The main objective of the paper is to use the following terms of Daron Acemoglu and James Robinson - Despotic, Real, Paper, Shackled Leviathans - to check and evaluate the state of democracy, governance and social power in Central and Eastern European Countries (CECCs). Six states were included...

This article frames environmentally sound innovation in the context of transnational network theory with the goal of setting forth a preliminary framework for international legal policy coherence. I consider how network dynamics can facilitate broad diffusion of environmentally sound...

Conventional wisdom proposes deep historical roots for authoritarianism in Africa: either colonial “decentralized despotism” or enduring structural features. We present a new theoretical perspective. Africans sought autonomous local communities, which constrained precolonial rulers....

Does government size and structure adapt to changes in government’s organisational environment (particularly to uncertainty and complexity) as predicted by organisational theory? We find – using a range of statistical analyses – support for each of the major theories of organisation...

Charles Beard ([1913] 2004) argued that the U.S. Constitution was created to advance the interests of people who owned personalty, particularly those at the Constitutional Convention. Because delegate votes on individual clauses at the Constitutional Convention were not publicly recorded, prior...

This paper analyzes the problem that an incumbent faces during the legislature when deciding how to react to popular initiatives or policy proposals coming from different sources. We argue that this potential source of electoral disadvantage that the incumbent obtains after being elected can...

Democratic systems are built, with good reason, on majoritarian principles, but their legitimacy requires the protection of strongly held minority preferences. The challenge is to do so while treating every voter equally and preserving aggregate welfare. One possible solution is storable votes:...

This paper questions the link between the establishment of a common currency among several countries and the necessity of political coordination. It begins by discussing why conducting a single monetary policy is thought to be easier within a single political unit. It then proceeds to enquire...

This paper studies the equilibrium size of countries. Individuals in small countries have greater influence over the nature of political decision making while individuals in large countries have the advantage of more public goods and lower tax rates. The model implies that (i) there exists...

This paper develops the empirical and theoretical case that differences in economic institutions are the fundamental cause of differences in economic development. We first document the empirical importance of institutions by focusing on two “quasi-natural experiments” in history, the...