How to soften resistance to state-building efforts by reform losers? This paper highlights the strategy of compensation via the bureaucracy, in which the ruler offers meaningful government offices in exchange for elites’ acceptance of state-building reforms. We empirically explore this...

Modernization theory is a cornerstone of much of political science, despite the mounting evidence against its predictions. In this paper, we argue that the theory's failings are rooted in predictions that are not conditioned on history and cultural configurations. We outline a theory in which...

This paper explores the interplay between concentration of wealth and policies, namely regulation and taxation. The paper exploits variation in exposure to international commodity prices. Using a global panel data set of the net worth of billionaires, the results point to a positive relationship...

Summary:– There is a growing coalition of people in the US who hold a strong view that they would like the government to ‘leave us alone’. The coalition includes home-schoolers, those who run small businesses and taxpayers. These groups do not want special favours from government and their...

Federal fiscal arrangements are argued to give rise to tacit collusion among competing Leviathans (Brennan and Buchanan, The Power to Tax, CUP, 1980). Though frequently encountered in academic and policy discussions, the cartelization hypothesis has rarely been scrutinized formally. This paper...

Is tax competition good for economic growth? The paper addresses this question by means of a simple model of economic growth in which a wasteful Leviathan state sets taxes and provides productive input. Wasteful behaviour is restricted by the voter, who reduces political support if her income is...

According to the Leviathan-Model, fiscal federalism is seen as a binding constraint on a revenue-maximizing government. The competitive pressure of fiscal federalism is supposed to reduce public sector size as compared to unitary states. However, empirical results concerning the Leviathan...

This article examines James Buchanan's conception of lawmaking, with specific respect to the institutional features he proposes in order to promote individual liberty. Buchanan's constitutional framework is based on his perception of the nature of lawmaking and the sources of law. This paper...

Modern media criticism as a whole based on the hermeneutic approach to the analysis of the media and media products relying on such key concepts as media agencies, media/media text categories, media technologies, media languages, media representations and media audiences, because they all have a...

Modernization theory is a cornerstone of much of political science, despite the mounting evidence against its predictions. In this paper, we argue that the theory's failings are rooted in predictions that are not conditioned on history and cultural configurations. We outline a theory in which...

Geoffrey Brennan and James M. Buchanan, in their 1980 book The Power to Tax, hypothesize that “the potential for fiscal exploitation varies inversely with the number of competing governmental units in the inclusive territory.” This paper tests that theory at the local level using data for US...

You're probably familiar with the earmarking of selective consumption taxes in your state—for example, gas tax revenues may be dedicated to highway funding. However, tax revenues don't always “stick” to the program that they're earmarked to. This chapter shows how earmarked taxes can serve...

Recent debates over the relative importance of democracy and state capacity for human development have led to the prevailing view that a strong state must be built before the introduction of democracy. Our research challenges this ``sequencing approach'' in international development. Using a...

This paper investigates the impact of the intensity of political competition on the leviathan behavior by political incumbents. Using panel data from German municipalities, we test whether the relative political strength of parties in local councils influences the spending behavior of...

The current public debt crises in Western democratic countries provide an important illustration of what Adam Smith had described as the “juggling trick” – namely deficit increases, accumulation of debt, and debasement of currency – that all governments resort to when confronted with...

This paper investigates the impact of the intensity of political competition on the leviathan behavior by political incumbents. Using panel data from German municipalities, we test whether the relative political strength of parties in local councils influences the spending behavior of...

We introduce tax competition for mobile labor into an optimal-taxation model with two skill levels. We analyze a symmetric subgame-perfect Nash equilibrium of the game between two governments and two taxpayer populations. Tax competition reduces the distortion from the informational asymmetry...

(Last revised version December 2005) To address the problem why China, as a communist country, moves in the opposite direction when the public sector has undergoing a continuous growth in most Western economies since the World War II, we offer a new approach that the de facto fiscal...

We introduce tax competition for mobile labor into an optimal-taxation model with two skill levels. We analyze a symmetric subgame-perfect Nash equilibrium of the game between two governments and two taxpayer populations. Tax competition reduces the distortion from the informational asymmetry...

We introduce tax competition for mobile labor into an optimal-taxation model with two skill levels. We analyze a symmetric subgame-perfect Nash equilibrium of the game between two governments and two taxpayer populations. Tax competition reduces the distortion from the informational asymmetry...

Zu den mächtigsten Bildern des Alten Testamentes gehören die beiden Monstra des Leviathan und des Behemoth, die Gott vor dem aufbegehrenden Hiob erscheinen läßt, um seine Macht zu demonstrieren. Während das Symbol des Leviathan als hobbesches Urbild des modernen Staates immer wieder...

Zu den mächtigsten Bildern des Alten Testamentes gehören die beiden Monstra des Leviathan und des Behemoth, die Gott vor dem aufbegehrenden Hiob erscheinen läßt, um seine Macht zu demonstrieren. Während das Symbol des Leviathan als hobbesches Urbild des modernen Staates immer wieder...