This study argues that strong parties play a critical role in fostering economic development. The theory explores how parties broaden the constituencies to which policy makers respond and help politicians to solve coordination problems. These features ensure that politicians engage in better...

Recent studies appear to show that democracy has no robust association with economic growth. Yet all such work assumes that the causal effect of democracy can be measured by a country's regime status in a particular year (T), which is correlated with its growth performance in a subsequent period...

What determines countries’ successful transition to democracy? Research has focused on socioeconomic and institutional factors, yet the assumption that political liberalization has to precede democratization has not been systematically examined. We explore the impacts of granting civil rights...