Examples from the breakup of Yugoslavia and state-building in the successor states are used to highlight the political and constitutional choices facing Ukraine. The main lesson is that legitimacy is needed for constitution-building, which is needed for long-term state stability. Ethnic and...

When politicians are provided with insufficient incentives by the democratic election mechanism, we show that social welfare can be improved by threshold contracts. A threshold incentive contract stipulates a performance level which a politican must reach in order to have the right to stand for...