In recent years some of the best theoretical work on the political economy of political institutions and processes has begun surfacing outside the political science mainstream in high quality economics journals. This two-part paper surveys these contributions from a recent five-year period. In Part I, the focus is on elections, voting and information aggregation, followed by treatments of parti...

The global health agenda has been dominating the current global health policy debate. Furthermore, it has compelled countries to embrace strategies for tackling health inequalities in a wide range of public health areas. The article by Robert and colleagues highlights that although globalization has increased opportunities to share and spread ideas, there is still great asymmetry of power accor...

The role that emotions play in shaping mass political behavior is increasingly well researched. This study refocuses the debate to explore the effect that the emotions expressed by candidates (target affect) through new media have on participation, rather than the effect of emotions felt by voters (observer affect). A unique experiment embedded in a nationally representative online survey demon...

Using social dominance theory and structural balance theory to analyze the political and psychological perspectives of subordinated peoples, we argue that struggles between dominant and subordinated polities are embedded in layered power structures. In such contexts, it is important to examine publics’ political desires and interests in relation to their political elites’ positions or choices o...

This article looks at the effect of politics on food security in thirty-eight SubSaharan African nations since 1990. In so doing, it helps clarify the causal mechanisms through which democracy impacts hunger. In contrast to previous empirical research where democracy is often treated as one-dimensional, this study incorporates multiple measures of democracy and freedom. The cross-national stati...

Popular attitudes in support of authoritarian alternatives and weak party systems constitute important threats to democratic consolidation the stability new democracies. This article explores popular alienation from established political actors Tunisia. Under what conditions do citizens elites power institutional infrastructure a democracy? Drawing on an original, nationally representative surv...

The phenomenon of crony capitalism has been explored primarily with reference to its impact on economic growth. This study investigates the political implications of crony capitalism and, specifically, the interaction between political competition and crony capitalism. Based on a case study of political trajectories in two regions of the Russian Federation, I argue that under crony capitalism p...

The emergence of protest events at the sites of transnational summits, meetings and Ministerials has become a primary security dilemma for police forces in locations where such elites choose to meet: Seattle, Genoa, Gleneagles and Heiligendamm. In particular, the prevention of any disruption to political proceedings is a key task facing such police forces. This article considers how such securi...

Sovereign wealth funds (“SWFs”) have received a great deal of attention since they appeared as critical investors during the global financial crisis. Reactions have ranged from fears of state intervention and mercantilism to hopes that SWFs will emerge as model long-term investors that will take on risky investments in green technology and infrastructure that few private investors are willing t...