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While much of the academic literature on spinouts focuses on new ventures launched by the ex-employees of incumbent firms within the same industry, recent research shows that spinouts may also enter a focal industry from "knowledge contexts" outside of the incumbent industry. In particular, recent studies show that spinouts may enter from both upstream and downstream industries related to a focal industry along the value chain. Such spinouts have been called user-industry and supplier-industry spinouts. In this article, evidence from existing studies is collected to provide an indication of the relevance of such spinouts across various industries. This survey also includes an analysis of industry studies in which user- and supplier-industry spinouts may have been present but were not identified as such by scholars due to a difference in focus. The paper then considers the evidence accumulated to date in order to explore the industry contexts in which these two types of spinouts appear and to develop propositions concerning differences in the entry timing and product/market strategies of these startups. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

New entrants and incumbent firms rely on new knowledge to innovate and compete in the market. One way to acquire new knowledge is through the recruitment of new employees from competitors, a phenomenon popularly known as "poaching." Digital labor platforms are widely used by firms for this aim. We argue that job titles represent the first and most visible public source of information about knowledge workers and thus play a key role in navigating the vast spectrum of competencies available in digital platforms. Our analyses of the career trajectories of 11,644 knowledge workers in the United States between 2004 and 2014 suggest that increases in the ambiguity of a job title claimed by an employee are negatively associated with the likelihood of the employee being hired by a new employer. This finding appears stronger in the case of transitions to incumbent firms rather than new entrants. In the concluding section of the paper, we take stock of the various analyses presented and reflect on the potential role of job titles in the strategic management of human capital. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Studies have repeatedly documented the cost of ruling: governing parties generally suffer electoral defeats. We approach this empirical law of political science from the perspective of another empirical law: the incumbency bonus, the fact that incumbents get more media attention than the opposition. Our claim is that the bonus constitutes an electoral liability because it reflects the critical approach of media to government power. News featuring incumbents is therefore associated with a more negative tone than news featuring the opposition. This incumbency burden in turn affects government support negatively. Empirically, we draw on an extensive news corpus covering four European countries over two decades, combined with monthly poll data. Analyses show that the incumbency burden in political news is an empirical reality, and that variations in the burden contribute substantially to predictions of government support. Finally, the negative burden effect is stronger for single‐party cabinets, but stable throughout government tenure. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The consequences of economic globalization on electoral outcomes have recently become a prominent topic of research. We complement the emerging literature on this topic by studying whether changes in a subnational region's trade competitiveness affect the incumbent's vote share in that region. Using a novel dataset that relates subnational trade competitiveness to election results in 29 countries over a 20‐year period, we show that this is indeed the case. We also show that this effect is most pronounced for elections where the clarity of responsibility is high. Finally, we find mixed evidence for a moderating effect of incumbents' economic ideology as a moderator. These findings also contribute to the broader economic voting literature. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, strategic action field theory and public value theory are utilized to develop knowledge about conflicts over public value in public service ecosystems (PSEs), with disabled people's striving for independent living serving as an illustration. Five propositions are developed to show how conflicts in PSEs i) are centred around public value, ii) occur between incumbents and challengers, iii) implicate social skills, iv) are triggered by exogenous shocks, and v) eventually settle. This paper also responds to calls for research on theory building about PSEs by integrating public value with public service logic (PSL) and conceptualizing power in PSL. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper introduces the peak‐end rule to economic voting, finding that voters focus on peak and end economic growth when evaluating incumbents. Cross‐national data from 595 elections in 70 countries (1960–2020) shows that the average of the highest GDP growth rate during the term and the growth rate in the election year positively impacts incumbent vote share, with peak growth having a stronger effect. Instrumental variable analysis addresses endogeneity. Heterogeneity analysis reveals that less‐educated voters rely more on the peak‐end rule. The findings contribute to understanding voters' behavioral patterns and improving democratic accountability. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study investigates factors influencing the reelection prospects of Brazilian mayors. Analyzing a comprehensive data set spanning 5114 municipalities across four elections reveals that increases in investment and current expenditures before elections pay off at the polls. Moreover, higher average investment expenditures throughout the term enhance reelection chances. The results also indicate that when former term‐limited mayors run against the incumbent, reelection probability diminishes, particularly with higher average investment by the previous mayor. Finally, the level of literacy shapes voter attitudes towards opportunistic fiscal strategies: voters with limited literacy are inclined to reward increases in current expenditures, whereas more educated populations prefer increasing investment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Leaders are rewarded for delivering on policy pledges. Yet mobilisation strategies often depend on keeping issues and unsolved problems ‘alive’ for electoral purposes. What happens when these incentives collide has been subject to little attention. Drawing on the example of Brexit in the United Kingdom, this article examines the politics of issue-eclipsing pledges – scenarios in which policy pledges directly undercut mobilisation strategies. Brexit offers a good example of these tensions because the referendum vote called the bluff of decades-long Conservative efforts to instrumentalise EU membership for electoral gain. We show how issue-eclipsing pledges produce cyclical and path-dependent dynamics that tend towards radicalisation, as pledges of incumbent elites to guarantee policy delivery are vulnerable to the efforts of non-incumbents to re-interpret pledges and re-mobilise bases of electoral support. We illustrate these dynamics by narrating the interplay of reform pledges and re-mobilisation strategies encountered by successive UK governments since the 2016 referendum. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The role of large private sector firms in rerouting our food systems towards sustainability through climate-oriented innovation is highly contested. The contestation has resulted in a portrayal in academic literature of these incumbents as either the key driver of sustainability transitions or as fundamentally contradictory to addressing climate change in food systems. Controversies and tensions can reinforce stalemates, which hamper progress towards climate-oriented innovation. This study explores the utility of a paradox lens which shifts the research gaze to the emergence of unavoidable and persistent tensions in encounters of distinct logics and lines of action, and opens space to examine how these encounters can nevertheless be used productively and creatively in overcoming stalemates. Based on reflexive practice and interviews with professionals from seven purposefully selected incumbent private sector firms in the agri-food sector, we identify five paradoxes: the paradox of direction--between mitigation and adaptation; the paradox of justification--between exploration and exploitation; the paradox of internal alignment--between mainstreaming and specialization; the paradox of external alignment--between collaboration and competition; and the paradox of evidence--between accountability and learning. Our analysis of how agri-food firms navigate paradoxes focuses on considerations, tensions, and decisions in organizing climate-oriented innovation. In our discussion, we examine whether and how paradoxical thinking enables civil society practitioners to accelerate climate-oriented innovation in food systems through interactions and collaborations with the private sector. We conclude that a paradox lens affords researchers, practitioners, and policymakers to move beyond the binary view on the role of incumbents' climate-oriented innovation, and instead provides strategic insights for engaging incumbents and their inherent contradictions in transforming our food systems under a changing climate. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Previous research has shown that in congressional campaigns, incumbents behave very differently than their challengers, especially on social media. The research that currently exists regarding how candidates use social media during their elections, however, is limited by examining only general election tweets. In this manuscript, we update this work by examining the Twitter behavior of candidates throughout both their primary and general election. By examining the Twitter accounts of candidates in the congressional elections in the state of Virginia in 2022, we show that incumbents and challengers address different issues and use a different tone throughout the various stages of their campaigns. We also show that gender and partisanship have different impacts on the Twitter behavior of candidates in their primaries and general elections. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The increase in elite-level polarization and the changing partisan nature of elections to the U.S. House led scholars to posit that candidate characteristics are minor considerations in determining these election outcomes. However, it is not clear if these trends extend to the U.S. Senate or if candidate considerations have lost the relatively minor predictive power they exhibited during the 2010s, particularly as partisanship continued to rise as a predictor of election outcomes. Using historical data on elections to the U.S. House and Senate from 1900 to the recent 2022 midterm elections, we test whether the incumbency advantage and candidate quality differentials are still salient predictors of congressional elections. We find that the incumbency advantage largely disappeared as a salient component of election outcomes for both chambers as partisanship increasingly shapes these outcomes. By contrast, we find that candidate quality differentials, while waning, still can play a considerable role in shaping congressional election outcomes, particularly in the Senate. We conclude by showing that the declining emergence of quality candidates may have played a pivotal role during the 2022 election cycle by costing Republicans control of the U.S. Senate. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite the widespread implementation of civil–military integration (CMI) policies in various countries, there remains a significant debate surrounding their impact on innovation. Taking the set of the National Civil–Military Integration Strategy in China in 2015 as a quasi-natural experiment, this paper uses the Propensity Score Matching and Difference in Difference (PSM-DID) method to systematically examine the impact of CMI policy on firm innovation. The results demonstrate that the CMI policy has notably increased the intensity of firms' Research and Development (R&D) investment, but does not exert a significant influence on their innovation output and efficiency. Notably, the policy effect is primarily observed among incumbent military firms and large-scale firms. Moreover, the CMI policy exhibits a considerable effect on fostering new cooperation links, but does not yield a significant impact on deepening cooperation or promoting network agglomeration. The results imply that the policy has not yet deeply affected firms' innovation processes and patterns. These findings provide manifold implications for policy understanding and decision-making. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article presents an overview of the trajectories of lithography technology with a particular focus on technology lock-in. Based on the theory of technological evolution, the paper exploits the contribution of different knowledge sources. The results show that four phases of technological development characterise the evolution of lithography. Phases 2 and 3 from 2002 to 2011 are characterised by the persistence of particular standard technology and path dependence, suggesting the existence of technology lock-in. By highlighting the characteristics of technology lock-in and path dependence, we discuss the core technology gap between incumbents and latecomers. We find that the lithography industry was dominated by U.S., German, and Japanese core technologies in the early stages. However, knowledge diversity has gradually increased in recent years, with Korea and Taiwan contributing more to the current lithography technology, possibly breaking out path dependence. This study contributes to the existing literature on indicators and connotations of technological lock-in and path dependence. It provides insight into the window of opportunity for latecomers by identifying core lithography technologies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We study the effects of new shopping centre developments on the performance of 7041 retail and hospitality firms located in the suburbs of Stockholm, Gothenburg, and Malmö. In particular, we analyse to what extent these effects vary with respect to the distance to, and characteristics of, these newly established centres. Exploiting data covering a 17-year period (2000–2016) in a fixed-effects panel regression framework, we find that the establishment of new neighbourhood centres is associated with an average increase in revenues and employment for retail incumbents by + 1.80% and + 1.20%, respectively, for each 100-m reduction in distance to the respective centre. Similarly, the introduction of large regional centres is associated with an increase in the revenues and employment of hospitality firms by + 1.40% and + 1.20%, respectively, for every 100-m decrease in proximity to the new shopping centre. Retail firms are affected by regional centres only in terms of their revenues, which increase by + 0.70% for each 100-m decrease in distance. Our results indicate a diminishing impact of both regional and neighbourhood centres with increased distance, suggesting a broader geographical reach for the effects of regional centres. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We study how voters' preferences between a safe incumbent and a risky opponent change in the aftermath of a negative aggregate shock. With reference-dependent preferences, economically disappointed voters become risk lovers, and are hence attracted by the more risky candidate. Survey data from the German Socio-Economic Panel are consistent with our assumptions and theoretical predictions on voters' behaviour. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper addresses the role of incumbent firms in driving transitions that entail multiple sectors, conditioned by multiple regimes. We analyse the case 'HYBRIT', a radical innovation venture championed by three incumbents from the steel and energy regimes. We investigate what conditions the incumbents' agency and how they enacted their agency targeting restructuring of the regime elements – actors, institutions, and materiality. We find that eight endogenous and exogenous factors coincide and condition the incumbents' agency, from which they act in a novel direction of change. We contribute by showing how the collaboration within and across regimes enabled the accomplishment of actions that would have been challenging for individual incumbents to achieve alone. In this setting of scale-intensive industries, incumbents have characteristics that give them a significantly larger capacity to stimulate change than newcomers. The timing and combination of endogenous and exogenous factors, enabling incumbents to collectively drive a transition. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

AbstractThis study investigates the political economy of slums to understand the role of political competition, electoral power, and political alignment in service delivery. The paper examines whether political competition is likely to improve housing and basic services in slums. It is based on surveys of slum dwellers in 2012 and 2021–22 in Kolkata, India. The results suggest that slum improvement may lead to slum eviction in the future. The political alignment and their electoral power of elected members influence housing and basic services. Ward level high political competition and fragmentation will degrade service in a slum if the incumbent administration and politician fail to showcase their credibility through overall long-term improvement of the service across all the slums. Housing and some services were found to better in slums facing high political competition and fragmentation. For an inclusive slum improvement, government should plan with the community and engage the market rather than depend on market-led or unplanned government initiatives. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Illiberal regimes exhibit a political economy in which people's continued access to welfare protections depends on loyalty to incumbent politicians. Their politicians' invocation of xenophobic tropes suggests a clear boundary between loyal lives that matter to the regime and those that do not, yet some illiberal regimes have come to promote a materialist necropolitics, devaluing human life not only outside the imagined boundaries of the demos, but also within it. By adopting approaches that explicitly recognize the value of individual human life, democracies can successfully hold on to societal buy-in to democratic forms of government even amid the spread of illiberalism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Previous literature has shown that voters' biased beliefs regarding policy outcomes incentivize the selection of seemingly better, but socially worse, policies. It has also shown that voters' tendency to gauge an incumbent's competence by the present state of the economy (retrospective voting) could counteract biased beliefs. In this article, we argue that, when the advantageous consequences of a measure of policy only accrue with considerable lag (the down-up problem), retrospective voting instead amplifies the effects of biased beliefs. Still, we find that it may nevertheless be optimal for an incumbent to select good long-term policies if the incumbent is strongly motivated by the success of the chosen policies. Finally, we investigate the robustness of these conclusions by considering an incumbent bias, limited accountability, and the introduction of incentive and threshold contracts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Heuristics are used to compensate for the limitations of human cognitive capacities. However, little is known about how voters decide what cue to use when multiple cues are available. Exploiting the institutional features of elections for the nonpartisan position of superintendent of education in South Korea, we demonstrate that voters may choose an "ecologically rational" heuristic in a given context, taking into account the trade-off between the cognitive costs and the accuracy of inference associated with different cues. Our analysis shows that the three cues—ballot order, partisan color, and ideology —are commonly used in the absence of party labels, and their relative importance varies with the electoral context. In areas with large school-age populations and in races without an incumbent, contexts where the demand for information is conceivably high, the importance of the partisan color cue increases. We further present individual-level evidence suggesting that voters with higher levels of political sophistication and interest rely more on the ideology cue. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The agri-food tech sector is touted for its potential to disrupt established industry. Yet research reveals that incumbent agribusinesses are buying their way into the sector through startup investments and acquisitions. Drawing from extensive qualitative research, we show that incumbent influence also shapes agri-food tech in more subtle and pervasive ways. Startups rely on incumbents' social and material infrastructure to achieve the rapid growth demanded by their venture capital funders. Incumbent influence, we argue, is ambient, continuous, and frequently indirect. It saturates the spaces where malleable startups take shape, influencing even those with whom incumbents have no direct contact. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The predominant view in the reviewed literature on how the IOC dealt with the Spanish question during the Civil War is that a conservative, aristocratic IOC, ideologically close to the Spanish rebels, swiftly recognised the Francoist Spanish Olympic Committee (SOC) set up in November 1937 to the detriment of the Republican equivalent based in Barcelona; that is, the IOC took sides and somehow betrayed the legitimate Republican SOC. The IOC undeniably sympathised with the insurgents and empathised with the persecuted members of the Spanish Olympic movement. Yet at the same time, by officially recognising the SOC reconstituted in San Sebastián by the IOC's representatives in Spain, the IOC was fulfilling its duty in the legal sense, as according to their statutes, a national Olympic Committee was valid only if constituted or supported by the IOC delegates in the incumbent nation. Moreover, the Republican SOC was disbanded in July 1936. Both its president and its general secretary escaped abroad to avoid political persecution. The Spanish Olympic Movement, therefore, did not split into two branches during the Civil War; it simply disappeared from the Republican side, ignored by those in command, in contrast with the 'Olympic proactivism' of the Francoists. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

India and Japan are the only two non-dollar issuing countries that have signed dollar-denominated bilateral swap arrangements (BSAs) with foreign central banks. These arrangements indicate that India and Japan are committed to protect their BSA partners’ financial security even at the expense of their own dollar reserves. What has motivated the two countries to make such policy choices? This article argues that India and Japan’s dollar-denominated BSAs not only enhance financial security but also limit the recipients’ motivations to look for alternative settlement currencies for trade or investment. Even if the BSAs are not directly aimed to contain China, therefore, this effectively limits the potential expansion of the RMB’s influence and allows India and Japan to maintain their structural power by supporting regional dollar dominance. This article finds, therefore, that India and Japan’s dollar-denominated BSAs serve as a tool in the geoeconomic competition with a rising China in support of the incumbent regional powers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Integrating a contingency perspective with status-quo theory, this study investigates how to break the inertial use of incumbent payments to use mobile-payment services in South Korea. We surveyed 330 Korean respondents from March 2021 to May 2021, using a non-probability purposive and web-panel sampling method. Our hierarchical regression estimation results reveal that the status-quo inertia of incumbent transactional method negatively influences user behavior regarding mobile payment adoption. Moreover, from a contingency perspective, individual factors, including gender and age, and technology environmental factors, such as technology diversity, weaken the effect of status-quo inertia. Meanwhile, regulatory environmental factors, such as institutional inertia, strengthen status-quo inertia's effect on the intention to use mobile payment. More attention has been given to the questions of how and why leapfrogging from traditional transaction methods to mobile payment has not yet been replaced. In this context, our findings could provide answers for both academic and industry experts who have explored how to break inertia to adopt mobile payment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

AbstractNew political parties can sometimes achieve remarkable election results. The 2022 parliamentary elections in Slovenia highlight that while appeals centred around anti-corruption, competence and newness contributed to the Freedom Movement’s ability to win over one third of the vote, its victory owed much to tactical voting. Data from a specially commissioned survey conducted immediately after the election highlight that voters jumped on the new party bandwagon as the best vehicle to defeat the incumbent prime minister’s party. Voters’ tactical choices help explain not just the appeal of new parties and the continuation of the new party subsystem in Slovenia but also the wider instability of party politics in Central and Eastern Europe and beyond. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper explores the balance between interoperability and innovation within the context of the Digital Markets Act (DMA) and competition law. It discerns vertical interoperability obligations (Article 6(4) and 6(7)) from the horizontal interoperability obligation (Article 7) and highlights the following. First, the EU competition law is more experienced in dealing with vertical interoperability which favours innovation incentives for SMEs and new entrants over those for established incumbents (the incentive-balance test). This approach may encourage sustaining innovation at the downstream level by fostering competition and could eventually lead to disruptive innovations as new entrants gain experience and resources. Secondly, EU competition law is not well-versed in horizontal interoperability obligations. While Article 7 may boost innovation through increased competition, considerations related to privacy and standardization make its (potentially benign and adverse) effects on innovation uncertain. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Prabowo Subianto's victory in Indonesia's 2024 presidential elections was decisive, and it is widely accepted that incumbent President Joko Widodo's de facto endorsement of him played a significant role in this outcome. But the motivations of Widodo (commonly known as "Jokowi") for picking his former adversary as his heir, and the reasons for his determination to get Prabowo elected in a landslide, remain poorly understood. This article demonstrates that Jokowi selected Prabowo after other options had fallen through, and that he made his choice with full awareness of the risks and uncertainties involved. By implication, he also tolerated the danger a Prabowo presidency could pose to Indonesian democracy. Tempted by Prabowo's offer to make Jokowi's son, Gibran Rakabuming Raka, his vice-presidential candidate, Jokowi went all-in and mobilized state resources to secure their triumph. Based on interviews with key actors, this article delivers a detailed picture of the factors that made Prabowo president-and that gave Jokowi few guarantees of continued influence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Enacting stringent climate policy has proven politically challenging, not least because of concentrated losses in fossil fuel-producing communities. "Just transition" strategies have been proposed to mitigate this distributional challenge. Yet, little is known about how such strategies affect voting behavior. Using a mixed-methods approach, we exploit a local climate policy in Spain—a "Just Transition Agreement" (JTA) to phase out coalmining, support affected workers, and invest in affected municipalities—which was negotiated by the incumbent Socialist Party (PSOE) government with affected unions and businesses shortly before a national election. A difference-in-differences study shows that PSOE's vote share in coalmining municipalities increased at the 2019 election relative to similar municipalities, implying that the JTA was electorally successful. Further statistical tests and elite interviews suggest that this electoral boost was driven by unions' support of the JTA. Our findings have implications for how parties can craft popular climate policy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Prior research on catch-up strategies often provides insights from the technology-related perspective and ignores some non-technological factors. Through the multi-case study of China's smartphone industry, we develop a theoretical framework explaining how latecomer firms catch up through diverse strategic choices. We identify two strategic paths that latecomer firms follow to catch up and surpass the incumbents. One path is to explore new business opportunities via deep market insights and then combine them with building up product technologies. Another path is from product technology build-up to market insights exploration. Firms following this path usually start with building up essential technologies and act as fast followers for new market insights. Then, as they continue developing their technological strengths, these firms devote efforts to improving their ability to capture new market insights. This study challenges the 'first imitation, then innovation model' discussed in the literature and shows that latecomer firms can pursue cutting-edge innovations in their early activities. The research also shows that, unlike previous studies, the technology build-up is not the only path to help latecomers catch up and challenge incumbent leaders. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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We study how campaign funding influences winning chances of candidates using the US House of Representatives elections in all 50 states and Washington D.C. from 2000 to 2018. We find a positive and statistically significant relationship between campaign expenditure, campaign contributions and winning probability. However, incumbent spending is less effective than contender spending due to diminishing returns for the former. We also scrutinize the gap between campaign expenditure and contributions made by special interest groups. The winning probability of incumbent candidates does not necessarily decrease even if they spend less than the funds received for the election campaigns. Obtained results are robust to alternative econometric specifications, estimation methods, the correction of possible endogeneity of campaign funding and sample sizes. Our results, therefore, show the variation in the effectiveness of campaign spending contingent on incumbency status and imply the social welfare diminishing effects of spare funds received by incumbents from special interest groups. JEL Classification : D72, P16. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: The literature on celebrity politics often asserts that celebrity politicians are good at fundraising. They are wealthy people in wealthy social networks, and this should give them a fundraising advantage compared to their noncelebrity opponents. Yet, this hypothesis has never been tested. Method: Fundraising data from 1964 to 2022 was collected from multiple sources. Results: This study finds that celebrity candidates are typically not able to out‐fundraise their opponents. Yet they perform remarkably well despite this disadvantage. Conclusions: Celebrities tend to win elections when they raise more money than their opponents, run in open‐seat contests or local elections. They tend to lose elections when they lose the fundraising battle, challenge incumbents, or seek federal offices. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Policies that promote the common good may be politically infeasible if legislators representing 'losing' constituencies are punished for failing to promote their district's welfare. We investigate how varying the local and aggregate returns to a policy affects voter support for their incumbent. In our first study, we find that an incumbent who favours a welfare-enhancing policy enjoys a discontinuous jump in support when their district moves from losing to at least breaking even, while the additional incremental political returns for the district doing better than breaking even are modest. This feature of voter response, which we replicate, has significant implications for legislative politics generally and, in particular, how to construct politically feasible social welfare-enhancing policies. In a second study, we investigate the robustness of this finding in a competitive environment in which a challenger can call attention to a legislator's absolute and relative performance in delivering resources to their district. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the effect of state-level monitoring on municipal governance, focusing on outcomes in financial reporting quality, local corruption, political entrenchment, and municipal financial soundness. I exploit the staggered adoption of fiscal monitoring policies that entail a regular review of municipal financial reports for signs of fiscal distress. I find that introducing these monitoring policies is associated with an increase in the proxies for reporting quality, a decrease in the number of corruption convictions, and a reduction in re-election likelihood for incumbent politicians. Consistent with the purpose of the policies, my evidence shows that fiscal health ratios of municipalities improve after initiating state monitoring. Collectively, my results are consistent with state fiscal monitoring improving several important aspects of municipal governance. Data Availability: Data are available from the public sources cited in the text. JEL Classifications: G18; G38; H1; H11; H7; H83; M4. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In an industry with homogeneous goods, this note compares the standard incumbent's strategic capacity choice versus the incumbent's pre‐emptive payment (profit) transfer (PPT) strategy (i.e., pre‐entry acquisition). It is shown that via the transfer option, the incumbent holds its monopoly position "dissuading" the potential competitor entry for a range of fixed costs larger than under strategic capacity. Moreover, in that range, at least one firm is better off under PPT, while the other is indifferent between PPT and capacity choice. That is, in contestable markets, the incumbent can keep its dominant position in an easier way than standard models predict. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We note and correct a flaw in the analysis of Ferejohn (1986)'s seminal model of electoral accountability. In the original solution, it is supposedly optimal for the voter to impose a stationary path of performance targets on officeholders. We show that, in fact, stationary paths are suboptimal; the voter can do better by choosing a path of performance targets that become increasingly lenient over time, which extracts more effort from the politician earlier on. We explicitly solve for the optimal performance targets for a class of examples and discuss the substantive implications of our exercise. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The online-to-offline (O2O) business mode has on-demand features to offer consumers instant fulfillment from a local store upon their online order. The O2O mode has attracted many more consumers recently. Using empirical evidence from a leading O2O platform in China, our study focuses on the market entry issue in the O2O context. Upon the new entrant entering the market, existing listed sellers implement a higher overall promotion to their consumers by enlarging the direct promotion extent but reducing the other types of promotions, including coupon, bundle, quantity, and gift promotions. However, the O2O platforms reduce the promotions level to the consumer orders from the existing listed sellers. The platform's and existing listed sellers' promotions increase consumers' purchase frequency but lower their purchase amount per order. The extent of these impacts depends on the geographic location of the new entrant. Our findings provide guidelines for the O2O platforms and listed providers to implement appropriate promotion strategies to attract consumers when considering the impact of certain new providers entering the O2O market. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article we study whether an elected leader has incentives to withdraw from an ongoing military conflict before elections take place. Remaining active in the conflict increases the chances of a victory, which would boost the political incumbent's reelection probability. On the other hand, if the rival does not surrender, then the incumbent politician's reelection probability decreases because of the costly conflict citizens have to endure. We show that when the crisis is costly to voters, the more distant the elections are, the more likely the ruling government withdraws from an ongoing war early. For low-cost conflicts, politicians never give up the fighting. We also show that confrontations in the shadow of elections are socially inefficient (too long or too short) because of the inherent misalignment of preferences between citizens and politicians. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Many democracies around the world face the challenge of democratic recession and autocratization as democratically elected incumbents increasingly show autocratic tendencies. Existing research has mainly focused on the circumstances under which these autocratizing incumbents erode democracy and on the structural factors explaining the resilience of democratic institutions. Much less is known about the actors within those institutions and when they stand up against the autocratizing incumbent to defend democracy. In this article, we present a novel theoretical framework of democratic defence that focuses on the interaction between the incumbent, institutional elites, and citizens. Developing a two-level model of democratic defence, we show how the democratic defender's personal interests, repression by the incumbent, the perceived ambiguity of the autocratic action, and the perceived credibility of the democratic defender interact to affect the occurrence of democratic defence. The resulting framework can guide future research on the role of specific actors in defending democracy. We demonstrate the utility of our framework with illustrative case studies of (attempted) democratic defence in Senegal (2011–2012) and Poland (2017–2018). An actor-based approach of democratic defence is crucial to understand what actions domestic and international actors can take to prevent (further) democratic recession. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The COVID-19 pandemic has had tremendous impacts on political, economic and social developments across the globe. Although some studies show that voters tend to hold incumbent parties accountable for managing the pandemic, the results of others suggest that the rally-round-the-flag strategy might be at plan. We contend that voters tend to hold the incumbent party accountable, even during an exogenous shock, such as the COVID-19 pandemic. We hypothesize that more stringent government responses to tackle the pandemic and more COVID-19 casualties tend to decrease the electoral support for incumbent parties. Using original data from 67 national elections in 56 electoral democracies from mid-March 2020 to May 2022, the empirical results support our hypothesis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

It is expected that the number of elected female mayors in local government will increase globally, yet no major progress has been registered lately despite the increased focus on the topic. At the European level, no country exceeds 40% female mayors or other leaders of the municipal council (or equivalent), with the highest descriptive representation of 39.1% in Iceland. Following the 2020 elections in Romania, only around 5% of mayors were female with a strong over-representation of male mayors. The current study aims to analyze the male–female distribution of mayors, the degree of re-election, the relationship between the number of candidates and re-election of incumbents, and how these factors impact female political representation at the local level in Romania. Thus, we argue that a high degree of re-election of incumbents may be a barrier to women's access to the position of mayor. In addition, it is important to determine whether female incumbents are as successful as their male counterparts in being re-elected. While there is an extensive body of literature on incumbency that covers a range of topics, there is a gap in the literature regarding the proposed subject. The present research aims to fill the gap and contribute to a better understanding of the political representation of women in Eastern Europe. We utilized a dataset of Romanian elections from 2008 to 2020 to test our hypotheses. Our findings indicate that during the studied period, more than 95% of mayors were male, the re-election was a frequent occurrence in Romania with a percentage ranging from 70.82% (2008–2012) to 72% (2012–2016 and 2016–2020), and female incumbents were just as likely to be re-elected as their male counterparts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explains the survival of the AKP in Turkey's late stage of autocratization (2017-present) through its strategy of shifting the primary drivers of competition from individual parties to pre-electoral alliances. Confronted with a decline in popular support in 2015 June elections, the article argues that the AKP created uneven patterns of competition via the system of pre-electoral alliances so that it could institutionalize a 'Rikerian offense' on the salient Turkish-Kurdish cleavage and establish an authoritarian power-sharing mechanism with its former challenger, the Turkish nationalist MHP. To illustrate the shift toward uneven patterns of electoral competition via such incumbent strategies, the article conducts a two-part analysis: It first examines the landscape of competition among parties (2002-2015) and second, evaluates competition among both parties and alliances (2018-2023) at the national and district levels in Turkey. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Turkish economy presented a complicated picture ahead of the 2023 election, with significant currency depreciation and soaring inflation yet robust growth and stable employment levels. How did voters' economic perceptions shape election results in such a context? Drawing on Turkish Election Study surveys, this study reaches two main conclusions. First, while the average evaluation of the economy in the electorate was quite poor, there is a sharp divergence across incumbent supporters and others: The incumbent Justice and Development Party (Adalet ve Kalkınma Partisi – AKP) supporters' evaluations have changed little since the previous election in 2018, yet those of other voters have deteriorated significantly. Second, the opposition seems to have failed in convincing large parts of the electorate that they would manage the economy better than Erdoğan. Overall, economic voting appears to have worked as expected, and the unwavering economic evaluations of likely AKP voters and the perceived incompetence of the opposition seem to have helped Erdoğan to win another term. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article analyses the organisational and individual drivers and barriers to the implementation of circular business models (CBM) by incumbents and start-ups in the workwear industry. It is based on a qualitative study of 15 organisations in the Swedish workwear industry. Most incumbents are found to have either long-life models with hybrid elements, such as repair, or access models, while circular start-ups have a larger variety of CBMs, although the most common is gap exploiter. Internal organisational barriers mostly differ between the two groups; however, external organisational barriers are more significant and common, such as the low price of new workwear, a lack of demand and a lack of supporting policies, for example, public procurement. Several organisational drivers are identified, such as opportunities to deliver customer value, textile and digital innovations and environmental concerns. Drivers and barriers are influenced by both type of CBM and type of company. Individual drivers and barriers, which are often overlooked in literature, are found to be important to CBM implementation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Danish Postal incumbent's, Post Danmark, struggle to acclimatize to a market without special rights has yielded epic competition cases such as Post Danmark I and Post Danmark II. While it is tempting to label Post Danmark as a serial infringer, it is fundamentally a company that was slow in accepting that letter mail presented a dying business case and viewed other services as being merely and capable of being priced accordingly. The extreme fall in letter volumes has made this position untenable, explaining the company's financial collapse and persistent clashes with competition law. Studies of Post Danmark's 'troublesome' relationship with competition law offer insights into the treatment of multi-product companies under competition law the need to police their allocation of costs and the consequences of failing in this. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As incumbents strive to collaborate with start-ups in the pursuit of cutting-edge digital solutions, the complexities posed by disparate partners and their innovative endeavours often lead to intricate tensions. Our research underscores the critical role of innovation intermediaries in enabling a successful digital co-creation, yet a deeper understanding of this novel and evolving context is required. Through a comprehensive study of two innovation intermediaries, five incumbent companies, and eleven start-ups, we shed light on how intermediaries can effectively mitigate the hard-to-manage tensions that emerge. Our analysis uncovers three primary tensions: incompatible digital co-creation cultures, divergent digital innovation operations, and misaligned technical capabilities. We further propose a four-phase process for innovation intermediation, including the establishment of digital co-creation foundations, catalysing digital innovation projects, orchestrating the co-creation process, and scaling the resulting outcomes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]