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"In Alien Agency, Chris Salter tells three stories of art in the making. Salter examines three works in which the materials of art - the 'stuff of the world' - behave and perform in ways beyond the creator's intent, becoming unknown, surprising, alien. Studying thse works - all three deeply embroiled in and enabled by science and technology - allows him to focus on practice through the experiential and affective elements of creation. Drawing on extensive ethnographic observation and on his own experience as an artist, Salter investigates how researcher-creators organize the conditions for these experimental, performative assemlages that sidestep dichotomies between subjects and objects, human and nonhuman, mind and body, knowing and experiencing."

The economic consequences of limits on political donations depend on the degree of political competition. Donors, who are ideologically aligned with candidates, decide how much to contribute to their own candidate. They may benefit from rent‐seeking by their own candidate but dislike rent‐seeking by the opposition. Increased rent‐seeking by politicians thus generates campaign contributions for themselves but also mobilizes donations to the opposing candidate, potentially to a greater extent. This latter effect acts as a deterrent to rent‐seeking when contributions finance electoral campaigns and positively affect election chances. When political competition is low, incumbent donors outnumber opposition donors, and limits reduce rent‐seeking. When political competition is high, donors are equalized and laissez‐faire reduces rent‐seeking. Consistent with these hypotheses, data from the USA suggest that limits are associated with better policies and stronger growth performance at low levels of political competition, while laissez‐faire is preferred when political competition is high.

Sophisticated voters assess incumbent competence by filtering out economic cycles (which they do not like) from trend growth (which they do). Naive voters on the other hand respond only to raw economic growth. This implies that voting in the aggregate should respond asymmetrically to the economic cycle. Upswings are rewarded by the naive, but punished by the sophisticated. Downswings are punished by all voters. Using an established dataset of over 400 general elections we find that the incumbent vote share (a) responds differently to trend growth than to the cycle, (b) does not respond significantly to positive variation in the economic cycle, and (c) responds significantly and negatively to negative realizations in the economic cycle. In contrast to standard formulations of the 'grievance asymmetry' this asymmetric vote response is found to be independent of trend growth. Adapted from the source document.

Models of strategic debt predict that public debt increases with polarization, measured by the ideological distance between the government and its likely successor. Conversely if voters are both short-termist and also more likely to switch their vote for parties offering higher spending and public good provision when the electorate is ideologically concentrated, then debt can fall with polarization, measured by dispersion of ideological preferences in the electorate. Using time-varying polarization measures generated from ideology data from party manifestos, we find a sizable and statistically significant negative association between debt levels in OECD countries and ideological polarization in the electorate.

Using panel data from the US states, we document a robust negative relationship between state-level government corruption and ideological polarization. This finding is sustained when state polarization is instrumented using lagged state neighbor ideology. We argue that polarization increases the expected costs of engaging in corruption, especially deterring marginal low-level corruption. Consistent with this thesis federal prosecutorial effort falls and case quality increases with polarization. Tangible anti-corruption measures including the stringency of state ethics' laws and independent commissions for redistricting are also associated with increased state polarization.

We document a robust positive correlation between the size of government and the labor share of income in data from European countries covering the period 1869-1975. Following Facchini et al (2017), we interpret this correlation as evidence that labor costs drive public spending. The long-term increase in the labor share observed over this period explains half of the overall growth of central government. The relationship holds when the labor share is instrumented with movements in technological change at the frontier. When decomposing public spending, transfers, not intensive in labor, are the only component not associated with the labor share.

This paper theorizes that the impact of ideology on the size of US state governments increases with state income. This idea is tested using state-level ideology data derived from the voting behavior of state congressional representatives. Empirically the interaction of ideology and mean income is a key determinant of state government size. At 1960s levels of income the impact of ideology is negligible. At 1997 levels of income a one standard-deviation move towards the left of the ideology spectrum increases state government size by about half a standard deviation. Estimated income elasticities differentiated by state and time are found to be increasing with ideology and diminishing with income, as predicted by the theory. Adapted from the source document.

This paper analyzes the impact of ideology on the size of US state governments. Following Pickering and Rockey (2011) this impact is hypothesized to increase with mean state income. This idea is tested using state-level ideology data derived from the voting behavior of state congressional representatives. Empirically the interaction of ideology and mean income is a key determinant of state government size. At 1960s levels of income the impact of ideology is negligible. At 1997 levels of income a one standard-deviation move towards the left of the ideology spectrum increases state government size by about half a standard deviation. Estimated income elasticities differentiated by state and time are found to be increasing with ideology and diminishing with income, as predicted by the theory.

We re-examine the concept of 'democratic advantage' in sovereign debt ratings when optimal repayment policies are time-inconsistent. If democratically elected politicians are unable to make credible commitments, then default rates are inefficiently high, so democracy potentially confers a credit market disadvantage. Institutions that are shielded from political pressure may ameliorate the disadvantage by adopting a more farsighted perspective. Using a numerical measure of institutional farsightedness obtained from the Global Insight Business Risk and Conditions database, we find that the observed relationship between credit ratings and democratic status is strongly conditional on farsightedness. With myopic institutions, democracy is associated with worsened credit ratings on average by about three investment grades. With farsighted institutions there is, if anything, a democratic advantage.