We examine the relationship between parliamentary seats and cabinet posts in European governments between 1946 and 2001. Our specification improves on past studies in two respects. First, it derives and uses the voting weights of the underlying coalition formation games. This reduces the...

We study an under-utilized source of data on legislative effectiveness, and exploit its panel structure to uncover several interesting patterns. We find that effectiveness rises sharply with tenure, at least for the first few terms even after controlling for legislators institutional positions,...

Why might citizens vote against redistributive policies from which they would seem to benefit? Many scholars focus on "wedge" issues such as religion or race, but another explanation might be geographically-based patronage or pork. We examine the tension between redistribution and patronage with...

We develop an incomplete-information theory of economic voting, where voters' perceptions of macro-economic performance are affected by economic conditions of people similar to themselves. Our theory alleviates two persistent issues in the literature: it shows how egotropic motivations can lead...

The election of an African American as President of the United States has raised questions as to the continued relevance and even constitutionality of various provisions of the Voting Rights Act (VRA). Barack Obama’s apparent success among whites in 2008 has caused some to question the...

In the current debate over the constitutionality of voter identification laws, both the Supreme Court and defenders of such laws have justified them, in part, as counteracting a widespread fear of voter fraud that leads citizens to disengage from the democracy. Because actual evidence of voter...