Barrington Moore's famous line 'no bourgeoisie, no democracy' is one of the most quoted claims in political science. But has the rise of the African middle class promoted democratic consolidation? This paper uses the case of Kenya to investigate the attitudes and behaviours of the middle class....

We analyze how the introduction of the voting advice application (VAA) smartvote affects voter turnout, voting behavior and electoral outcomes. The Swiss context offers an ideal setting to identify the causal effects of online information with aggregate real world data because smartvote was...

There is a popular view in Russian studies arguing that underdevelopment of Russian civil society is partly responsible for the failure of liberal idea in Russia. Fragmented society sees no alternative to massive government regulation, that is why support of strong state is so high. If this...

In the third decade of the 21st century, digitization, global events, challenges from authoritarian states, and difficulties of particular democracies to function properly confront democracy with a new series of challenges and opportunities that will force it to reinvent itself. The last decades...

Politicians seeking reelection need voters to know what they have done for them. Thus, incentives may arise to spend more money where media coverage is higher. We present a simple model to explain the allocation of public spending across jurisdictions contingent on media activity. An incumbent...

This paper examines the impact of political compet ition on b lock grants from federal to sub-federal levels of government. We model the extent and direction of income redistribution as determined proximately by the political agendas of central decisionmakers and, at a deeper level, by the...