The paper inquires why in some countries traditionally ruled by absolute monarchs the monarchy survived in the form of constitutional monarchy but not in others. It considers constitutional monarchy as a negotiated settlement between the king and a liberal opposition to share office rents, while...

The domain of possible power assignments within a multicameral government is multidimensional and essentially continuous. This allows policymaking authority to be divided in many ways and also allows constitutional exchange to take place along many margins of power. This internal market for...

Firstly, two seemingly unrelated topics of Russian politics are investigated. It is shown that under expected utility maximization the assumptions of an unbiased oil forward market and a risk-acceptant attitude (strictly convex utility function) of president Putin are sufficient to explain...

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...

In practice one rarely observes pure forms of dictatorship that lack a council, or pure forms of parliament that lack an executive. Generally government policies emerge from organizations that combine an executive branch of government, the king, with a cabinet or parliamentary branch, the...

This paper offers a framework for understanding the origin of market-preserving government. The paper shows that when parties in a Hobbesian society end in an arms race rather than war, they can create a market-preserving government to maintain the no-war equilibrium at lower cost. The...

France sent five thousand men to fight alongside George Washington's army in the American Revolutionary War. We show that the French combatants' exposure to the United States of America increased support for the French Revolution a decade later. French regions (départements) from which more...

Es existiert wohl keinerlei «Präzedenzfall», der in irgendeiner Weise vergleichbar wäre mit der vollkommenen Verwandlung des derzeitigen griechischen Ministerpräsidenten Alexis Tsipras und dessen Anpassung an die Anforderungen der griechischen Realität. Wahrhaft, all zu rasch übersetzte...

In a complex and chaotic world, people often gloss over the facts and jump to conclusions. Unfortunately, the hasty approach usually yields deficient and even harmful results. The domains affected range from migration and poverty to alienation and crime. According to the Myth of Boon, for...

This paper describes the compilation of an annual database on public expenditure on education, health and social security and other fiscal variables. It covers 32 upper and upper-middle income countries, between 1950 and 2008. The total includes 8 Latin American countries. The database was...