Do elections reduce or increase the risk of autocratic regime breakdown? This article addresses this contested question by distinguishing between election events and the institution of elections. The authors propose that ...

Abstract Various theories in political science point to temporal heterogeneity in relationships of interest. Yet, empirical research typically ignores such heterogeneity or employs fairly crude measures to evaluate ...

The notion that cultural characteristics influence political regimes remains popular, despite mixed supporting evidence. In particular, democracy is argued to emerge and thrive in countries where liberal or freedom-oriented ...

We investigate whether democracy enhances the skills and knowledge of citizens through improving education quality. This, in turn, could have ramifications for other development outcomes such as economic growth. We offer ...

We study how economic crises relate to the likelihood of experiencing regime changes ‘from within’; that is, transitions brought about, in part or fully, by actors in the incumbent regime. While historically common and ...

Two distinct literatures have studied the macroeconomic effects of electoral systems and of labor market structures, respectively. Results include a positive association between proportional representation (PR) electoral ...

Most studies of democratic developments are limited to the period after World War II. However, political regimes varied according to different aspects of democracy long before the establishment of modern liberal mass ...

Political leaders often have private incentives to pursue socially wasteful projects, but not all leaders are able to pursue these interests. We argue that weaker accountability mechanisms allow autocratic leaders to more ...

This article argues that the extent to which political parties are institutionalized shapes welfare state development. Institutionalized parties allow politicians to overcome co-ordination problems, avoid capture by special ...

Abstract Unidimensional measures of democracy fail to account for the complex and varied nature of political systems. This article disaggregates the concept of democracy and proposes a multidimensional conceptualization ...