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Populism has become a favourite catchword for mass media and politicians faced with the challenge of protest parties or movements. It has often been equated with radical right leaders or parties. This volume offers a different perspective and underlines that populism is an ambiguous but constitutive component of democratic systems torn between their ideology (government of the people, by the people, for the people) and their actual functioning, characterised by the role of the elites and the limits put on the popular will by liberal constitutionalism.

Etudes & documents ; The empirical literature on the political economy of finance emphasizes the importance of political institutions as crucial determinants of financial development and shows that democratic regimes are positively and robustly correlated with financial development. By using a three years periodic panel of 140 countries over 1984-2007, we show that democratic regimes appear to be significantly and positively correlated with financial development, but the opposition between democracies and dictatorships is not sufficient to account for differentials in financial development between countries. Indeed, our results highlight a significant and highly heterogeneous relationship between democratic regimes and financial development since the positive effect induced by democracies on financial development is explained by the presence of specific democratic political institutions, namely: parliamentary form of government and to a lesser extent federal state form. Thus, democracies seem to better foster financial development if its constitutional arrangement allows horizontal flexibility and vertical stability in the political decision-making process.

Etudes & documents ; The empirical literature on the political economy of finance emphasizes the importance of political institutions as crucial determinants of financial development and shows that democratic regimes are positively and robustly correlated with financial development. By using a three years periodic panel of 140 countries over 1984-2007, we show that democratic regimes appear to be significantly and positively correlated with financial development, but the opposition between democracies and dictatorships is not sufficient to account for differentials in financial development between countries. Indeed, our results highlight a significant and highly heterogeneous relationship between democratic regimes and financial development since the positive effect induced by democracies on financial development is explained by the presence of specific democratic political institutions, namely: parliamentary form of government and to a lesser extent federal state form. Thus, democracies seem to better foster financial development if its constitutional arrangement allows horizontal flexibility and vertical stability in the political decision-making process.

In this paper, I argue that religion matters for the emergence of democracies and dictatorships. Religion is defined as a stochastically set demand for public goods. Different types of religious collectives reflect different tradeoffs between centralized resource distribution and market rewards. Religions are defined as collectivist, when their respective collectives facilitate the hierarchical provision of common pool resources toward their members at the expense of market incentives. Religions are defined as individualist, when their respective collectives recruit and preserve their members on the basis of market incentives. Islam, Orthodoxy and Catholicism are treated as collectivist religions, whereas Judaism and Protestantism as individualist ones. I provide a historical overview that designates the Jewish kibbutz as the collective of democracy and the Russian-Orthodox monastery as the collective of dictatorship. Assuming a collectivist economy, I solve the radical government and modernization stochastic games. I find that modernization occurs in a collectivist economy when the threat of a radical government is imminent and when the leader has high extraction rents over the economy. In order to stay in power, the leader credibly commits to provide more public goods in the future, and thus modernization occurs. Underdevelopment occurs at intermediate levels of state enforcement, modernization at low levels and centralization at high levels of state enforcement. The emergence of a radical government is more likely in a collectivist rather than in an individualist economy.

In this paper, I argue that religion matters for the emergence of democracies and dictatorships. Religion is defined as a stochastically set demand for public goods. Different types of religious collectives reflect different tradeoffs between centralized resource distribution and market rewards. Religions are defined as collectivist, when their respective collectives facilitate the hierarchical provision of common pool resources toward their members at the expense of market incentives. Religions are defined as individualist, when their respective collectives recruit and preserve their members on the basis of market incentives. Islam, Orthodoxy and Catholicism are treated as collectivist religions, whereas Judaism and Protestantism as individualist ones. I provide a historical overview that designates the Jewish kibbutz as the collective of democracy and the Russian-Orthodox monastery as the collective of dictatorship. Assuming a collectivist economy, I solve the radical government and modernization stochastic games. I find that modernization occurs in a collectivist economy when the threat of a radical government is imminent and when the leader has high extraction rents over the economy. In order to stay in power, the leader credibly commits to provide more public goods in the future, and thus modernization occurs. Underdevelopment occurs at intermediate levels of state enforcement, modernization at low levels and centralization at high levels of state enforcement. The emergence of a radical government is more likely in a collectivist rather than in an individualist economy.

Scholars argue that institutions in democracies constrain leaders and prevent international conflict. However, many democracies specify rules of governance in times of emergency that divert substantial power to the head of state. The manipulation of these "emergency powers" provides a rational motivation for conflict. Using a novel data set of emergency provisions within democracies, I test the relationship between emergency power strength and conflict propensity using several steps to achieve causal inference, including an instrumental variable analysis that exploits the specificity of the state's constitution as a plausibly exogenous determinant of emergency power strength. I find that emergency power strength is a strong predictor of conflict onset in democracies in each test and that states with strong emergency powers are substantially more likely to enact a state of emergency due to an international conflict. I conclude with a discussion of my findings and avenues of future research using these data.

Scholars argue that institutions in democracies constrain leaders and prevent international conflict. However, many democracies specify rules of governance in times of emergency that divert substantial power to the head of state. The manipulation of these "emergency powers" provides a rational motivation for conflict. Using a novel data set of emergency provisions within democracies, I test the relationship between emergency power strength and conflict propensity using several steps to achieve causal inference, including an instrumental variable analysis that exploits the specificity of the state's constitution as a plausibly exogenous determinant of emergency power strength. I find that emergency power strength is a strong predictor of conflict onset in democracies in each test and that states with strong emergency powers are substantially more likely to enact a state of emergency due to an international conflict. I conclude with a discussion of my findings and avenues of future research using these data.