We provide a rationale for Co-Voting, a decision-making procedure that blends elements of direct and representative democracy to mitigate their main inefficiencies. A randomly selected group of citizens receives voting rights on specific issues, with their collective decision aggregated with...

This chapter surveys economic perspectives on the separation of powers, revealing how contemporary research in political economics and the economic analysis of law conceptualize and assess institutional checks on government authority. Emphasizing principal-agent theory, it unpacks how...

Organised crime groups often deliver electoral support to politicians, yet how they are rewarded remains unclear. Using data from Sicilian municipalities (1992-2022), we show that narrowly won races by Forza Italia, Silvio Berlusconi's party, coincide with sharp declines in the reallocation of...