This paper develops a positive theory of growth and redistribution in which agents care about both their absolute and relative levels of consumption. As in Alesina and Rodrik (1994), public goods are productive and are financed by a tax on capital. Equilibrium tax policy is chosen by a pivotal voter and is shown to reflect the strength of status preferences and the distributions of wealth and p...

ing from specificities, we can break down pendulum democracy at the local level into ten general characteristics as well:14 Practices

Virtues, or habituated excellences of character, have been understood as having important roles in political regimes since the very beginnings of Western political thought. Across remarkable variation in theorists’ contexts and perspectives, the virtues are considered central to the flourishing of regimes beyond otherwise abstract norms and formal institutions. In Greek thought, for example, et...

There is increasing interest in promoting participatory democracy, in particular by allowing voting by mail or internet and through random-sample elections. A pernicious concern, though, is that of vote buying, which occurs when a bad actor seeks to buy ballots, paying someone to vote against their own intent. This becomes possible whenever a voter is able to sell evidence of which way she vote...

The relationship between democracy and environment has always been controversial. Some scientists found that democracy had a positive impact on reducing environmental disruption. Other scholars claimed that democracy tends to accelerate environmental degradation. Ther are many studies focusing on main determinants of environmental degradation. More recently, democracy is considered to be one of...

This paper describes the key role that city authorities and their civil societies should play in mediating the relationship between economic globalization and human development so that cities act not only as engines of growth but also as agents for greater social justice and environmental sustainability. In a globalizing and urbanizing world, urban governments have a much more important role in...

In this article, the authors investigate the effects of economic conditions on support for an incumbent regime in a newAfrican democracy. Drawing on two unique data sources fromZambia—the results of a 1,200-respondent postelection survey and a pair of 10,000-household poverty surveys conducted in the same years as that country’s first two posttransition general elections—the authors find eviden...