Suchergebnisse

This book explores how domestic institutions shape the ways governments redistribute the risks and benefits of economic globalization, identifying the Anglo-American democracies because of their majoritarian polities and decentralized competitive economies, as uniquely vulnerable to the challenges of globalization

AbstractA prominent line of research on electoral systems and income redistribution argues that proportional representation (PR) leads to tax-and-transfer policies that benefit the poor at the expense of the rich. This is because PR produces encompassing center-left coalitions that protect the poor and middle classes. Yet countries with PR electoral systems tend to rely heavily on consumption taxes and tax profits lightly, both of which are inconsistent with this expectation. Both policies are regressive and seem to benefit the rich at the expense of the poor. This article argues that PR electoral institutions, when combined with trichotomous multipartism, are not as hostile to the rich as commonly believed, and that it is important to understand how electoral and party systems interact with labor market institutions in order to explain the puzzling pattern of taxation that is observed. The author develops a theoretical model and evaluates its empirical implications for a world in which production has become multinational.

This article contributes to the growing literature on the role that domestic political institutions play in mediating globalization pressures by arguing that the capital tax constraints arising from international economic integration are the most severe for countries with majoritarian political institutions. In doing so, the author solves a tax puzzle that challenges conventional thinking about how institutions condition the relationship between economic globalization and domestic politics. He presents a formal, game-theoretic model to sharpen the basic logic of his argument and then tests some of the model's predictions empirically using both quantitative and qualitative evidence.

The view that multiparty elections in changing authoritarian regimes should be held sooner rather than later has been increasingly under attack. Critics argue that, under conditions of low institutional development, multiparty elections may lead to violence and civil war, rather than to the peaceful allocation of authority that everyone desires. Starting from the premise that elections are strategically timed and endogenous in transitioning authoritarian regimes, that is, more likely to be held when violence is imminent, we show that for Africa, the continent with the lowest levels of political institutionalization, elections do not increase the probability of a civil war initiation. In fact, for the post-Cold War period, the holding of multiparty elections is actually associated with a substantial reduction in the probability of civil war onset. To account for this pattern, we develop an informational theory of elections held under conditions that prevail in the post-Cold War, when foreign powers are reluctant to provide direct support for dictators (or their opponents) and elections are more reflective of the true level of a leader's strength. We argue that, under these conditions, elections may prevent the eruption of a civil war that is already imminent, through two mechanisms: they may deter a weak opposition from initiating a war they are likely to lose or they may induce a weak dictator to offer ways to share power with the opposition.

"Spatial and Temporal Interdependence" published on by Oxford University Press.