How does presidentialism affect democratic representation, both in theory and in practice? In this paper, part of a larger book project, we build on our previous research (Samuels and Shugart 2003), which argued that all else equal, presidentialism impedes representation based on prospective government “mandates.” Inspired by and building on research on Latin America by Susan Stokes (2001), her...

While the literature already includes a large number of party typologies, they are increasingly incapable of capturing the great diversity of party types that have emerged worldwide in recent decades, largely because most typologies were based upon West European parties as they existed in the late nineteenth through mid-twentieth centuries. Some new party types have been advanced, but in an ad ...

We analyze existence of equilibrium in a one-dimensional model of endogenous party platforms andmore than two parties. The platforms proposed by parties depend on their membership composition. The policy implemented is a function of the different proposals and the vote distribution among such proposals. It is shown that if voters are sincere there is always an equilibrium regardless of the numb...

In this paper I argue that the effect of ideology on tax structure depends on the electoral system. Earlier research has argued that left wing governments tax more progressively, but in light of recent empirical work, this has been challenged. The dominant approach instead posits that the left taxes regressively while spending progressively. That is, the left still redistributes more, but it ta...

Historically, the supposed independence of unions from parties in France has been a myth, with the development of close relations between the CGT and the PCF on the one hand, and looser ones between the CFDT in particular, and the PS on the other. These links weakened from the 1980s on, but appeared to be re-established, with some changes, when unions backed François Hollande in the 2012 presid...

In this paper I test whether parties matter for fiscal policy choices, i.e., government spending and level of taxes. It is part of conventional wisdom that the Left spends and taxes more than the Right. However, there are very few convincing empirical studies that show this to be the case. I argue that this might reflect either the data sets used, or the employed methodology. By using a very la...

We study the political economy of social insurance with double heterogeneity of voters (i.e., different income and risk levels). Social insurance is financed through distortionary taxation and redistributes across income and risks. Individuals vote over the extent of social insurance, which they can complement on the private market. Private insurance suffers from adverse selection which results...

Many security protocols refer to a trusted third party (TTP) as an ideal way of handling computation and data with conflicting stakeholders. Subsequent discussion usually dismisses a TTP as hypothetical or impractical. However, the last decade has seen the emergence of hardware-based devices like the IBM 4758 that, to high assurance, can carry out computation unmolested; TPM-based systems like ...

We identify the conditions under which voters can induce political parties to collect information and to select policies which are optimal from the representative voter’s point of view. We show that when parties are office motivated the voting rule should encourage parties to collect information. Voting rules that focus on the opposition party sometimes dominate voting rules that focus on the i...

after world war ii, the people and european governments got disappointed from radical right groups, and their activities were banned. however, during the past decade, we witness the strengthening the social base of the mentioned political parties which are seeking power in different european countries. the reason why these groups have come to power is due to a variety of factors causing importa...