Widely ignoring recommendations from mainstream economics, the some Central Asian countries have achieved remarkable economic growth rates since their transformational recession in the 1990s. While Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, and Turkmenistan have greatly benefitted from increasing world market...

This contribution explores the importance of independent organizations in authoritarian regimes. While some authoritarian governments delegate policy tasks to (relatively) autonomous agencies simply in order to improve their domestic or international image as modern political leaders or to build...

We argue that the literature on government size suffers from neglecting the role of governance both as a driving and a limiting factor for government spending. Cross-country evidence for a sample of 126 developed and developing countries averaging data for the period 2003-07 reveals that better...

European development strategies with Africa have been challenged by a pragmatic, self-interested Sino-African trade and development cooperation with a focus on infrastructure projects, which gained momentum in the last twenty years. African-European development cooperation and European norms and...

The paper adresses the need for more flexibility in the integration process of the European Union after its recent eastward enlargement. Due to the increasing number of decision-makers and the increasing heterogeneity of economic structures, financial constraints, societal preferences, and...