Since the early decades of the 20 th century, an element of international relations has been the notion that democratic ideals are universal and that their spread across the globe can be encouraged by governments. One of the more recent expressions of the idea has been the “democracy promotion” programs funded by official aid agencies of developed democracies, but the idea has changed and evolv...

a r t i c l e i n f o Available online xxxx JEL classification: D72 D78 H44 H73 Keywords: Electoral cycles Electricity supply Night lights India We present evidence from India showing that state governments induce electoral cycles in electricity service provision. Our data and research strategy allow us to build on models of political business cycles and targeted distribution in two important w...

In this paper I discuss the political value of right to privacy. The classical accounts privacy do not differentiate between as a citizen against other citizens vs. state or government. shall argue that distinction should be made, since new context debate has surpassed historical frames in which intelligence methods used by governments were comparable those available individuals. also present c...

We provide an political-institutional explanation for the enormous variance in the extent to which democratic governments redistributes income from rich to poor. In addition to the number of veto points, which has been emphasized in the existing literature, we show the importance of the skill system and of the electoral system. The nature of skills is important because it determines the demand ...

The 564-page annual review of human rights practices around the globe, summarizes major human rights issues in more than 90 countries(1). The report documents ongoing human rights abuses by states and non-state armed groups across the globe, including attacks on civilians in conflicts in Afghanistan, Colombia, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Georgia, Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territ...

This paper argues that energy democracy could manifest in terms of public engagement at the community level, free of state intervention, government fostering, and donor support, even in locations where governments have been in flux from a democracy to a non-democracy. In currently non-democratic Thailand, for example, public engagement on community energy transitions had occurred, were sustaine...

Against welfare dependence models, this paper argues that in the ’70s Americans flooded the labor market, helping to suppress wages and make more people poor. It also argues that capitalist markets normally generate unemployment, which sustains poverty; capitalist nations in Europe with less poverty don’t have better free markets but their governments pay needy people more. These facts were inv...

Although a number of studies have examined the influence of public opinion on government policy, few have considered the influence of public opinion on social conditions. These are separate questions, since government policies may not have their intended effects and opinion may influence some outcomes independently of government action. This paper examines the relationship between public suppor...

The article shows how judicial review has expanded around the globe from the United States, Western Europe, and Japan to become a regular feature of constitutional design in Africa and Asia. Although the formal power to exercise judicial review is now nearly universal in democratic states, courts have varied in the extent to which they are willing to exercise this power in practice. After decad...

This article assesses land ownership patterns among small-scale producers of non-traditional fruit exports (NTAX) in El Palqui, Chile, in the context of the country’s extensive neoliberal reforms during dictatorial rule from 19731989 and their continuation under successive democratic Concertación governments since 1990. It reports on work that revisits an export boom locality ten years after an...