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ID: 118176

Domestic institutions and credible signals / Uzonyi, Gary; Souva, Mark; Golder, Sona N

Souva, Mark	Journal Article
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2012.

Summary/Abstract

Audience costs are a central feature of many prominent theories of international conflict. We advance the understanding of audience costs by specifying the domestic institutions necessary to generate them. In our conceptualization, audience cost capacity (ACC) is a function of the availability of alternative rulers and the cost of mobilizing against the incumbent. This conceptualization leads to the first measure of ACC that has variation between more and less democratic political systems and variation within autocracies. We subject our measure to a rigorous set of tests that includes addressing selection effects and temporal treatment effects, neither of which have been fully examined in this research area. The empirical analysis offers strong support for the validity of our measure.

Key Words

International conflicts ; Domestic Institutions ; Conceptualization ; Audience Cost Capacity

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ID: 094968

Measuring government duration and stability in Central Eastern / Conrad, Courtenay Ryals; Golder, Sona N

Conrad, Courtenay Ryals	Journal Article
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Publication

2010.

Summary/Abstract

Existing studies of government duration in parliamentary democracies typically measure the length of a government's tenure in office without accounting for delays in the government formation process. By assuming that a cabinet leaves office on the day prior to the new cabinet taking office, these measures ignore periods during which a government has lost its mandate but is still legally in power as a caretaker government. A consequence is that governments that are actually stable and governments that only appear stable because replacement governments take a long time to form are observationally equivalent. This suggests that some existing studies of government stability are potentially flawed. It also means that a number of interesting research questions cannot be answered with existing data. Many of these questions address the various consequences of caretaker governments. The answers to these questions are relevant for scholars interested in representation and accountability. This article presents a new dataset collected on government duration in eleven Central Eastern European democracies from 1990 to 2008 that specifically takes account of caretaker periods and delays in the government formation process. These data will provide scholars with more flexibility to choose the measure that best reflects their underlying conception of government stability.

Key Words

Europe ; Parliamentary Democracy ; Iran - Democracy - 1941-1953

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ID: 123625

Monetary institutions and the political survival of democratic / Clark, William R; Golder, Sona N; Poast, Paul

Golder, Sona N	Journal Article
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Publication

2013.

Summary/Abstract

According to the political business cycle literature, survival-maximizing leaders will manipulate whatever macroeconomic policy instruments they have at their disposal in order to retain power. However, an obvious implication of the political business cycle literature has not previously been adequately tested: does having the ability to manipulate macroeconomic policy instruments actually allow leaders to stay in office longer? We argue that elected leaders who have neither fiscal nor monetary instruments available for electoral purposes will find it more difficult to survive in office. We test this claim using data from 19 OECD countries in the latter part of the twentieth century when the degree of capital mobility in the international economy was high. We find that access to macroeconomic instruments does help leaders retain office, but that these instruments are only effective for leaders who have been in office for at least 7 years.

Key Words

OECD ; International Economy ; Macroeconomic Policy ; Political Business

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