Consolidating democracy and (or) tireless institutional experimentation

Laboratories of Democracy : Policy Experimentation under Decentralization ∗

We examine the extent of policy experimentation under decentralization and centralization. More speci cally, we study the incentive for experimentation in an environment where there is uncertainty about the payo of policies as well as the competence of policymakers. Voters form beliefs about the policymakers upon observing noisy signals. Policymakers are concerned about their reputation to the ...

Do Democratic Institutions Constrain or Inform? Contrasting Two Institutional Perspectives on Democracy and War

How do domestic political institutions affect the way states interact in international crises? In the last decade we have witnessed an explosion of interest in this question, thanks largely to the well-known claim that democratic states do not Ž ght wars with one another. Work on the ‘‘democratic peace’’ has generated a number of theoretical arguments about how practices, values, and institutio...

Continuous Institutional Innovation and the Pragmatic Conception of Democracy

In every society in many arenas, the reality of collective decision making falls far short of the democratic ideal in countless ways. These shortfalls include disenfranchisement, unequal influence operating through formal and informal mechanisms, political apathy and alienation, misinformation, and misperception. Part of the solutions to these challenges lies in a sound democratic constitution....

Consolidating or non-consolidating queues: A game theoretic queueing model with holding costs

We consider a two-server queueing system in which the servers choose their service rate based on the demand and holding cost allocation scheme offered by the demand generating entity. We provide an optimal holding cost allocation scheme that leads to the maximum possible service rate for each of a pooled and a split system. Our results suggest that careful allocation of holding costs can create...

The Czech Republicans 1990-1998: A populist radical right outsider in a consolidating democracy