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Is the decline in voter turnout an indicator of a worse health of a representative democracy? We build a simple probabilistic-voting model with endogenous turnout to address this question. We find that a lower turnout caused by a higher cost of voting implies higher political rents. Contrarily, a lower turnout caused by a higher ideological mobility of voters or by a lower expressive benefit of voting implies lower political rents. If voters have a civic-duty motive to vote that depends on the level of rents, multiple equilibria (a high-rents low-turnout and a low-rents high-turnout) arise.

Why do citizens get politically informed in a democracy? On one hand, being informed allows a citizen to participate in political discussions within her social network. On the other hand, having an informed opinion can help her to extend her social network. This paper builds a simple model on these insights and finds that effort in political information acquisition has inverted-U shape in the size of social network. The data from the 2000 American National Election Study and the 20022006 European Social Surveys confirm this theory: political information acquisition, political knowledge, and interest in politics increase with the size of social network, at a decreasing rate. The effect of social network is much weaker for the political efficacy measures for the United States, but not for Europe. Adapted from the source document.

We model political information acquisition in large elections, where the probability of being pivotal is negligible. Our model builds on the assumption that informedcitizens enjoy discussing politics with other informedcitizens. The resulting information acquisition game exhibits strategic complementarities. We findthat information acquisition depends negatively on the social distance between citizens. Next, we build an application of the model to the distributive politics game. Equilibrium policies are biasedto wards regions/groups with lower social distance between citizens. Finally, we present evidence for the basic model?s main prediction based on the data from the 2000 U.S. National Elections Study. Citizens with a shorter residence span (thus having a less developed local social network, i.e. facing a larger social distance) acquire significantly less political information than the otherwise similar long-term residents.

We model political information acquisition in large elections, where the probability of being pivotal is negligible. Our model builds on the assumption that informedcitizens enjoy discussing politics with other informedcitizens. The resulting information acquisition game exhibits strategic complementarities. We findthat information acquisition depends negatively on the social distance between citizens. Next, we build an application of the model to the distributive politics game. Equilibrium policies are biasedto wards regions/groups with lower social distance between citizens. Finally, we present evidence for the basic model?s main prediction based on the data from the 2000 U.S. National Elections Study. Citizens with a shorter residence span (thus having a less developed local social network, i.e. facing a larger social distance) acquire significantly less political information than the otherwise similar long-term residents.

Participatory conservation projects imply direct involvement of local communities in natural conservation efforts, aiming at combining economic development with protecting the environment. NGOs engaged in both development and conservation massively implement such projects. Numerous field studies document mixed results of such interventions and the persistence of conservation-development tradeoff: better conservation comes at the expense of lowering the livelihoods of community members because they have to abstain from using the conservation area for hunting or agriculture. Economists argue that transferring property rights to relevant stakeholders would provide the right incentives for escaping this tradeoff. We build a simple model explaining why this policy might be insufficient. If the revenue from the conservation project is low and/or volatile, the community members may rationally reject conservation unless the NGO allocates a part of resources to sustaining community livelihoods (e.g. by agricultural extension). Hence, the NGO should deviate from its narrow mission to reach its broader objective. If the NGO is funded by strictly environmentally-oriented donors it may struggle to justify diverting a part of resources to agricultural extension, as such donors obtain little "warm-glow" utility from giving to the NGO that substantially engages in non-core mission activities. Thus, the NGO faces a "size versus efficiency" dilemma: poorly conserving a larger area (with non-cooperating local communities but happier donors) or conserving well a smaller area (with cooperation by local communities but keeping donors unsatisfied). ; SCOPUS: ar.j ; info:eu-repo/semantics/published

ABSTRACTThis paper systematically reviews the empirical literature on development non‐governmental organizations (NGOs), drawing both on quantitative and qualitative analyses, and constructs a set of basic facts about these organizations. These facts concern the size of the development NGO sector and its evolution, the funding of NGOs, the allocation of NGO aid and projects across beneficiary countries, the relationship of NGOs with beneficiaries, and the phenomenon of globalization of development NGOs.

In close elections, a sufficiently high share of invalid ballots—if driven by voter mistakes or electoral fraud—can jeopardize the electoral outcome. We study how the closeness of electoral race relates to the share of invalid ballots, under the traditional paper-ballot hand-counted voting technology. Using a large micro-level data set from the Italian parliamentary elections in 1994–2001, we find a strong robust negative relationship between the margin of victory of the leading candidate over the nearest rival and the share of invalid ballots. We argue that this relationship is not driven by voter mistakes, protest, or electoral fraud. The explanation that garners most support is that of rational allocation of effort by election officers and party representatives, with higher rates ofdetectionof invalid ballots in close elections.