violence during democratization and the quality of democratic institutions abstract this paper investigates the impact of violent civil conflicts during the process of democratization on the institutional quality of the emerging democracies we propose a theory of endogenous regime transition in which violent conflict can arise in equilibrium peaceful transitions lead to a social contract that provides all groups with political representation and leads to better protection of civil liberties than violent transitions empirical evidence from the third wave of democratization based on a difference in difference methodology supports the theoretical predictions the findings suggest that compared to peaceful transitions violent conflicts during the democratic transition have persistent negative effects on the institutional quality of the emerging democracies

children as collective goods and divorce settlements the failure of many divorced fathers to comply with court mandated child support awards has been identified as a major reason why a growing number of children live in poverty in female headed households this paper presents a model that seeks to explain why so many divorced fathers allow their children s welfare to suffer as a consequence of divorce the point of departure is the recognition that children are collective consumption goods from the point of view of the father and mother within marriage proximity and altruism serve to overcome the free rider problem associated with the provision of public goods however on divorce the noncustodial parent suffers a loss of control over the allocative decisions of the custodial parent and it is not feasible for the couple to achieve a pareto optimal allocation of their joint resources a model of optimal marriage contracts is constructed in which a couple decides on the allocation of resources within marriage and on the terms of a settlement in the event

committed procurement in privately negotiated markets evidence from laboratory markets previous research suggests an increase in committed procurement can result in lower cash market prices for livestock there is a paucity of research that ascertains prices received by market agents trading in a prior bargaining session via alternative marketing arrangements versus those who have not we use laboratory market experiments to analyze the potential impacts of committed procurement on privately negotiated transactions when some traders have two windows of negotiation and others have one results illustrate that those who do not engage in prior trading are at a bargaining disadvantage due to matching and inventory loss risks

inequality and the instability of polity and policy we create alternative measures of political instability which capture only movements from dictatorship to democracy and vice versa and unlike older well known measures does not capture government changes that preserve the democratic or dictatorial structure of the country we show that inequality is positively correlated with our measures of political instability as well as with a well known measure used by alesina and perotti but the impact of inequality on the latter is only through components of political instability captured by our measures we show that our measures have significant policy implications political instability increases both fiscal and trade polity volatility

budgetary units a weberian approach to consumption1 established consumption theory relies heavily on application of individualistic frames and market models of behavior a framework built around consumption oriented groups would facilitate progress toward a more general theory of consumption this article reintroduces and extends weber s budgetary unit concept to address this gap correcting key problems dogging the consumption literature the budgetary unit concept 1 offers a new framework for theorizing and better accounting for observed consumption patterns 2 reveals how consumption units have organizational logics preferences strengths and vulnerabilities that are consequentially distinct from market logic of production and profit and 3 focuses attention on social processes and features enabling theorization of general social patterns of consumption across diverse contexts this article highlights the explanatory power and broad applicability of weber s budgetary unit approach using the conventionally dissimilar cases of russian organized

a theory of political transitions we develop a theory of political transitions inspired by the experiences of western europe and latin america nondemocratic societies are controlled by a rich elite the initially disenfranchised poor can contest power by threatening revolution especially when the opportunity cost is low for example during recessions the threat of revolution may force the elite to democratize democracy may not consolidate because it is redistributive and so gives the elite an incentive to mount a coup highly unequal societies are less likely to consolidate democracy and may end up oscillating between regimes and suffer substantial fiscal volatility

inequality democracy and institutions a critical review of recent research this paper surveys the theoretical and empirical literature on the effect of economic and political inequality on institutions the current understanding suggests that unequal societies develop exploitative and inefficient institutions empirical research which is scant and has mainly concentrated at cross national level supports to some extent the existence of an inverse relationship between inequality and institutions but more analysis is needed future empirical research should undertake country state and micro level analysis which are a necessary complement to aggregate level studies the effect of inequality could also take place indirectly through the influence of inequality on democratization

a duration analysis of democratic transitions and authoritarian backslides recent theories of political development have emphasized redistributive demands as the main drivers of democratic transitions and consolidation the authors employ cox duration models to evaluate a number of economic institutionalist and sociological theories of regime transition using global data from 1970 to 1999 this study suggests that demands for redistribution are insufficient explanators of political transitions the authors find that transitions to democracy depend primarily on a high level of oppositionist social mobilization and secondarily favorable patterns of economic distribution on the other hand a high level of socioeconomic development is by far the best guarantor of democratic resiliency whereas mass political conflict endangers consolidation once democracy has been introduced the study also reveals that institutionalist factors are less influential than socioeconomic characteristics in explaining regime transitions this study highlights the contribution of social movement the

dependency disarticulation and denominator effects another look at foreign capital penetration less developed countries desparately need capital to develop but countries dependent on foreign capital face slower economic growth higher income inequality and possibly impaired domestic capital formation these conclusions emerge from a reassessment of glenn firebaugh s broad critique of capital dependency research which exposed an important error in earlier studies the solution charts new theoreticall ground by factoring dependency effects into the differential productivity of foreign and domestic investment and the negative externalities from foreign capital penetration the revised formulation is applied to cross national analyses of economic growth decapitalization and income inequality the findings consistently support capital dependency theory

domestic political conflict and basic needs outcomes an empirical assessment this study undertakes an empirical investigation of the near universal assumption that domestic political conflict is invariably harmful to the societies in which it occurs in particular we examine the implications of domestic conflict for the provision of basic human needs once the known effects of aggregate national wealth are removed using a variation of the panel regression model we regress an index of basic needs satisfaction on measures of domestic conflict scope and intensity along with suitable controls for a sample of 85 contemporary nations the findings indicate that the intensity measure is associated with long term improvements in basic needs while the scope of conflict carries a negative impact for basic needs outcomes

shaping democratic practice and the causes of electoral fraud theory and evidence from pre 1914 germany why is there so much alleged electoral fraud in new democracies most scholarship focuses on the proximate cause of electoral competition this article proposes a different answer by constructing and analyzing an original dataset drawn from the german parliament s own voluminous record of election disputes for every parliamentary election in the life of imperial germany 1871 1912 after its adoption of universal male suffrage in 1871 the article analyzes the election of over 5 000 parliamentary seats to identify where and why elections were disputed as a result of election misconduct the empirical analysis demonstrates that electoral fraud s incidence is significantly related to a society s level of inequality in landholding a major source of wealth power and prestige in this period after weighing the importance of two different causal mechanisms the article concludes that socio economic inequality by making new democratic institutions endogenous to preexisting social power can be a major and underappreciated barrier to democratization even after the adoption of formally democratic rules

an evaluation of does economic inequality breed political conflict studies contradictory findings that economic inequality may have a positive negative or no impact on political conflict are a puzzle for conflict studies three approaches have been used t o explain the inconsistent findings of the ei pc economic inequality political conflict nexus statistical modeling formal modeling and theory building because analysts have tended to possess different research skills these three approaches have been employed in isolation from one another singly however all three approaches have proved deficient and are unlikely to solve the ei pc puzzle the most fruitful approach is to combine the assumptions of the theory builders and the deductive approach of the formal modelers with the various empirical tests of the statistical modelers such an approach to the ei pc puzzle produces a crucial test of the deprived actor and rational actor theories of conflict the approach is also our best hope for solving the other long standing puzzles in conflict studies

work welfare and single mothers economic survival strategies past efforts to conceptualize the effects of welfare on work have failed to consider the full range of incentives and disincentives that low skill single mothers perceive and act upon when making the choice between welfare and work they also have neglected the fundamental economic reality of these mothers lives neither welfare nor low wage work gives single mothers enough income to meet their families expenses in depth interviews with 379 low income single mothers in four u s cities show that welfare recipients and low wage workers employ a set of survival strategies to make ends meet the range of strategies available to mothers is shaped by the social structural characteristics of the cities in which they live and by the quality of their private social safety nets the authors argue that because some survival strategies are more compatible with work than others the strategies a mother employs may affect her ability to move from welfare to work most welfare recipients want to leave welfare for work however most also believe that unless they can lower the costs associated with work or increase their earning power through investments in further education they will be unable to meet their expenses by working

diversity disparity and civil conflict in federal states both policy makers and scholars have turned their attention to federalism as a means for managing conflicts between central governments and subnational interests but both the theoretical literature and the empirical track record of federations make for opposing conclusions concerning federalism s ability to prevent civil conflict this paper argues that the existing literature falls short on two accounts first it lacks a systematic comparison of peaceful and conflict ridden cases across federal states second many studies seem to suggest that there is one optimal mix of decentralization and centralization while others acknowledge that there is no one size fits all federal solution but leave this without further theorizing our argument is that the peace preserving effect of specific federal traits fiscal decentralization fiscal transfers and political co partisanship are conditional on a society s income level and ethnic composition the argument is tested across 22 federal states from 1978 to 2000

polarization politics and property rights links between inequality and growth most efforts to trace the effects of income inequality on growth have focused on redistribution however empirical investigation has not substantiated either the positive association of income inequality with redistribution or the negative association of redistribution with economic growth the authors analyze the effects of inequality in the broader context of social polarization they argue that social polarization whether rooted in income inequality or in ethnic tension makes large changes in current policies including those guaranteeing the security of contract and property rights more likely under a wide range of institutional arrangements the resulting uncertainties in the policy and contractual environment hinder growth they find strong empirical support for both parts of this argument the policy implications of their argument are quite distinct from those of arguments that inequality reduces growth by increasing pressures for redistribution if redistributive policies per se were to blame for the low growth resulting from inequality governments that seek to mitigate income inequality must inevitably confront a tradeoff between equity and growth if on the other hand the insecurity of property rights slows growth in unequal or otherwise polarized societies governments that commit over the long run to particular redistributive policies incur less risk of slowing economic growth fiscal redistribution that reduces inequality may actually increase growth by reducing the risks of political uncertainty

inequality growth and democracy the analysis of the relationship between inequality and economic growth in distinct politi coeconomic environments has been one of the central preoccupations of the extensive theoretical and empirical work on growth in the last decade the authors argue that the empirical evidence available to date strongly indicates the relevance of this work for understanding the elusive causal connection between economic development and democracy the state of the literature suggests considerable sophistication in conceptualizing the direct economic effects of inequality and contains critical insights into politically unconstrained policy making aimed at the alleviation of their negative economic impact however the political feasibility of the recommended policy measures and the politically mediated effects of inequality and redistributive policy on growth and on the strength and stability of democratic regimes are understood less well the authors discuss the critical factors influencing these effects and sketch several approaches to creating a comprehensive politicoeconomic account of the interaction between inequality redistributive policy making and political regimes

income inequality regime repressiveness and political violence death rate from political violence is postulated to vary cross nationally as a positively accelerated time lagged function of income inequality and as a nonmonotonic inverted u function of regime repressiveness the former hypothesis is consistent with approaches to the explanation of collective political violence that emphasize the general concept of discontent or more specifically relative deprivation the latter hypothesis is consistent with a political process version of the resource mobilization approach in the context of a multivariate model estimated across two decades 1958 67 and 1968 77 support is found for the inequality hypothesis support also is foundfor the regime repressiveness hypothesis in the decade 1968 77 for which the index of regime repressiveness is available the u curve effect of regime repressiveness appears to have stronger impact on variation in rates of deadly political violence than the positively accelerated effect of income inequality

agrarian structures urbanization and inequality summary this study examines the impact of agrarian structures on income inequality over the long run first it exhibits the relationship between land and income distribution by developing a theoretical model based on harris and todaro 1970 and lewis 1954 high land inequality increases income gini coefficients in the urban sector as well as the rural sector not only by creating congestion in the urban subsistence sector but also by feeding the growth of the urban reserve army of labor which pulls down the wages in the urban capitalist sector next the study investigates the empirical relationship between land inequality level of urbanization and income inequality using cross country datasets the estimation results support the theoretical model and indicate that the level of land inequality has a significant impact on determining the level of urbanization and urban and overall income inequalities moreover the analysis finds that overurbanization increases income inequality the empirical analysis controls for institutional factors like education inequality and the level of democracy the results present a stronger evidence on the land inequality s influence through urbanization than through education and democracy these results suggest that policymakers should have a broader view as to the importance of agrarian policies a progressive land reform or and subsidies protecting small peasantry can also reduce urban income inequality and poverty over the long run

linking conflict to inequality and polarization in this paper we study a behavioral model of conflict that provides a basis for choosing certain indices of dispersion as indicators for conflict we show that a suitable monotone transform of the equilibrium level of conflict can be proxied by a linear function of the gini coefficient the herfindahl hirschman fractionalization index and a specific measure of polarization due to esteban and ray jel classification d74 d31

ethnicity and conflict an empirical study this paper examines the impact of ethnic divisions on conict the empirical specication is informed by a theoretical model of conict esteban and ray 2011 in which equilibrium conict is related to just three distributional indices of diversity ethnic polarization ethnic fractionalization and a greenberg gini index constructed across ethnic groups our empirical ndings verify that these distributional measures are signicant correlates of conict the underlying theory permits us to use these results to make inferences about the relative importance of public goods in conict as well as the extent of within group cohesion in conictual activity these eects are further strengthened as we introduce country specic measures of group cohesion and the relative importance of public goods and combine them with the distributional measures exactly as specied by the theory

economic inequality and its socioeconomic impact abstract income inequality is of fundamental interest not only to economists but also to other social scientists a substantial literature in economics and the social sciences has investigated the relationship between income inequality and economic growth and a variety of social phenomena the links between inequality and economic growth are explored as well as those between inequality and such key social variables as political conflict education health and crime the analysis in this paper follows a two step process first a review of the empirical evidence relating inequality to growth and to each of the above social variables is undertaken second the various causal mechanisms that have been proposed in the social science literature to explain those links are surveyed

rulers and the ruled patterned inequality and the onset of mass political violence the theory of patterned inequality between rulers and ruled provides a valuable analytic approach to the relationship between inequality and political violence under conditions of a bifurcated pattern of inequality the probability of political violence is likely to be greater than under a more generalized inequality typically measured by the gini index a strong systematic relationship between patterned inequality in latin american landholdings and deaths from political violence was discovered using the exponential distribution as a model for the lower portion of the land distribution and the log exponential for the upper this degree of association was far stronger than that found between the gini index of land inequality in latin america and deaths from political violence evidence supporting the theory was also found in an analysis of middle eastern landholdings

inequality and political violence revisited in their 1987 article in this review muller and seligson used logged ordinary least squares lols to estimate the effect of income inequality on cross national levels of deaths by political violence t y wang challenges the robustness of the main conclusion and argues for the application of a maximum likelihood approach the exponential poisson regression epr model rather than lols he concludes that the widely used lols approach yields misleading conclusions when applied to event count data dixon muller and seligson replicate previous work using both lols and epr approaches and conclude that in most but not all respects the two approaches yield similar results supporting the effect of inequality when the specifications are identical they also argue in response to concerns expressed by brockett 1992 that the inequality results are robust when account is taken systematically of the best information on underreporting of deaths

income distribution within nations problems of cross national comparison in recent years a large number of cross national studies have examined the causes and consequences of income inequality within nations unfortunately few of these studies have attended very carefully to problems of measurement and definitional consistency that can seriously undermine the comparative use of currently available data on income shares this article offers a discussion of the major theoretical and practical problems that can arise in measuring and comparing patterns of income distribution across nations focusing on the completeness of income coverage the unit of analysis the time period over which income is measured the scope of population coverage the underreporting of income and the effect of public sector fiscal policies it then assesses major published sources of cross national data on the size distribution of income in light of these problems finally the article offers several suggestions for minimizing the negative consequences of measurement problems that remain in even the be

why did the west extend the franchise democracy inequality and growth in historical perspective during the nineteenth century most western societies extended voting rights a decision that led to unprecedented redistributive programs we argue that these political reforms can be viewed as strategic decisions by the political elite to prevent widespread social unrest and revolution political transition rather than redistribution under existing political institutions occurs because current transfers do not ensure future transfers while the extension of the franchise changes future political equilibria and acts as a commitment to redistribution our theory also offers a novel explanation for the kuznets curve in many western economies during this period with the fall in inequality following redistribution due to democratization i introduction the nineteenth century was a period of fundamental political reform and unprecedented changes in taxation and redistribution britain for example was transformed from an oligarchy run by an elite to a democracy the franchise was extended in 1832 and then again in 1867 and 1884 transferring voting rights to portions of the society with no previous political representation the decades after the political reforms witnessed radical social reforms increased taxation and the extension of education to the masses moreover as noted by kuznets inequality which was previously increasing started to decline during this period the gini coefficient for income inequality in england and wales had risen from 0 400 in 1823 to 0 627 in 1871 but fell to 0 443 in 1901 two key factors in the reduction in inequality were the increase in the proportion of skilled workers williamson 1985 and the redistribution of income toward the poorer segments of the society for example taxes rose from 8 12 percent of national product in 1867 to 18 8 percent by 1927 and the progressivity of the tax system increased substantially see lindert 1989

inequality and insurgency maldistribution of land in agrarian societies is commonly thought to be an important precondition of mass political violence and revolution others argue that because of the difficulty of mobilizing rural populations for political protest land maldistribution is irrelevant except as part of an inegalitarian distribution of income nationwide these rival inequality hypotheses have significant implications with respect to the kinds of reforms likely to reduce the potential for insurgency in a society they are tested using the most comprehensive cross national compilation of data currently available on land inequality landlessness and income inequality support is found for the argument that attributes the greater causal import to income inequality moreover the effect of income inequality on political violence is found to hold in the context of a causal model that takes into account the repressiveness of the regime governmental acts of coercion intensity of separatism and level of economic development

the paradox of redistribution and strategies of equality welfare state institutions inequality and poverty in the western countries the structure of welfare state institutions 2 a trade off exists between the degree of low income targeting and the size of redistributive budgets 3 outcomes of market based distribution are often more unequal than those of earnings related social insurance programs we argue that social insurance institutions are of central importance for redistributive outcomes using new data our comparative analyses of the effects of different institutional types of welfare states on poverty and inequality indicate that institutional differences lead to unexpected outcomes and generate the paradox of redistribution the more we target benefits at the poor and the more concerned we are with creating equality via equal public transfers to all the less likely we are to reduce poverty and inequality social scientists and social reformers have long debated how the welfare state and social policies should be designed so as to best reduce poverty and inequality this debate involves two different issues one question concerns whether social policies should be targeted or universal that is should they be organized for the poor only or should the welfare state include all citizens in the context of nontargeted programs another question concerns the level of benefits should benefits be equal for all or should they be related to previous earnings and in

the empirical content of nash bargained household behavior in households whose allocation decisions can be represented as nash bargained household decisions extrahousehold environmental parameters eeps serve as pure shifters of the threat points the comparative statics of changes in demands due to changes in these eeps are given these are incorporated into a comprehensive statement of the empirical content of nash bargained household behavior including a nash generalization of barten s 1966 fundamental matrix equation of the theory of consumer demand estimation and data requirements are discussed along with nested testing of the following structure the neoclassical model is nested in the nash bargained model which in turn is nested in an unrestricted model of household demands emphasized throughout is the enriched menu of explanatory variables for demand analysis provided by the nash model as well as the model s ability to jointly analyze i household formation and ii intrahousehold allocation decisions

studying the role of political competition in the evolution of government size over long horizons here we argue for the use of cointegration and error correction analysis to combine economic factors that are nonstationary with political factors that are stationary into an empirical model of the evolution of public policy over long periods the approach is applied to disentangle the contributions of economics and politics to the evolution of public expenditure by the government of canada over 130 years political competition emerges as the primary political factor affecting government size

the political economy of performance standards automotive industrial policy in comparative historical perspective abstracta substantial body of literature holds that industrial policies work best when their beneficiaries are subject to demanding performance standards by conditioning access to their low cost loans and lucrative markets on foreign sales and local content for example east asian officials forced their manufacturers to improve quality cut costs and develop linkages to allied industries that generated jobs and foreign exchange revenues of their own in the so called miracle years but the politics of performance standards are themselves unclear why are they more common in some countries than others are they more likely to be imposed by autocratic than democratic regimes and if so why i address these questions by examining cross national data on export and local content requirements in the auto industry in 1980 find that they all but presupposed autocracy in labour surplus but not labour scarce countries explore the interactions of political regimes productive assets and performance st

unpacking the effect of decentralized governance on routine violence lessons from indonesia summary we study the effect of decentralization on routine violence in indonesia we unpack decentralization along multiple dimensions and consider the individual effects of local elections the creation of new administrative units fiscal transfers and local public service delivery we use comprehensive data from indonesia s national violence monitoring system nvms a new dataset that records the incidence and impact of violence in indonesia we use these data to examine the relationship between the different dimensions of decentralization and different types of local violence in indonesian districts during 2001 10 our analyses suggest that there is a positive association between local service delivery and at least some forms of violence we argue that the positive effect of service delivery on violence is due to newly generated distributive conflicts among local ethnic groups around the control over and access to services by comparison district splitting and the introduction of direct elections of district heads are negatively associated with some forms of violence there is little evidence that fiscal transfers in general mitigate conflict

welfare spending and political conflict in latin america 1970 2010 abstract we study an age old question in political economy does government spending on welfare ensure peace this question was at the heart of the european welfare state model of the early 20th century and remains relevant today in face of rising inequalities and political conflict yet there is limited empirical evidence about this question we make use of a panel of 12 latin american countries over the period 1970 2010 to show that welfare spending has led to substantial reductions in conflict across the region this effect is more pronounced when associated with reductions in inequality and increasing social and institutional trust

land inequality and conflict intensity this paper investigates the impact of land inequality on conflict intensity a fundamental distinction with the existing literature lies in the nature of inequality under consideration we investigate how land inequality across landlords only influences the intensity of the fight against a rebel group comprised of landless individuals we show that conflict intensity is non monotonic in land inequality in particular the most severe conflicts occur for intermediate land inequality levels moreover a pareto improving and thus voluntary transfer of land from the smaller to the larger landlord may exist