Free media may not favor political accountability when other democratic institutions are weak, and may even bring undesirable unintended consequences. We propose a simple model in which politicians running for office may engage in coercion to obtain votes. A media scandal that exposes these...

A pesar de los avances en equidad de género en América Latina, existe aún una notable brecha en términos de participación política ciudadana. La investigación en América Latina, se ha concentrado en entender la política como ocupación, razón por la cual la relación de los ciudadanos...

This paper studies the effect of strengthening democracy, as captured by an increase in voting rights, on the incidence of violent civil conflict in nineteenth-century Colombia. Empirically studying the relationship between democracy and conflict is challenging, not only because of conceptual...

This paper estimates the effect of enrollment in a large scale anti-poverty program inColombia, Familias en Acción (FA), on intent to vote, turnout and electoral choice. For identification we use discontinuities in program eligibility and variation in program enrollment across voting booths. We...

We study a large-scale intervention designed by civil society organizations to reduce vote buying in Uganda’s 2016 elections. We study this intervention in light of a model where incumbents benefit from a first-mover and valence advantage, vote buying and campaigning are complementary, and...

We investigate whether term limits can help historically underrepresented groups, such as women, gain faster access to positions of political power. We exploit evidence from Italian local elections where, in a context of rapidly increasing women's presence in politics, mayoral term limits were...

Die Europawahl 2024 hat in Deutschland zu einer Zweiteilung der politischen Landkarte geführt. Während in den westlichen Bundesländern überwiegend die Union zur stärksten Partei gekürt wird, dominiert im Osten die AfD. Dieser Wochenbericht untersucht, welche regionalen Faktoren im...

Die Europawahl 2024 hat in Deutschland zu einer Zweiteilung der politischen Landkarte geführt. Während in den westlichen Bundesländern überwiegend die Union zur stärksten Partei gekürt wird, dominiert im Osten die AfD. Dieser Wochenbericht untersucht, welche regionalen Faktoren im...

We analyze a vote-buying model where the members of a committee vote on a proposal important to a vote buyer. Each member incurs a privately-drawn disutility if the proposal passes. We characterize the cheapest combination of bribes that guarantees the proposal passes in all equilibria. When...