🚨 New working paper! 🚨
@grattonecon and I just completed the first draft of "The Rise and Fall of Technocratic Democracies". Excited to present it in Munich this week—thanks to @LauraSeelkopf, @christoph_knill & others for hosting us! 🧵👇
▶️ Motivation
Many democracies have have witnessed a process of "technocratization", with unelected technocrats having gained greater discretion over important realms of public policy (e.g. monetary policy). Populists explicitly oppose this narrowing of the purview of majoritarian policymaking, instead vowing to

@KaiGehring1 Yes -- this argument depends on a number of assumptions, though, which are rarely spelt out:
1. Voters have a clear objective they want to see achieved (is -10% immigration enough? -50%?). If this is a moving target, then parties' will be pulled away ever more from the centre. @KaiGehring1 2. Voters will actually realise that an "issue" has been solved. This rules out that populists can conjure up beliefs by exploiting misperceptions about immigration/immigration.
3. Voter will credit a government consisting of mainstream parties with this. The deeper the distrust,

Interessante Argumente, denen ich allerdings nur in Teilen zustimme. Bin aus folgenden Gründen skeptischer.
1. Die Kostenreduktionen bei den erneuerbaren Energien müssen auch vor dem Hintergrund des technologischen Fortschritts bei der Extraktion von Öl and Gas

https://twitter.com/ChrisStoecker/status/1875827461130162210

gesehen werden -- insbesondere, weil die geopolitischen Anreize, die Extraktionskosten weiter zu reduzieren, beträchtlich sind. Das wird auch deutlich, wenn man sich vergegenwärtigt, dass die Öl- und Gas-Produktion unter Harris
academic.oup.com/isq/article-ab…

Interessanter Artikel, den ich allerdings nur mäßig überzeugend finde.
Zunächst bin ich – anders als Zürn – skeptischer, was die „explanatory power“ der politikwissenschaftlichen Erklärungen für den Aufstieg der Rechtspopulisten betrifft.

https://twitter.com/annettedittert/status/1875082954063347753

Die Effektgrößen (meistens zwischen 1 bis 10 Prozentpunkten) der gut identifizierten Studien reichen eher nicht aus, um das "support level" zu erklären -- und die Studien, die zu "großen" Effekten kommen, sind empirisch wackelig sind. Das hat auch damit zu tun, dass es schwierig

Möchte dies zum Anlass nehmen, auf meinen Bsky-Post von vor ~2 Wochen zu verweisen. "Für mich ist das Attraktive an der liberalen Demokratie, dass sie eben auch mit ganz gewöhnlichen Menschen funktioniert – also Menschen, deren Motive meist eine
bsky.app/profile/jacobe… x.com/sabinedoering/… ganze Menge Egoismus und ein Wenig Altruismus widerspiegeln und die kognitiv erhebliche Beschränkungen haben, weshalb sie Fehlwahrnehmungen und "inferential mistakes" aufsitzen. Das unterscheidet die liberale Demokratie von anderen Systemen, die – wenn überhaupt – nur

Here is my list.
1. “Special Interest Politics” by Grossman and Helpman
mitpress.mit.edu/9780262571678/… x.com/edenhofer_jaco… 2. “The Normalization of the Radical Right” by @ValentimVicente
academic.oup.com/book/57946

Ok, I'll bite - mainly because the idea that accommodating the radical right on immigration is almost bound to work electorally seems to be rather popular among mainstream politicians.
Let me try to provide a basic overview of the party competition literature and, in doing so,

https://twitter.com/MartGuenzel/status/1862817120540606590

explain why there are good reasons to be sceptical about the claim that accommodation will reap electoral rewards. This doesn't mean that accommodation never works -- just that there is little reason to be as confident about its radical-right-dampening potential as many

RIP Walter Korpi -- one of the key figures in the development of the "power resources theory". Let me take this opportunity to connect some recent work in (labour) economics to this way of thinking about the welfare state and the political economy of redistribution.

https://twitter.com/GerardoMunck/status/1860609304761602049

Most (political) economists think about redistribution and the welfare state in terms of the Meltzer-Richard-Romer model (see 👇) for a summary of the demand- and supply-side assumptions. The famous macro-level prediction is that, as the right-ward skew of the income ...

@kyleichan has a very interesting post, arguing that -- because China is more dependent on the US than the other way around -- Trump's desire to ratchet up the trade war with China might work to the advantaged of the US. While I'm not qualified to assess high-capacity.com/p/beijing-brac… the overall argument, I think the post under-estimates the political costs that the first trade war engendered for Trump. Here are three interesting papers documenting these costs.
1. @fetzert , and Carlo Schwarz. 2021. ‘Tariffs and Politics: Evidence from Trump’s Trade Wars’.

Interesting podcast, which reminded me of this book chapter:
@benwansell and @jrgingrich. 2021. ‘The End of Human Capital Solidarity?’ In Who Gets What?: The New Politics of Insecurity, eds. Frances McCall Rosenbluth and Margaret Weir. 52–78. cambridge.org/core/books/abs… x.com/voxeu/status/1… I seem to remember that one of the authors did a thread on this when it came out, but I can't find it. In lieu of linking to thread, I'll post some of favourite passages from their chapter.
Their chapter is especially important against the backdrop of the flattening or even

It's the political selection stupid (at least in the US). The supply-side dynamics of US politics over the last ~40 years or so seem like an underrated factor in explaining elite-level polarisation and its downstream ramifications.

https://twitter.com/qjps_editors/status/1846993490967970034

Let me collect some explanations.
1. The cost of running for office have increased. Given these high opportunity costs (in terms of money and time), only wealthy people take the risk of running in elections, and even they rely heavily on campaign contributions. That is

Let me celebrate today's Nobel Prize for Acemoglu, Robinson, and Johnson by summarising the work of the first two laureates on the relationship between inequality and democratisation. In fact, AR kicked off the literature on redistributive theories of democratisation. 1/n Most summaries will focus on their contributions to the historical political economy of development, but their work on democratisation shouldn't go unmentioned today.
The synthesis of their work is presented in AR's "Economic Origins" book -- the

2/ncambridge.org/core/books/eco…

Interesting paper, which also raises deeper questions about the (unintended side) effects of the distributional ramifications of technocratic poliycmaking on politics. Let me sketch some thoughts.
To be clear: This is not suggest that central bank
onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/jo… independence is a bad idea. In fact, I believe trying to mitigate commitment problems via delegation is very important. If, however, that type of delegation engenders (regressive) distributional effects and voters cannot hold those that craft these policies accountable in

Den Tag der deutschen Einheit verstehe ich als Aufforderung,
- die historisch nahezu singuläre Leistung der ProtagonistInnen (in Ost u. West) der friedlichen Revolution zu würdigen,
- mir die durch die Wiedervereinigung gerissenen Wunden sowie deren Persistenz zu vergegenwärtigen, und
- indes nicht die Integrationserfolge aus den Augen zu verlieren.
Mein komparativer Kostenvorteil besteht in der (leider zu oberflaechlichen) Kenntnis von Teilen der sozialwissenschaftlichen Literatur. Ich hoffe dennoch, dass diese Arbeiten zu einer

The book by @CharlotteCavai1 that Marc mentions in his thread is required reading imo for anyone interested in comparative political economy. I'm not qualified to review the book, but would like to draw your attention to some especially interesting cambridge.org/gb/universityp… x.com/MarcHvidkjaer/… points.
Cavaillé defines "fairness reasoning as the thought process through which individuals reason as if a third-party judge ruling on the fairness of a given situation" (p. 32)
She then discusses 3 questions
1⃣ When does fairness matter relative to self-interest?

Immigration is back on the German political agenda. Here are some of my favourite academic works on the political and economic dynamics of immigration in Germany.
1. The book by @dhdannychoi, @MathiasPoertner, and Nicholas Sambanis is mightily
press.princeton.edu/books/paperbac… impressive, both empirically and substantively. Key lesson: It's the norms, stupid. See also the @scopeconditions episode with @dhdannychoi.

2. This interview with Christian Dustmann (@RF_Berlin) is definitely also worth a read. scopeconditionspodcast.com/episodes/dongh…
rfberlin.com/interview-dust…

In light of the debate about the extent of inequality in the US, I thought it might be helpful to summarise how political scientists think about the demand for and supply of redistribution. The literature is vast -- so this 🧵is intended only a bare-bones introduction. /1 For some empirical background, see this thread by @MortenStostad (though not every graph is uncontested). In general, inequality has risen in most advanced industrialised democracies since roughly the 1980s -- though the extent is debated.
Should we ... /2

https://x.com/MortenStostad/status/1780873004224045442

Ich möchte diesen Tweet von @kuhnmo – dem ich en gros zustimme – als Anlass nehmen, um einen kurzen Überblick über relevante Arbeiten aus der Ökonomie und Politikwissenschaft zu diesem Thema zu geben. Die Literatur zeigt, dass mehr Gesetze dann gut sein können, wenn sie ... /1

https://twitter.com/kuhnmo/status/1823644859971858638

dabei helfen, die unvollständigen Verträge, die Gesetze darstellen, zu vervollständigen. Was damit gemeint ist, fasse ich auf dieser Folie (👇) zusammen.
Wenn durch weitere Gesetze bzw. Novellen bestehender Gesetze Doppeldeutigkeiten beseitigt werden, wird die durch unvolls. /2

Seems like a good time to re-read some polsci classics.
1. This @JPolEcon piece by Barry Weingast and William Marshall.
journals.uchicago.edu/doi/10.1086/26…

https://twitter.com/rSanti97/status/1824085193809965512

2. Diermeier, Daniel, and @rbmyerson. 1999. ‘Bicameralism and Its Consequences for the Internal Organization of Legislatures’. American Economic Review 89(5): 1182–96. aeaweb.org/articles?id=10…

The climate policy sequencing literature has spent much of the past five years or so rediscovering the insights by Dewatripont and @gerardrolanducb. This doesn’t devalue the contributions of the sequencing crowd, but it’s still extraordinary. A true modern classic.

https://twitter.com/edenhofer_jacob/status/1822973652779794460

Here are some references for those interested in the climate-related sequencing literature.
@jonasmeckling, Thomas Sterner, and @GernotWagner . 2017. ‘Policy Sequencing toward Decarbonization’. Nature Energy 2(12): 918–22. nature.com/articles/s4156…

Indeed - this seems to be an instance of autocratic learning. Fico and his cronies seem to have learned from Orbán that EU membership, including generous EU funds, are compatible with democratic backsliding and high FDI inflows, driven by multinationals. For more, see 👇

https://twitter.com/KimLaneLaw/status/1821244349331739087

Let me elaborate on 3 points.
1⃣How we got here and why this is an instance of autocratic diffusion

In the table below I summarise the literature on the strategies Orbán has employed to foster the consolidation of his regime. Many of these strategies are familiar to those