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The paper contends that political democracy is a matter of degree, a variable property of political institutions. An index for this property, Q, measures the extent to which complex institutions approximate a generalized definition of majority-rule (e.g. that losing coalitions must be smaller than winning or blocking ones.) This index for degrees of political democracy is in turn treated as a function of simpler structural variables, such as decision-rule, the sizes of veto groups, the sizes of groups excluded from decision-making, and simple patterns of representation. Finally, it is suggested that there is no necessity that more democracy produce more satisfaction with outcomes, but that this property does set a "maxi-min" constraint on rates of satisfaction: the more democratic an institution, the larger is the smallest possible proportion of a group (or "domain") which can be satisfied with any single (binary) outcome.

Intro -- Acknowledgements -- Contents -- Contributors -- 1 The Dictator's Knowledge Problem -- 1.1 Introduction -- 1.2 The Literature: Separate Pieces of the Same Puzzle -- 1.3 The Dictator's Knowledge Problem -- 1.3.1 Who Supports and Who Opposes? -- 1.3.2 Which Means of Support? -- 1.3.3 Exogenous Factors -- 1.3.4 The Dictator-Citizen Relationship -- 1.4 Feedback Mechanisms to Resolve the Dictator's Knowledge Problem -- 1.4.1 Legislatures -- 1.4.2 Business and Professional Associations -- 1.4.3 Protests -- 1.4.4 Is One Mechanism Better than Another? -- 1.5 Conclusion -- References -- 2 The Economic Reconstruction of Iraq -- 2.1 Introduction -- 2.2 Background on the Economy and Economic Reconstruction of Iraq -- 2.2.1 Iraq's Prewar Economy -- 2.2.2 The Governing Body of Iraq's Initial Economic Reconstruction -- 2.2.3 Economic Reconstruction -- 2.3 The Traps of Economic Reconstruction in Iraq -- 2.3.1 The Credible Commitment Trap -- 2.3.2 The Political Economy Trap -- 2.3.3 The Bureaucracy Trap -- 2.3.4 The Fatal Conceit Trap -- 2.4 Conclusion: Implications for Policy -- References -- 3 Foreign Intervention and Global Public Bads -- 3.1 Introduction -- 3.2 Global Public Goods, Global Public Bads and Unintended Consequences -- 3.3 Evidence of the Negative Unintended Consequences of Foreign Intervention -- 3.3.1 Method and Case Selection -- 3.3.2 Democratic Republic of the Congo -- 3.3.3 Afghanistan and Pakistan -- 3.4 Conclusion -- References -- 4 Property Rights and Economic Development: The Case of Sub-Saharan African Countries -- 4.1 Introduction -- 4.2 The History and the Point of Divergence in the Paths of Nations' Development -- 4.3 The Model and Data Description -- 4.3.1 Data Description -- 4.3.2 The Models -- 4.4 Results and Interpretation -- 4.5 Conclusion -- References.

This study examines how quality of political institutions affects the distribution of government budget and how development of government spending in major sections shapes the political institutions in Iran. This question has become especially important due to recent international sanctions, aiming to change the political behavior of Iran. We use the impulse response functions (IRF) and variance decomposition analysis (VDC) on the basis of Vector Autoregressive (VAR) model with annual data from 1960 to 2006. Our results show the importance of political institutions in patronage and public goods provision spending in Iran. The results imply that a shock in positive changes of democratic quality of institutions leads to negative and statistically significant response of military spending and positive and statistically significant response of education expenditures in short term. If sanctions are successful to change the political behavior of Iran in short run (Dizaji and Bergeijk, 2013), then one can also expect to see a reduction in allocated budget for military in Iran.

This study examines how quality of political institutions affects the distribution of government budget and how development of government spending in major sections shapes the political institutions in Iran. This question has become especially important due to recent international sanctions, aiming to change the political behavior of Iran. We use the impulse response functions (IRF) and variance decomposition analysis (VDC) on the basis of Vector Autoregressive (VAR) model with annual data from 1960 to 2006. Our results show the importance of political institutions in patronage and public goods provision spending in Iran. The results imply that a shock in positive changes of democratic quality of institutions leads to negative and statistically significant response of military spending and positive and statistically significant response of education expenditures in short term. If sanctions are successful to change the political behavior of Iran in short run (Dizaji and Bergeijk, 2013), then one can also expect to see a reduction in allocated budget for military in Iran.