We develop a quantitative theory of repeated political transitions driven by revolts and reforms. In the model, the beliefs of disenfranchised citizens play a key role in determining revolutionary pressure, which in interaction with preemptive reforms determine regime dynamics. We study the...

Regimes controlled by a rich elite often collapse and make way for democracy amidst widespread social unrest. Such regime changes are often followed by redistribution to the poor at the expense of the former elite. We argue that the reason why the elite may have to resort to full-scale...

We develop a theory of political transitions inspired in part by the experiences of Western Europe and Latin America. Nondemocratic societies are controlled by a rich elite. The initially disenfranchised poor can contest power by threatening social unrest or revolution and this may force the...

What is the place of political parties within a democratic system of political economy? Parties are often described as intermediaries that lubricate the political process by facilitating the matching of voter preferences with candidate positions. This line of analysis flows from a bi-planar...

Formal models in political science typically consider actors with differing interests or ideologies, but political actors often have “good faith disagreements” about how to achieve commonly shared goals. We develop a model of a hierarchical political organization in which a principal and an...

This paper reports the results of a questionnaire study used to explore the economic understanding, normative positions along the egalitarian-libertarian spectrum, and the party preferences of a large student sample. The aim of the study is both to find socio-economic determinants of normative...

This paper studies the effect of social learning on political outcomes in a model of informative campaign advertising. We find that communication networks among voters have important effects on parties' incentives to disclose political information, on voters' learning about candidates running...