Government intervention to stabilise financial systems in times of banking crises ultimately involves political decisions. This paper sheds light on how certain political variables influence policy choices during banking crises and hence have an impact on fiscal outlays. We employ cross-country...

This paper tackles a familiar question in the study of parties and party systems: why some countries develop party systems dominated by regional or local parties whereas other countries have party systems dominated by parties with broad national constituencies and broad programmatic appeals (Cox...

Taking into proper account the geographic distribution of ethnic groups and the operation of electoral systems reveals that the impact of ethnic diversity and electoral systems on the number of parties has been badly underestimated. Contrary to earlier findings, ethnic diversity spurs party...

This paper explores the impact of decentralization on countries' fiscal outcomes paying attention to one aspect usually neglected in the literature: the relevance of self-interested local politics. Relevance that can be proxied by the nationalization of political party systems, namely the extent...

How do the contours of electoral systems, party systems, and women's representation affect political engagement, and are these effects different for men and women? Drawing on the World Values Study, we systematically untangle the influence of proportionality in electoral rules, the number and...