In nations where the executive has budgetary control, how are spending decisions and allocations affected? Is intra-party conflict relevant? This paper sets out to show that institutional rules and leadership roles affect budgetary outcomes. It makes the following argument: If intra-party...

How does informal government accountability relate to democratization? In this paper, we use multiple methodologies to show the relation between informal government accountability and democratization in Taiwan. Three results are relevant: First, a game-theoretic model reveals that both informal...

How does government spending affect party fragmentation in emergent democracies? This paper considers that parties affect the environment within which they compete. As a result, supply-side factors – such as government spending – may affect party fragmentation. We investigate how government...

How is government spending used strategically in the emergent Asian democracies of South Korea and Taiwan? As nations generally considered to have weathered democratization, a study of government spending in South Korea and Taiwan is instructive on how allocations may be used strategically...

Are new democracies with divided governments and volatile parties politically ill-fated? The literature suggests so, but cases of emergent democracies, such as Taiwan and Brazil that face both conditions, defy the prediction. This paper explains why: Party volatility follows from pursuing...

A debate persists over how economic performance fuels democratization. It is fanned partly by the divergent experiences of the East and Southeast Asian nations of Indonesia, South Korea, Thailand, Taiwan and the Philippines. This paper provides a theoretical model that shows that economic...

Do governments in less-democratic newly industrialized countries (NICs) bargain with their citizens? In this paper, we develop a game-theoretic model to show that the government may not be able to avoid bargaining in open economies, such as the Asian-NICs, when economic conditions are...

Does the lack of competitive elections in the less democratic newly industrialized or industrializing countries (NICs) mean that their governments are unconstrained by their citizens' preferences for economic performance? In this article, I show how non-electoral mechanisms in the less...

A debate persists over how economic performance fuels democratization. It is fanned partly by the divergent experiences of South Korea and Taiwan that suggest that economic growth leads to democratization. This paper provides a theoretical model that shows that economic downturns lead to...