The COVID-19 pandemic has not only caused thousands to die and millions to lose their jobs, it has also prompted more governments to simultaneously to declare a state of emergency than ever before. States of emergency usually imply the extension of executive powers that diminishes the powers of...

The Middle East is the most terror-prone region of the world. It is almost exclusively governed by autocratic regimes that often explicitly refer to Islam to justify some of their policies. In this paper, we analyse government reactions to terrorist events in the states that are members of the...

Nine out of ten modern constitutions contain explicit emergency provisions, describing who can call a state of emergency (and under which conditions) and the additional powers government enjoys under a state of emergency. As states of emergency typically allocate additional powers to the...

Over the last couple of decades, non-majoritarian institutions (NMIs) have been introduced in many countries. Of late, they have been criticized as promoting technocracy to the detriment of democracy. A number of political scientists even argue that they would strengthen populists and be, hence,...

The rule of law, a fundamental value of the European Union (EU), has come under stress in a number of its member states. The EU's response to these stresses has been criticized as politicized, slow, and unassertive. This research note develops a proposal to improve the current procedure.

Constitutional Economics - the analysis of constitutions drawing on the economic approach - has made important progress over the last two decades. The factors determining whether a constitution is complied with, however, have received only little attention. This is surprising, as a huge gap...

It is now abundantly clear that social norms channel behavior and impact economic development. This insight leads to the question: How do social norms evolve? This survey examines research that relies on geography to explain the development of social norms, and suggests that religion and family...

This paper explores the dynamics of press freedom around events that threaten or oust the incumbent regime of a country. While democracies on average grant the press more freedom, our theoretical starting point is that democracies and autocracies may have similar incentives to protect the power...

Over the last three decades, plea bargaining procedures have been adopted by a large number of jurisdictions worldwide. However, a comprehensive account of the current adoption and use of such procedures is still missing. We survey 174 jurisdictions, finding that 101 of them have a formalized...

We bring attention to a previously overlooked determinant of de jure-de facto constitutional gaps: a polity's transition to a nation-state. We argue that nation-statehood, predicated on the formation of a strong sense of national identity, lowers the government's incentive to violate...