Now or Later? The Political Economy of Public Investment in Democracies

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Author :
Publisher : International Monetary Fund
ISBN 13 : 1513563505
Total Pages : 38 pages
Book Rating : 4.5/5 (135 download)

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Book Synopsis Now or Later? The Political Economy of Public Investment in Democracies by : Mr.Sanjeev Gupta

Download or read book Now or Later? The Political Economy of Public Investment in Democracies written by Mr.Sanjeev Gupta and published by International Monetary Fund. This book was released on 2015-07-27 with total page 38 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This paper explores the impact of political and institutional variables on public investment. Working with a sample of 80 presidential and parliamentary democracies between 1975 and 2012, we find that the rate of growth of public investment is higher at the beginning of electoral cycles and decelerates thereafter. The peak in public investment growth occurs between 21 and 25 months before elections. Cabinet ideology and government fragmentation influence the size of investment booms. More parties in government are associated with smaller increases in public investment while left-wing cabinets are associated with higher sustained increases in investment. Stronger institutions help attenuate the impact of elections on investment, but available information is insufficient to draw definitive conclusions.

Costs of Democracy

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Publisher : Oxford University Press
ISBN 13 : 019909313X
Total Pages : 383 pages
Book Rating : 4.1/5 (99 download)

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Book Synopsis Costs of Democracy by : Devesh Kapur

Download or read book Costs of Democracy written by Devesh Kapur and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2018-06-13 with total page 383 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: One of the most troubling critiques of contemporary democracy is the inability of representative governments to regulate the deluge of money in politics. If it is impossible to conceive of democracies without elections, it is equally impractical to imagine elections without money. Costs of Democracy is an exhaustive, ground-breaking study of money in Indian politics that opens readers’ eyes to the opaque and enigmatic ways in which money flows through the political veins of the world’s largest democracy. Through original, in-depth investigation—drawing from extensive fieldwork on political campaigns, pioneering surveys, and innovative data analysis—the contributors in this volume uncover the institutional and regulatory contexts governing the torrent of money in politics; the sources of political finance; the reasons for such large spending; and how money flows, influences, and interacts with different tiers of government. The book raises uncomfortable questions about whether the flood of money risks washing away electoral democracy itself.

The Political Economy of Democracy and Tyranny

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Author :
Publisher : De Gruyter Oldenbourg
ISBN 13 :
Total Pages : 358 pages
Book Rating : 4.0/5 ( download)

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Book Synopsis The Political Economy of Democracy and Tyranny by : Norman Schofield

Download or read book The Political Economy of Democracy and Tyranny written by Norman Schofield and published by De Gruyter Oldenbourg. This book was released on 2009 with total page 358 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: One theme that has emerged from the recent literature on political economy concerns the transition to democracy: why would dominant elites give up oligarchic power? This book addresses the fundamental question of democratic stability and the collapse of tyranny by considering a formal model of democracy and tyranny. The formal model is used to study elections in developed polities such as the United States, the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, Canada, and Israel, as well as complex developing polities such as Turkey. The key idea is that activist groups may offer resources to political candidates if they in turn adjust their polities in favor of the interest group. In polities that use a "first past the post" electoral system, such as the US, the bargaining between interest groups and candidates creates a tendency for activist groups to coalesce; in polities such as Israel and the Netherlands, where the electoral system is very proportional, there may be little tendency for activist coalescence. A further feature of the model is that candidates, or political leaders, like Barack Obama, with high intrinsic charisma, or valence, will be attracted to the electoral center, while less charismatic leaders will move to the electoral periphery. This aspect of the model is used to compare the position taking and exercise of power of authoritarian leaders in Portugal, Argentina and the Soviet Union. The final chapter of the book suggests that the chaos that may be induced by climate change and rapid population growth can only be addressed by concerted action directed by a charismatic leader of the Atlantic democracies.

Open Budgets

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Publisher : Brookings Institution Press
ISBN 13 : 0815723377
Total Pages : 272 pages
Book Rating : 4.8/5 (157 download)

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Book Synopsis Open Budgets by : Sanjeev Khagram

Download or read book Open Budgets written by Sanjeev Khagram and published by Brookings Institution Press. This book was released on 2013 with total page 272 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Explicates political economy factors that have brought about greater transparency and participation in budget settings across Asia, Africa, and Latin America. This title presents the strategies, policies, and institutions through which improvements can occur and produce change in policy and institutional outcomes.

Democracy, Governance, and Economic Performance

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Publisher : MIT Press
ISBN 13 : 9780262562119
Total Pages : 408 pages
Book Rating : 4.5/5 (621 download)

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Book Synopsis Democracy, Governance, and Economic Performance by : Yi Feng

Download or read book Democracy, Governance, and Economic Performance written by Yi Feng and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2003 with total page 408 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A theoretical and empirical examination of why political institutions and organizations matter in economic growth.

The Political Economy of Democratic Decentralization

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Publisher : World Bank Publications
ISBN 13 :
Total Pages : 152 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 (91 download)

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Book Synopsis The Political Economy of Democratic Decentralization by : James Manor

Download or read book The Political Economy of Democratic Decentralization written by James Manor and published by World Bank Publications. This book was released on 1999 with total page 152 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Nearly all countries worldwide are now experimenting with decentralization. Their motivation are diverse. Many countries are decentralizing because they believe this can help stimulate economic growth or reduce rural poverty, goals central government interventions have failed to achieve. Some countries see it as a way to strengthen civil society and deepen democracy. Some perceive it as a way to off-load expensive responsibilities onto lower level governments. Thus, decentralization is seen as a solution to many different kinds of problems. This report examines the origins and implications decentralization from a political economy perspective, with a focus on its promise and limitations. It explores why countries have often chosen not to decentralize, even when evidence suggests that doing so would be in the interests of the government. It seeks to explain why since the early 1980s many countries have undertaken some form of decentralization. This report also evaluates the evidence to understand where decentralization has considerable promise and where it does not. It identifies conditions needed for decentralization to succeed. It identifies the ways in which decentralization can promote rural development. And it names the goals which decentralization will probably not help achieve.

Decentralization and Popular Democracy

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Publisher : University of Michigan Press
ISBN 13 : 0472118196
Total Pages : 373 pages
Book Rating : 4.4/5 (721 download)

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Book Synopsis Decentralization and Popular Democracy by : Jean-Paul Faguet

Download or read book Decentralization and Popular Democracy written by Jean-Paul Faguet and published by University of Michigan Press. This book was released on 2012-06-04 with total page 373 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Faguet identifies the factors that determine the outcomes of national decentralization on the local level

Governing for the Long Term

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Publisher : Cambridge University Press
ISBN 13 : 1139496115
Total Pages : 323 pages
Book Rating : 4.1/5 (394 download)

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Book Synopsis Governing for the Long Term by : Alan M. Jacobs

Download or read book Governing for the Long Term written by Alan M. Jacobs and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2011-03-28 with total page 323 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In Governing for the Long Term, Alan M. Jacobs investigates the conditions under which elected governments invest in long-term social benefits at short-term social cost. Jacobs contends that, along the path to adoption, investment-oriented policies must surmount three distinct hurdles to future-oriented state action: a problem of electoral risk, rooted in the scarcity of voter attention; a problem of prediction, deriving from the complexity of long-term policy effects; and a problem of institutional capacity, arising from interest groups' preferences for distributive gains over intertemporal bargains. Testing this argument through a four-country historical analysis of pension policymaking, the book illuminates crucial differences between the causal logics of distributive and intertemporal politics and makes a case for bringing trade-offs over time to the center of the study of policymaking.

Democracy and Prosperity

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Publisher : Princeton University Press
ISBN 13 : 0691210217
Total Pages : 359 pages
Book Rating : 4.6/5 (912 download)

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Book Synopsis Democracy and Prosperity by : Torben Iversen

Download or read book Democracy and Prosperity written by Torben Iversen and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2020-11-03 with total page 359 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: It is a widespread view that democracy and the advanced nation-state are in crisis, weakened by globalization and undermined by global capitalism, in turn explaining rising inequality and mounting populism. This book, written by two of the world's leading political economists, argues this view is wrong: advanced democracies are resilient, and their enduring historical relationship with capitalism has been mutually beneficial. For all the chaos and upheaval over the past century--major wars, economic crises, massive social change, and technological revolutions--Torben Iversen and David Soskice show how democratic states continuously reinvent their economies through massive public investment in research and education, by imposing competitive product markets and cooperation in the workplace, and by securing macroeconomic discipline as the preconditions for innovation and the promotion of the advanced sectors of the economy. Critically, this investment has generated vast numbers of well-paying jobs for the middle classes and their children, focusing the aims of aspirational families, and in turn providing electoral support for parties. Gains at the top have also been shared with the middle (though not the bottom) through a large welfare state. Contrary to the prevailing wisdom on globalization, advanced capitalism is neither footloose nor unconstrained: it thrives under democracy precisely because it cannot subvert it. Populism, inequality, and poverty are indeed great scourges of our time, but these are failures of democracy and must be solved by democracy.

Problem-Driven Political Economy Analysis

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Publisher : World Bank Publications
ISBN 13 : 1464801223
Total Pages : 289 pages
Book Rating : 4.4/5 (648 download)

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Book Synopsis Problem-Driven Political Economy Analysis by : Verena Fritz

Download or read book Problem-Driven Political Economy Analysis written by Verena Fritz and published by World Bank Publications. This book was released on 2014-01-13 with total page 289 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume presents eight good practice examples of problem-driven political economy analysis conducted at the World Bank, and reflect what the Bank has so far been able to achieve in mainstreaming this approach into its operations and policy dialogue.

Information, Democracy, and Autocracy

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Publisher : Cambridge University Press
ISBN 13 : 1108356338
Total Pages : 401 pages
Book Rating : 4.1/5 (83 download)

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Book Synopsis Information, Democracy, and Autocracy by : James R. Hollyer

Download or read book Information, Democracy, and Autocracy written by James R. Hollyer and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2018-09-27 with total page 401 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Advocates for economic development often call for greater transparency. But what does transparency really mean? What are its consequences? This breakthrough book demonstrates how information impacts major political phenomena, including mass protest, the survival of dictatorships, democratic stability, as well as economic performance. The book introduces a new measure of a specific facet of transparency: the dissemination of economic data. Analysis shows that democracies make economic data more available than do similarly developed autocracies. Transparency attracts investment and makes democracies more resilient to breakdown. But transparency has a dubious consequence under autocracy: political instability. Mass-unrest becomes more likely, and transparency can facilitate democratic transition - but most often a new despotic regime displaces the old. Autocratic leaders may also turn these threats to their advantage, using the risk of mass-unrest that transparency portends to unify the ruling elite. Policy-makers must recognize the trade-offs transparency entails.

Golden Rule

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Publisher : University of Chicago Press
ISBN 13 : 022616201X
Total Pages : 439 pages
Book Rating : 4.2/5 (261 download)

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Book Synopsis Golden Rule by : Thomas Ferguson

Download or read book Golden Rule written by Thomas Ferguson and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2011-08-15 with total page 439 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "To discover who rules, follow the gold." This is the argument of Golden Rule, a provocative, pungent history of modern American politics. Although the role big money plays in defining political outcomes has long been obvious to ordinary Americans, most pundits and scholars have virtually dismissed this assumption. Even in light of skyrocketing campaign costs, the belief that major financial interests primarily determine who parties nominate and where they stand on the issues—that, in effect, Democrats and Republicans are merely the left and right wings of the "Property Party"—has been ignored by most political scientists. Offering evidence ranging from the nineteenth century to the 1994 mid-term elections, Golden Rule shows that voters are "right on the money." Thomas Ferguson breaks completely with traditional voter centered accounts of party politics. In its place he outlines an "investment approach," in which powerful investors, not unorganized voters, dominate campaigns and elections. Because businesses "invest" in political parties and their candidates, changes in industrial structures—between large firms and sectors—can alter the agenda of party politics and the shape of public policy. Golden Rule presents revised versions of widely read essays in which Ferguson advanced and tested his theory, including his seminal study of the role played by capital intensive multinationals and international financiers in the New Deal. The chapter "Studies in Money Driven Politics" brings this aspect of American politics into better focus, along with other studies of Federal Reserve policy making and campaign finance in the 1936 election. Ferguson analyzes how a changing world economy and other social developments broke up the New Deal system in our own time, through careful studies of the 1988 and 1992 elections. The essay on 1992 contains an extended analysis of the emergence of the Clinton coalition and Ross Perot's dramatic independent insurgency. A postscript on the 1994 elections demonstrates the controlling impact of money on several key campaigns. This controversial work by a theorist of money and politics in the U.S. relates to issues in campaign finance reform, PACs, policymaking, public financing, and how today's elections work.

Getting it Right

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Publisher : MIT Press
ISBN 13 : 9780262522267
Total Pages : 214 pages
Book Rating : 4.5/5 (222 download)

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Book Synopsis Getting it Right by : Robert J. Barro

Download or read book Getting it Right written by Robert J. Barro and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 1996 with total page 214 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Since 1991, Robert Barro has been a lively contributor to the Wall Street Journal and other popular financial media. Getting It Right brings together, updates, and expands upon these writings that showcase Barro's agility in applying economic understanding to a wide array of social issues. Barro, a "conservative who takes no prisoners," and a self-described libertarian, believes that most governments have gone much too far in their spending, taxation, and regulation. The dominant theme in these wide-ranging essays is the importance of institutions that ensure property rights and free markets. The discussion deals especially with the appropriate range of government: which areas represent useful public policy and which are unnecessary interference. The first section of the book considers these questions in the context of the determinants of long-run economic growth. In addition to basic economics, Barro assesses related political topics, such as the role of public institutions, the optimal size of countries, and the consequences of default on foreign debt. The second section deals with the proper role and form of monetary policy. Barro argues that government should provide markets with a stable nominal framework and then stay out of the way to best allow for price stability. Writings in the third section cover fiscal and other macroeconomic policies. Topics include the distorting influences of taxation, especially taxes on capital income; infrastructure investment and other government spending; and the consequences of public debt and budget deficits. In a final section, Barro looks at more micro issues such as cartels, tax amnesties, school choice, privatization, cigarette-smoking regulation, endangered species regulation, the market for baseball players, and term limits for politicians.

Rents to Riches?

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Publisher : World Bank Publications
ISBN 13 : 0821384805
Total Pages : 303 pages
Book Rating : 4.8/5 (213 download)

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Book Synopsis Rents to Riches? by : Naazneen Barma

Download or read book Rents to Riches? written by Naazneen Barma and published by World Bank Publications. This book was released on 2012 with total page 303 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Rents to Riches> focuses on the political economy of the detailed decisions that governments make at each step of the natural resource management (NRM) value chain. Many resource-dependent developing countries pursue seemingly shortsighted and suboptimal policies when extracting, taxing, and investing resource rents. The book contextualizes these micro-level outcomes with an emphasis on two central political economy dimensions: the degree to which governments can make credible intertemporal commitments to both resource developers and citizens, and the degree to which governments and inclined to turn resource rents into public goods. Almost 1.5 billion people live in the more than 50 World Bank client countries classified as resource-dependent. A detailed understanding of the way political economy characteristics affect the NRM decisions made in these countries by governments, extractive developers, and society can improve the design of interventions to support welfare-enhancing policy making and governance in the natural resource sectors. Featuring case study work from Africa (Angola, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Ghana, Niger, Nigeria), East Asia and Pacific (the Lao People's Democratic Republic, Mongolia, Timor-Leste), and Latin America and the Caribbean (Bolivia, Chile, Ecuador, Mexico, Trinidad an dTobago_, the book provides guidance for government clients, domestic stakeholders, and development partners committed to transforming natural resource into sustainable development riches.

The Inclusionary Turn in Latin American Democracies

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Publisher : Cambridge University Press
ISBN 13 : 110890159X
Total Pages : 587 pages
Book Rating : 4.1/5 (89 download)

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Book Synopsis The Inclusionary Turn in Latin American Democracies by : Diana Kapiszewski

Download or read book The Inclusionary Turn in Latin American Democracies written by Diana Kapiszewski and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2021-02-04 with total page 587 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Latin American states took dramatic steps toward greater inclusion during the late twentieth and early twenty-first Centuries. Bringing together an accomplished group of scholars, this volume examines this shift by introducing three dimensions of inclusion: official recognition of historically excluded groups, access to policymaking, and resource redistribution. Tracing the movement along these dimensions since the 1990s, the editors argue that the endurance of democratic politics, combined with longstanding social inequalities, create the impetus for inclusionary reforms. Diverse chapters explore how factors such as the role of partisanship and electoral clientelism, constitutional design, state capacity, social protest, populism, commodity rents, international diffusion, and historical legacies encouraged or inhibited inclusionary reform during the late 1990s and early 2000s. Featuring original empirical evidence and a strong theoretical framework, the book considers cross-national variation, delves into the surprising paradoxes of inclusion, and identifies the obstacles hindering further fundamental change.

How Does Political Instability Affect Economic Growth?

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Author :
Publisher : International Monetary Fund
ISBN 13 : 1455211907
Total Pages : 30 pages
Book Rating : 4.4/5 (552 download)

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Book Synopsis How Does Political Instability Affect Economic Growth? by : Mr.Ari Aisen

Download or read book How Does Political Instability Affect Economic Growth? written by Mr.Ari Aisen and published by International Monetary Fund. This book was released on 2011-01-01 with total page 30 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The purpose of this paper is to empirically determine the effects of political instability on economic growth. Using the system-GMM estimator for linear dynamic panel data models on a sample covering up to 169 countries, and 5-year periods from 1960 to 2004, we find that higher degrees of political instability are associated with lower growth rates of GDP per capita. Regarding the channels of transmission, we find that political instability adversely affects growth by lowering the rates of productivity growth and, to a smaller degree, physical and human capital accumulation. Finally, economic freedom and ethnic homogeneity are beneficial to growth, while democracy may have a small negative effect.

Fiscal Politics

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Publisher : International Monetary Fund
ISBN 13 : 1475589522
Total Pages : 548 pages
Book Rating : 4.4/5 (755 download)

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Book Synopsis Fiscal Politics by : Vitor Gaspar

Download or read book Fiscal Politics written by Vitor Gaspar and published by International Monetary Fund. This book was released on 2017-04-07 with total page 548 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Two main themes of the book are that (1) politics can distort optimal fiscal policy through elections and through political fragmentation, and (2) rules and institutions can attenuate the negative effects of this dynamic. The book has three parts: part 1 (9 chapters) outlines the problems; part 2 (6 chapters) outlines how institutions and fiscal rules can offer solutions; and part 3 (4 chapters) discusses how multilevel governance frameworks can help.