Alienation to politics weakens political competition and can undermine the acceptance and legitimacy of democracy as a political system. Governance and representation problems at the local level cause part of citizens' lack of power and political alienation. Citizens have local power if they can...

Members of parliament have more effective incentives to cater for the majority's preferences when they are elected in districts with few seats in parliament rather than in districts with many seats. We empirically investigate this hypothesis by matching voting behavior on legislative proposals...

What determines political candidates' election prospects' We match roll call votes of candidates for the majority elected upper house of parliament who were previously in the lower house with revealed preferences of their constituency. Thereby, we obtain a direct measure of past congruence....

This paper addresses the personal linkages between the public administration and the legislature that emerge because public servants pursue a political mandate. There are concerns that the strong representation of bureaucrats in many Western parliaments compromises the constitutionally proposed...

We compare the votes of parliamentary representatives and their constituents on a popular initiative that directly aimed at weakening the separation of powers in 1922 in Switzerland. We analyze whether the strength of individual ties to the public service affect the probability of voting for the...

Institutions systematically affect which individuals gain positions in the different branches of democratic government. Given agents' discretion in decision-making, their characteristics matter for policy choices. This perspective of political selection replaces the representative political...

By examining discrepancies between officially reported GDP growth figures and the actual economic growth implied by satellite-based night time light (NTL) density, we investigate whether democracies manipulate officially reported GDP figures, and if so, whether such manipulation pays political...

This paper analyses how tax morale and countries' institutional quality affect the shadow economy, controlling in a multivariate analysis for a variety of potential factors. The literature strongly emphasizes the quantitative importance of these factors to understand the level and changes of...

This paper analyses how governance or institutional quality and tax morale affect the shadow economy, using an international country panel and also within country data. The literature strongly emphasizes the quantitative importance of these factors to understand the level and changes of shadow...