Many countries have adopted policies to give preferential treatment for voluntary contributions to certain public goods. Taxable deductions, matching subsidies and rebate subsidies, which decrease gthe price of givingh for donors, are prototypical examples. However, the more aggressive policy of...

This study examines how quality of political institutions affects the distribution of government budget and how development of government spending in major sections shapes the political institutions in Iran. This question has become especially important due to recent international sanctions,...

We develop a theory of endogenous regimes transitions (with a focus on democratic consolidation), which emphasizes the role of political culture and of its interaction with political institutions. Political culture reflects the extent of individual commitment across citizens to defend democracy...

This paper investigates whether the religious identity of state legislators in India influences development outcomes, both for citizens of their religious group and for the population as a whole. To control for politician identity to be correlated with constituency level voter preferences or...

Since their introduction in 1932, Likert and other continuous, independent rating scales have become the de facto toolset for survey research. Scholars have raised significant reliability and validity problems with these types of scales, and alternative methods for capturing perceptions and...

Analyses of policy options are often unavailable or only available from think tanks that may have political biases. This paper experimentally examines how voters respond to policy analysis and how the response differs when a nonpartisan, liberal, or conservative organization produces the...

The migration out of Europe and the establishment of North American colonies presents us with a great puzzle: Why did the colonists establish democratic forms of governance? Considering that early democratic colonies appeared even before philosophical works such as those of Locke and Montesquieu...

This paper proposes an experiment in political media reform, in which competing newspapers would jointly sponsor a blogging contest to cover a city government and community issues. The goal is to test whether the VoterMedia design for a blog contest will generate enough public interest...

This paper compares two experimental models for participatory budgeting: the model pioneered by the city of Porto Alegre, Brazil; and the "votermedia" blog competitions implemented at the University of British Columbia and at several municipalities in Metro Vancouver, Canada. The mainstream...

With the passage of Act 48 in May 2011, Vermont has become the first U.S. state to enact a law for a universal, publicly financed health care system. The state is on course for implementing a single payer system by 2017. This first breakthrough in the decades-long struggle for universal health...