The paradigm of liberalism – the preeminence of some form of universal human rights – has taken hold in much of the developed world, with obvious exceptions. Prior to liberalism, certain subgroups in society were not accorded full moral status and were considered morally as part of the...

Competition is widely seen as a driver of improvements in institutional quality. We consider the robustness of competition, namely, polycentricity, in the form of the creation of institutions built by rebel groups in the course of civil war. In a variety of panel regressions and synthetic...