Ever since the spectacular boom and bust cycle of the Spanish real estate industry, endemic corruption at the local level has become a widely recognized problem in the national public discourse. In an effort to expose an under-explored political determinant, this paper investigates the effect of...

Vier Parteien - Die Linke, SPD, Bündnis 90/Die Grünen und FDP - haben bis Ende April 2021 den Entwurf ihres Programms zur Bundestagswahl am 26. September veröffentlicht. Wie klar und überzeugend vermitteln Bundestagsparteien ihre Vorstellungen? Die digital- und medienpolitischen Aussagen der...

Diese Studie untersucht die Programme zur Bundestagswahl 2021 im Hinblick auf Maßnahmen, die die Rolle von privatem Eigentum in unserer Gesellschaft tangieren. Untersuchungsgegenstand sind die Wahlprogramme aller gegenwärtig im deutschen Bundestag vertretenen Parteien.

This paper provides a simple model to explain effect of political alignment between different tiers of government on policy choices and election outcomes. We derive precise predictions that, as long as voters attribute most of the credit for providing public goods to the local government: (i)...

This paper studies the effects on electoral competition of political parties relying on monetary donations and volunteer labor for their electioneering activities. It also examines whether a recorded decline in party activism increases special-interest influence on party policy platforms....

In this paper we test the hypothesis that intergovernmental grants allocated to co-partisans buy more political support than grants allocated to local governments controlled by opposition parties. We use a rich Spanish database containing information about the grants received by 617...

A key tenet of representative democracy is that politicians' discourse and policies should follow voters' preferences. In the median voter theorem, this outcome emerges as candidates strategically adjust their platform to get closer to their opponent. Despite its importance in political economy,...

Following the Supreme Court's 2010 decision in Citizens United v. FEC, independent expenditures have grown dramatically both in terms of raw dollars and as a percentage of spending in elections. A large and growing portion comes from political nonprofits—so called “dark money”...