This paper investigates the impact of foreign aid on democratic outcomes using a panel of countries for the period between 1995 and 2018. In so doing, it speaks to a major critique of foreign aid, which is that it negatively impacts democratic governance. The analysis distinguishes between...

In this paper we examine the interrelatedness between regime types of democracy and non-democracy and poverty reduction. The liberal international order and democratic principles have been challenged by the populace's general discontent in recent years, while the reduction of poverty is a...

This paper analyzes which institutional features contribute to poverty reduction when countries democratize. For this, theories and data are used that distinguish between different areas of democratic institutions - namely electoral, liberal, participatory, deliberative, and egalitarian...

One decade after the Arab uprisings of 2010/11, the present discussion paper revisits processes of political change in the Middle East and North Africa MENA) with a focus on the question of systemic change. Core questions in this context are: How, among all possible varieties of political...

We study the effect of ethnic diversity on local public spending following fiscal decentralisation in a setting where local institutions are salient. Specifically, the latter affects coordination costs and thereby cooperative behaviour across the constituent ethnic groups. Our theory highlights...

Die Corona-Maßnahmen der Bundes- und Landesregierungen haben das öffentliche Leben in Deutschland zeitweise massiv beeinträchtigt. Durch das Kontaktverbot wurden die freie Berufsausübung, die Gewerbefreiheit, die Schulpflicht und die Religionsfreiheit vorübergehend eingeschränkt....

The EU has made democracy support a stronger aspect in its relations with African countries since 2002. However, a broad range of political and economic dynamics within as well as outside of Europe challenge democracy and its supporters: the rise of non-democratic countries such as China,...

For scholars, policy-makers and casual observers, there is no doubt that Morocco has undergone an impressive transformation process since Mohammed VI came to power in 1999. The country projects an image of liberal-democratic modernity and socio-economic progress that the international community...

Americans have trillions of dollars invested in public and private companies, yet stock ownership is highly unequal: the wealthiest one percent of American households possess forty percent of all wealth, and there is a large and persistent racial wealth gap. What if new innovations in...

The main aim of this study is to explain how institutional change, based on processes of democratization, governs the origin and diffusion of technological innovation across economies. This study suggests that institutional change, based on a progressive democratization of countries, is a...

The EU has made democracy support a stronger aspect in its relations with African countries since 2002. However, a broad range of political and economic dynamics within as well as outside of Europe challenge democracy and its supporters: the rise of non-democratic countries such as China,...

For scholars, policy-makers and casual observers, there is no doubt that Morocco has undergone an impressive transformation process since Mohammed VI came to power in 1999. The country projects an image of liberal-democratic modernity and socio-economic progress that the international community...

We study the effect of franchise extension on the fiscal structure of central and local governments in the United Kingdom between 1820 and 1913 to revisit the Redistribution Hypothesis - the prediction that franchise extension causes an increase in state-sponsored redistribution. We adopt a...

We study the effect of ethnic diversity on local public spending following fiscal decentralisation in a setting where local institutions condition cooperative behaviour across ethnic groups. The theory we develop highlights the role of the local elite in lobbying for policies which favour them...

Die Corona-Maßnahmen der Bundes- und Landesregierungen haben das öffentliche Leben in Deutschland zeitweise massiv beeinträchtigt. Durch das Kontaktverbot wurden die freie Berufsausübung, die Gewerbefreiheit, die Schulpflicht und die Religionsfreiheit vorübergehend eingeschränkt....

Political systems shape institutions and govern institutional change supporting economic performance, production and diffusion of technological innovation. This study shows, using global data of countries, that institutional change, based on a progressive democratization of countries, is a...

We show using a theoretical framework that embeds a voting model in a general-equilibrium model of a rural economy with two interest groups defined by land ownership that the effects of democratization--a shift from control of public resources by the landed elite to a democratic regime with...

"In the rich and growing body of work on democracy, there has been little attention to the connection between democracy and migration; and when there is, it is usually in connection with countries that see in-migration rather than out-migration. The latter is the focus of this book, which looks...

Introduction: Economic growth and democracy in post-colonial Africa : Cabo Verde, small states, and the world economy / Aminah N. Fernandes Pilgrim and Joao Resende-Santos -- Revisiting state-building and the challenges of democracy in Cape Verde / Crisanto Barros -- Cabo Verde in the world /...

"A decade has now passed since protests in the Middle East captured the attention and imagination of audiences around the world. The story of how those protests began is now familiar to most, but no less striking to recall. On December 17, 2010, Mohamed Bouazizi, a fruit seller in the central...

The paper is about the political consequences of increasing economic inequality in Western economies. Political theorists have often stressed that democracy is in troubles when its population is not broadly uniform in income and wealth because unequal economic resources can easily translate into...

We examine the role of democracy shocks in the cross-country economic growth processes over a period of five decades since 1960. The recent uprisings that arose independently and spread across the Arab world form the main context of our investigation. We study if (i) a shock to democracy in one...

Autocracies in developing countries are more likely to collapse during economic crises. Some influential works and popular media extend this argument to oil-rich autocracies, but cross-national empirical studies find little evidence to support this view. Yet, while the causes of their stability...

Current debates on democratization are overshadowed by the possible retreat of democracy and causes for the democratic backslide worldwide. This paper seeks to shed some light on these issues in the African context. Is democracy on a retreat in the region? It seeks to assess the general trends...

Summary statistics on the labor share of income show that between-country variation is much greater than within-country variation: functional income distribution is determined by factors which change substantially across countries but are persistent over time. We attempt to shed some light on...

This book explores the variations in the transformation of the Asian developmental state in South Korea, Singapore, and Taiwan. Based on an original theory, the author argues that these variations are influenced by two factors: industrial structure and democratic transition, both of which are...

"Public banks are neither ultimately good nor bad but made and remade by contentious social forces. They are dynamic institutions. Set against the backdrop of financing a global green & just transition, this first single-authored academic book on public banks explores six case studies - the...

Looking for democracy in all the wrong places -- The big picture -- The components of salience -- The regional picture -- Myanmar and donor switching -- Egypt and Fiji -- No golden age, no silver bullet.

Competitiveness and economic growth in the digital economy of Asian countries -- Experimental Democracy: Lessons from Sri Lanka -- Pakistan-United States commodity trade and Asymmetric S-Curve: Evidence from 41 industries -- Bank efficiency across Asian countries -- On the macroeconomic linkages...

This book explores the debate and politicisation of the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) negotiations in the Spanish, French and British public spheres. It addresses the questions of how and to what extent the national media discourses about TTIP were Europeanised, and how...

"Buying into Change examines how the development of a mass consumer society under the dictatorship of Generalissimo Francisco Franco (1939-1975) inserted Spain into transnational consumer networks and set the stage for Spain's transition to democracy during the late 1970s."