Many find that oil wealth produces political conflict. It is also argued that oil makes countries susceptible to the “resource curse” because rulers more easily buy off opposition and stave off economic reforms. We explore this issue by examining whether oil price volatility affects...

Pessimists on globalization claim that liberalization of markets allows multinational corporations free reign, constraining local autonomy and precipitating a race to the bottom that will endanger recent democratic gains. The optimists see the end of dirigiste economic models as favorable for...

We were asked by the Independent Evaluation Office to outline political science methods for assessing the chances of reform implementation in an ex-ante fashion. We agreed to illustrate how these tools 'work' by using Pakistan as a case study. The recent literature on IMF-sponsored reforms...

In this paper, we assess the effect of globalization on the distribution of income within countries, focussing on the influence of foreign direct investment. We analyze data for 72 countries, 1970-90. We incorporate in our tests the Kuznets (1955) curve, measures of the character of political...

We address the question of state militarization under conditions of ethnic and other diversity. Primordialist claims about ancient hatreds, fear, and insecurity in such societies would lead one to expect that fractionalization, polarization and ethno-nationalist exclusion would prompt...