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Jacob Edenhofer 🇪🇺 🇺🇦 Profile picture
@edenhofer_jacob
Feb 15, 2024 • 13 tweets • 4 min read • Read on X
These maps are interesting. Given the pre-existing differences between the East and West, however, we cannot simply "eyeball" the effects of the GDR regime, though some of the variation is likely causal.
Here are some of my favourite works that help us think carefully ... 1/11
about the GDR regime's effects.
1. I've pointed to this great paper so many times that I feel like a broken record, but this by @essobecker, @LukasMergele, and @Woessmann is essential reading 2/11
2. This by Kern and Hainmueller is an absolute classic and leverages the variation generated in large part by the topography of the valley of the unaware ("Tal der Ahnungslosen") around Dreseden.
3/11cambridge.org/core/journals/…
3. Bursztyn and Cantoni's paper use a similar identification strategy, but look at a different outcome, i.e. consumption, rather than attitudes.
4/11direct.mit.edu/rest/article-a…
4. Another great paper is this @JEEA_News piece by Lichter, Löffler, and @Sigginho. They use within-GDR differences in spying intensity to examine the effects on trust and, more broadly, social capital.
5/11academic.oup.com/jeea/article/1…
5. For non-German readers, let me note that imo Jens Gieseke's (@zzfpotsdam) history of the Stasi is unrivalled. English translation here
6/11amazon.co.uk/History-Stasi-…
Recently, a number of papers have come out that analyse the (i) process of privatisation (via the Treuhand) and (ii) effects of privatisation on economic and political outcomes.
6. This🧵and the related paper are absolute must-reads. 7/11
7. Then, there is this interesting working paper by @ufukakcigit and co-authors.
8/11nber.org/papers/w31645
8. This paper by @BachmannRudi et al. sheds light on the role of monopsony in creating productivity differences between East and West German firms.
9/11papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cf…
9. On the political effects of privatisation, see the work by Hennicke, @anselmhager, @krause_we, and @LukasMergele
10/11osf.io/preprints/osf/…
10. @HansLueders has a new paper in @World_Pol, where he shows that the economic uncertainty associated with East Germany's democratisation has long-lasting effects, with East Germans responding more strongly to present economic uncertainty. 11/END
muse.jhu.edu/pub/1/article/…
Addendum: See this🧵of mine for some more general thoughts on the "workings" of autocracies:
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More from @edenhofer_jacob

Jacob Edenhofer 🇪🇺 🇺🇦 Profile picture
Dec 16
Excited to have just finished this pre-analysis plan (PAP) with Lara, @johannesbrehm, and Henri -- it will be interesting to see which, if any, of our predictions will be borne out by the data. More on that in the new year. In the meanwhile, let me tell you about our theory. Image
Two observations constitute our starting point:
1⃣A well-established stylised empirical fact on climate public opinion is women express greater support for climate policy than men.
➡️What is less clear is which groups drive this gap, especially on
osf.io/9usd2/files/ms…
the male side (see also the cool work by Amelia Malpas in the non-climate context), and among the unaffected, those not directly exposed to climate-induced job losses.
2⃣Much of the literature focuses on those (in)directly affected by the adverse
ameliamalpas.com
Read 16 tweets
Jacob Edenhofer 🇪🇺 🇺🇦 Profile picture
Dec 11
Recently, I have been thinking about the political economy of policy advice. Below are my thoughts; I'd be curious to hear what "practitioners" think about these. Let's start by thinking about the demand for and supply in the market for policy advice.
Policymakers rely on expert advice because it serves two purposes.
1⃣ Expertise can lead to better policies or implementation by providing an evidence-based overview of the costs and benefits of different policy instruments or objectives.
2⃣Expertise can provide legitimation.
Expert statements (e.g. in interviews) can help policymakers justify their preferred positions to coalition partners, interest groups, or attentive elites. The relative weight of these functions depends on the institutional and political environment in which policymakers operate.
Read 27 tweets
Jacob Edenhofer 🇪🇺 🇺🇦 Profile picture
Nov 26
There is understandably a great deal of interest in fighting populism. I share the normative aspiration.
Yet the more I think about it, the more I find myself drawn to a more pessimistic interpretation. The latter may well be wrong. But articulating it helps clarify whether
there are strong grounds for greater optimism. Based on the above presentation, here is a thumbnail sketch for why fighting right-wing populism is so hard.
I. Powerful structural forces have reshaped political competition and made the job of mainstream politicians much harder
Contemporary political competition is shaped by structural changes that are neither easily reversed nor influenced by tweak to mainstream parties' strategies or platforms.
+ The cultural dimension has become significantly more salient, even though preferences on this
Read 18 tweets
Jacob Edenhofer 🇪🇺 🇺🇦 Profile picture
Nov 18
Delighted to see this paper out - working with @grattonecon was fantastic; I learned a lot! We develop the argument that technocracy can serve as an intertemporal insurance device for groups who fear their majority status is ephemeral. Because technocrats weigh minority concerns Image
more than majority rule would, they protect today’s majority against losing power in the future. This protection is epsecially valuable when that majority cares intensely about the issue it delegates. But when majority status becomes more stable (e.g. via
tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.10…
entrenchment) or technocratic decisions consistently favour the same group, those disfavoured by technocracy may push back. Democracies can then oscillate between technocratic and majoritarian decision-making; the ensuing cycles can undermine institutional stability and heighten
Read 6 tweets
Jacob Edenhofer 🇪🇺 🇺🇦 Profile picture
Nov 9
This very interesting paper raises a broader questions: why do some scandals stay contained while others discredit an entire political class? Part of the answer, I think, lies in diffeences in the clarity of accountability across democratic political systems. A well-established
line of research in comparative politics points out that
democracies differ in how easily citizens can infer responsibility for policy decisions/outcomes. In systems with high clarity of responsibility—Westminster or presidential ones—power is
onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.111…
concentrated, making it easy to attribute decisions. In these systems, I would argue that scandals are (more) "individualised". The offender resigns, the party apologises, and voters move on. Each scandal reaffirms that wrongdoing can be sanctioned reasonably effectively. In
Read 10 tweets
Jacob Edenhofer 🇪🇺 🇺🇦 Profile picture
Nov 3
Fascinating paper by @grattonecon, @bartonelee2, and Hasin Yousaf!
The paper addresses a fundamental question: Why do some democracies chronically avoid ambitious, long-term reforms even when they have decent institutions?
They argue that what matters is not only institutional Image
quality (rules, transparency, electoral design), but also political culture: voters’ beliefs about whether politicians can be trusted and whether institutions really hold them accountable.
In their model, there are two types of politicians: ambitious
academic.oup.com/ej/advance-art…
(who promise reforms) and default (who play it safe).
- Ambitious politicians can be honest or dishonest; only honest ones try to deliver.
- Voters can’t observe effort directly; they see results with some probability (transparency).
- Voters have beliefs (their “political
Read 8 tweets

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