxation was a landmark in the development of the fiscal state in Western Europe and elsewhere. This paper presents an event history study of the adoption of the income tax in 11 Western European countries between 1815 and 1941. We find evidence that social learning,...

The emancipation of the serfs is often viewed as watershed moment in 19th-century Russian history. However, this reform was accompanied by numerous others measures aimed at modernizing the Tsarist economy and society. Among these "Great Reforms" was the creation of a new institution of local...

This paper suggests a new approach to analyze the causes of franchise extension. Based on a new dataset, it provides a detailed econometric study of the Great Reform Act of 1832 in the United Kingdom. The econometric analysis yields four main results. First, modernization theory only receives...

Although they would yield social benefits, some political projects may not be implemented in democracies. Prominent examples are the reform of European labour markets, the reduction of government debt or the reduction of greenhouse gases. We suggest introducing political contracts to make...

The paper studies a simple voting system that has the potential to increase the power of minorities without sacrificing aggregate efficiency. Storable votes grant each voter a stock of votes to spend as desired over a series of binary decisions. By cumulating votes on issues that it deems most...

We study the opportunistic political budget cycle in the London Metropolitan Boroughs between 1902 and 1937 under two different suffrage regimes: taxpayer suffrage (1902-1914) and universal suffrage (1921-1937). We argue and find supporting evidence that the political budget cycle operates...

Most moral justifications for coercion have been based on one of two arguments: the consent of the coerced, usually understood as univariate and discrete, or the beneficial consequences of coercion; but many cases do not fit these categories. This paper proposes that consent be understood as our...