In most parliamentary democracies, proportional representation electoral rules mean that no singl... more In most parliamentary democracies, proportional representation electoral rules mean that no single party controls a majority of seats in the legislature. This in turn means that the formation of majority legislative coalitions in such settings is of critical political importance. Conventional approaches to modeling the formation of such legislative coalitions typically make the "common knowledge" assumption that the preferences of all politicians are public information. In this paper, we develop a theoretical framework to investigate which legislative coalitions form when politicians' policy preferences are private information, not known with certainty by the other politicians with whom they are negotiating over what policies to implement. The model we develop has distinctive and novel implications. It suggests that legislative coalitions should typically be either of the center-left or the center-right. In other words our model, distinctively, predicts only center-left, or center-right policy coalitions, not coalitions comprising the median party plus parties both to its left and to its right.
Many of the world's most populous democracies are political unions composed of states or province... more Many of the world's most populous democracies are political unions composed of states or provinces that are unequally represented in the national legislature. Scattered empirical studies, most of them focusing on the United States, have discovered that overrepresented states appear to receive larger shares of the national budget. Although this relationship is typically attributed to bargaining advantages associated with greater legislative representation , an important threat to empirical identification stems from the fact that the representation scheme was chosen by the provinces. Thus, it is possible that representation and fiscal transfers are both determined by other characteristics of the provinces in a specific country. To obtain an improved estimate of the relationship between representation and redistribution, we collect and analyze provincial-level data from nine federations over several decades, taking advantage of the historical process through which federations formed and expanded. Controlling for a variety of country-and province-level factors and using a variety of estimation techniques, we show that overrepresented provinces in political unions around the world are rather dramatically favored in the distribution of resources.
What institutional arrangements allow veto players to secure maximal welfare when all agree on bo... more What institutional arrangements allow veto players to secure maximal welfare when all agree on both the need for and the direction of policy change? To answer this question, we conduct a mechanism design analysis. We focus on a system with two veto players, each with incomplete information about the other's policy preferences. We show that the unique welfare-maximizing mechanism is the mechanism that implements the preferred policy of the player whose ideal policy is closer to the status quo. We provide examples of institutional structures under which the unique equilibrium outcome of this two-player incomplete information game is the policy outcome implemented by this mechanism, and argue that our result can be used as a normative benchmark to assess the optimality of veto player institutions.
Do electoral incentives to stop a terrorist attack before the next election induce democratic gov... more Do electoral incentives to stop a terrorist attack before the next election induce democratic governments to undertake ineffective counterterrorism policies? This article shows that shortsighted electoral motivations are not a sufficient explanation for why governments engage in counterproductive repression when responding to electoral pressures to safeguard security. It develops a game-theoretic model to show that limitations on observability of counterterrorism activities are an important factor for understanding why electoral pressures might induce democratic governments to choose ineffective security policies. The model also allows us to systematically investigate the conditions under which repressive counterterrorism is more likely to aggravate the terrorist threat, and has empirical and policy implications regarding the relationship between repression and its (in)effectiveness when democratic societies strive to counter the threat of terrorism.
The institution of judicial review is an important mechanism of holding the government legally ac... more The institution of judicial review is an important mechanism of holding the government legally accountable, nevertheless questions remain about its proper role in a separation of powers system. This article analyzes the effect of judicial review on the policy-making process from an expertise perspective. It shows that the exercise of non-expert judicial review can induce more informed policies and that non-expert courts have incentives to exercise judicial review in a manner consistent with institutional concerns for expertise. In addition to its importance as a mechanism of legal accountability, our analysis underscores another virtue of judicial review: legal review of governmental policy by non-expert courts can improve the amount of information available for policy-making. The article contributes to a literature on the scope and legitimacy of judicial review and has broader implications for understanding the effect of institutional checks and balances on the quality of policy-making.
The strategy of parties regarding which issues to emphasize during electoral campaigns is an impo... more The strategy of parties regarding which issues to emphasize during electoral campaigns is an important aspect of electoral competition. In this paper, we advance research on electoral competition by developing a multidimensional model of electoral competition in which parties compete for electoral support by raising the electoral salience of position issues. We show that parties have incentives to advertise an issue on which the opponent has a more popular position or an issue on which neither party has electoral advantage. We also show that the party with the lower equilibrium vote share prefers to emphasize more controversial issues, while the party with the higher equilibrium vote share prefers to emphasize more consensual issues on its electoral agenda. The analysis provides a theoretical foundation for moving toward a more complete understanding of the content of campaign communication on issues on which voters disagree about which policies ought to be implemented. It also provides novel empirical predictions about how the structure of public opinion impacts the campaign strategy of parties, which can foster further empirical research on electoral campaigns and issue-selection.
What is the role of legal limits on executive power, if any, when citizens demand more security f... more What is the role of legal limits on executive power, if any, when citizens demand more security from terrorism and allowing executive officials legal flexibility of action appears necessary to achieve it? We develop a game-theoretic model to show that when the executive faces increased electoral incentives to provide security and has legal flexibility to choose any policy it finds optimal, security from terrorism can actually decrease. In contrast, when the executive faces increased electoral incentives to provide security and there is an explicit legal limit on executive counterterrorism activities, security from terrorism increases. We also show that the executive achieves the objective of terrorism prevention more effectively when there are some limitations on its counterterrorism powers. The article provides a security rationale for legal limits on executive power and has implications for understanding how to design the institutional structure of liberal governments when the social objective is terrorism prevention.
How does a policy of reacting to terrorist attacks with restrictions on free speech protections a... more How does a policy of reacting to terrorist attacks with restrictions on free speech protections affect the likelihood of terrorism in the first place? In this paper, I develop a dynamic model of an interaction between a security agency and a terrorist organization to study the dynamic consequences of adopting policies that curtail free speech protections and other rights when terror strikes. The paper shows that in a world in which democratic governments respond to major terrorist attacks with restrictions on freedom of expression and other rights and liberties, such policies have perverse effects on the pre-attack incentives of terrorism prevention/occurrence, which can make a terrorist attack more likely. The analysis suggests that a commitment to respecting fundamental rights and liberties in times of duress can be security-beneficial: if liberal societies were to remain faithful to their fundamental values in the aftermath of terrorist attacks, such a strategy can decrease the probability of a terrorist attack in the first place.
Essential to the Madisonian conception of checks and balances is the division of policy-making au... more Essential to the Madisonian conception of checks and balances is the division of policy-making authority among multiple actors such that each can veto proposed changes in policy. We use a mechanism design approach to analyze checks and balances institutions. We show that checks and balances institutions in which the most preferred policy of the more moderate player is the unique equilibrium outcome are the only checks and balances institutions that are strategy-proof, efficient, and responsive. Our analysis facilitates a comprehensive evaluation of checks and balances institutions, and our results can serve as a normative benchmark to assess any such institution, regardless of its specific design. We illustrate the applicability of our normative benchmark within the context of constitutional review, a crucial pillar of established democracies, and, increasingly, of developing democracies.
I develop a game-theoretic model of an interaction between an anti-terrorist agency and a terrori... more I develop a game-theoretic model of an interaction between an anti-terrorist agency and a terrorist organization to analyze how the probability of a terrorist attack varies when the level of privacy protections changes. I derive two implications. First, privacy and security from terrorism need not be in conflict: when accounting for strategic interactions, reducing privacy protections does not necessarily increase security from terrorism. Second, and more importantly, the anti-terrorist agency will always want less privacy. The very agency whose expertise affords it disproportionate influence on policymaking will prefer a reduction in privacy protections even when that reduction harms security from terrorism. The analysis has implications for understanding the relationship between government powers and civil liberties in the context of terrorism prevention and times of emergencies more generally.
This article builds upon the observation that political rulers have to rely upon administrators t... more This article builds upon the observation that political rulers have to rely upon administrators to implement their policy decisions to uncover two mechanisms by which legal limits, understood in terms of fundamental human rights, can be self-enforcing. We show how the effectiveness of such legal limits depends on administrators' expectation that rights violations might be costly in the future, when the current ruler's grip on power ends. We also show how the effectiveness of legal limits depends on administrators' expectation about each others' actions when asked to execute an illegal policy, which allows for the possibility that human rights laws might induce compliance by making a particular behavior salient. The analysis contributes to a general understanding of the mechanisms by which law can effectively limit the arbitrary power of the government.
In most parliamentary democracies, proportional representation electoral rules mean that no singl... more In most parliamentary democracies, proportional representation electoral rules mean that no single party controls a majority of seats in the legislature. This in turn means that the formation of majority legislative coalitions in such settings is of critical political importance. Conventional approaches to modeling the formation of such legislative coalitions typically make the "common knowledge" assumption that the preferences of all politicians are public information. In this paper, we develop a theoretical framework to investigate which legislative coalitions form when politicians' policy preferences are private information, not known with certainty by the other politicians with whom they are negotiating over what policies to implement. The model we develop has distinctive and novel implications. It suggests that legislative coalitions should typically be either of the center-left or the center-right. In other words our model, distinctively, predicts only center-left, or center-right policy coalitions, not coalitions comprising the median party plus parties both to its left and to its right.
Many of the world's most populous democracies are political unions composed of states or province... more Many of the world's most populous democracies are political unions composed of states or provinces that are unequally represented in the national legislature. Scattered empirical studies, most of them focusing on the United States, have discovered that overrepresented states appear to receive larger shares of the national budget. Although this relationship is typically attributed to bargaining advantages associated with greater legislative representation , an important threat to empirical identification stems from the fact that the representation scheme was chosen by the provinces. Thus, it is possible that representation and fiscal transfers are both determined by other characteristics of the provinces in a specific country. To obtain an improved estimate of the relationship between representation and redistribution, we collect and analyze provincial-level data from nine federations over several decades, taking advantage of the historical process through which federations formed and expanded. Controlling for a variety of country-and province-level factors and using a variety of estimation techniques, we show that overrepresented provinces in political unions around the world are rather dramatically favored in the distribution of resources.
What institutional arrangements allow veto players to secure maximal welfare when all agree on bo... more What institutional arrangements allow veto players to secure maximal welfare when all agree on both the need for and the direction of policy change? To answer this question, we conduct a mechanism design analysis. We focus on a system with two veto players, each with incomplete information about the other's policy preferences. We show that the unique welfare-maximizing mechanism is the mechanism that implements the preferred policy of the player whose ideal policy is closer to the status quo. We provide examples of institutional structures under which the unique equilibrium outcome of this two-player incomplete information game is the policy outcome implemented by this mechanism, and argue that our result can be used as a normative benchmark to assess the optimality of veto player institutions.
Do electoral incentives to stop a terrorist attack before the next election induce democratic gov... more Do electoral incentives to stop a terrorist attack before the next election induce democratic governments to undertake ineffective counterterrorism policies? This article shows that shortsighted electoral motivations are not a sufficient explanation for why governments engage in counterproductive repression when responding to electoral pressures to safeguard security. It develops a game-theoretic model to show that limitations on observability of counterterrorism activities are an important factor for understanding why electoral pressures might induce democratic governments to choose ineffective security policies. The model also allows us to systematically investigate the conditions under which repressive counterterrorism is more likely to aggravate the terrorist threat, and has empirical and policy implications regarding the relationship between repression and its (in)effectiveness when democratic societies strive to counter the threat of terrorism.
The institution of judicial review is an important mechanism of holding the government legally ac... more The institution of judicial review is an important mechanism of holding the government legally accountable, nevertheless questions remain about its proper role in a separation of powers system. This article analyzes the effect of judicial review on the policy-making process from an expertise perspective. It shows that the exercise of non-expert judicial review can induce more informed policies and that non-expert courts have incentives to exercise judicial review in a manner consistent with institutional concerns for expertise. In addition to its importance as a mechanism of legal accountability, our analysis underscores another virtue of judicial review: legal review of governmental policy by non-expert courts can improve the amount of information available for policy-making. The article contributes to a literature on the scope and legitimacy of judicial review and has broader implications for understanding the effect of institutional checks and balances on the quality of policy-making.
The strategy of parties regarding which issues to emphasize during electoral campaigns is an impo... more The strategy of parties regarding which issues to emphasize during electoral campaigns is an important aspect of electoral competition. In this paper, we advance research on electoral competition by developing a multidimensional model of electoral competition in which parties compete for electoral support by raising the electoral salience of position issues. We show that parties have incentives to advertise an issue on which the opponent has a more popular position or an issue on which neither party has electoral advantage. We also show that the party with the lower equilibrium vote share prefers to emphasize more controversial issues, while the party with the higher equilibrium vote share prefers to emphasize more consensual issues on its electoral agenda. The analysis provides a theoretical foundation for moving toward a more complete understanding of the content of campaign communication on issues on which voters disagree about which policies ought to be implemented. It also provides novel empirical predictions about how the structure of public opinion impacts the campaign strategy of parties, which can foster further empirical research on electoral campaigns and issue-selection.
What is the role of legal limits on executive power, if any, when citizens demand more security f... more What is the role of legal limits on executive power, if any, when citizens demand more security from terrorism and allowing executive officials legal flexibility of action appears necessary to achieve it? We develop a game-theoretic model to show that when the executive faces increased electoral incentives to provide security and has legal flexibility to choose any policy it finds optimal, security from terrorism can actually decrease. In contrast, when the executive faces increased electoral incentives to provide security and there is an explicit legal limit on executive counterterrorism activities, security from terrorism increases. We also show that the executive achieves the objective of terrorism prevention more effectively when there are some limitations on its counterterrorism powers. The article provides a security rationale for legal limits on executive power and has implications for understanding how to design the institutional structure of liberal governments when the social objective is terrorism prevention.
How does a policy of reacting to terrorist attacks with restrictions on free speech protections a... more How does a policy of reacting to terrorist attacks with restrictions on free speech protections affect the likelihood of terrorism in the first place? In this paper, I develop a dynamic model of an interaction between a security agency and a terrorist organization to study the dynamic consequences of adopting policies that curtail free speech protections and other rights when terror strikes. The paper shows that in a world in which democratic governments respond to major terrorist attacks with restrictions on freedom of expression and other rights and liberties, such policies have perverse effects on the pre-attack incentives of terrorism prevention/occurrence, which can make a terrorist attack more likely. The analysis suggests that a commitment to respecting fundamental rights and liberties in times of duress can be security-beneficial: if liberal societies were to remain faithful to their fundamental values in the aftermath of terrorist attacks, such a strategy can decrease the probability of a terrorist attack in the first place.
Essential to the Madisonian conception of checks and balances is the division of policy-making au... more Essential to the Madisonian conception of checks and balances is the division of policy-making authority among multiple actors such that each can veto proposed changes in policy. We use a mechanism design approach to analyze checks and balances institutions. We show that checks and balances institutions in which the most preferred policy of the more moderate player is the unique equilibrium outcome are the only checks and balances institutions that are strategy-proof, efficient, and responsive. Our analysis facilitates a comprehensive evaluation of checks and balances institutions, and our results can serve as a normative benchmark to assess any such institution, regardless of its specific design. We illustrate the applicability of our normative benchmark within the context of constitutional review, a crucial pillar of established democracies, and, increasingly, of developing democracies.
I develop a game-theoretic model of an interaction between an anti-terrorist agency and a terrori... more I develop a game-theoretic model of an interaction between an anti-terrorist agency and a terrorist organization to analyze how the probability of a terrorist attack varies when the level of privacy protections changes. I derive two implications. First, privacy and security from terrorism need not be in conflict: when accounting for strategic interactions, reducing privacy protections does not necessarily increase security from terrorism. Second, and more importantly, the anti-terrorist agency will always want less privacy. The very agency whose expertise affords it disproportionate influence on policymaking will prefer a reduction in privacy protections even when that reduction harms security from terrorism. The analysis has implications for understanding the relationship between government powers and civil liberties in the context of terrorism prevention and times of emergencies more generally.
This article builds upon the observation that political rulers have to rely upon administrators t... more This article builds upon the observation that political rulers have to rely upon administrators to implement their policy decisions to uncover two mechanisms by which legal limits, understood in terms of fundamental human rights, can be self-enforcing. We show how the effectiveness of such legal limits depends on administrators' expectation that rights violations might be costly in the future, when the current ruler's grip on power ends. We also show how the effectiveness of legal limits depends on administrators' expectation about each others' actions when asked to execute an illegal policy, which allows for the possibility that human rights laws might induce compliance by making a particular behavior salient. The analysis contributes to a general understanding of the mechanisms by which law can effectively limit the arbitrary power of the government.
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