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As Mancur Olson pointed out in his 1965 book, The Logic of Collective Action: Public Goods and the Theory of Groups, one of the great puzzles of social dynamics is how people overcome collective action problems and organize to pursue common goals. What conditions facilitate and which hinder the emergence of social movements, what allows social movements to persist over time, and what accounts for their impact on social and political dynamics are some of the key questions that scholars have explored over the last few decades. Keywords: collective behavior; political sociology; conflict; Eastern Europe; Middle and Near East

This dissertation consists of three chapters which relate to public officials’ capacity and incentives to improve public services.Chapter 1 examines a setting in which government seeks to augment its capacity by enlisting the private sector. It uses a randomized controlled trial (RCT) to measure the effect of a Liberian school reform which outsourced management of public primary schools to private providers. It finds that outsourced public schools saw learning gains of 0.18 standard deviations in both English and mathematics on average, but the effects varied a lot by private provider.Chapter 2 turns to the question of whether improved public services yield electoral rewards for the officials responsible. It leverages the random variation in learning gains provided by Chapter 1’s randomized school reform in Liberia. On average, voters near treated schools were 3 percentage points less likely to vote for the incumbent party’s candidate than those near control schools. This negative average electoral effect, however, masks important heterogeneity. The negative electoral impact of the reform was concentrated in places where the reform reduced children’s learning. In places where the reform significantly improved test scores, it also produced electoral rewards.Chapter 3 also seeks to measure the electoral gains to public good provision, focusing on the construction of the Interstate Highway System (IHS) in the United States of America. It uses a shift-share estimator to isolate exogenous variation in the timing of IHS construction by county. It finds that a mile of IHS construction in an election year increases county-level vote share for the incumbent governor’s party by 0.6-2.2 percentage points during the period 1950-1972.These essays provide new empirical evidence of democratic accountability for public service provision, even as they illuminate directions for future research into the conditions in which democratic accountability binds.

Voting is considered an inherent right of citizenship in modern democracies, an idea originating in Enlightenment ideology but not automatically achieved in practice. In the past, proposals to expand the franchise to include nonproperty-holding white men were quite controversial, so the concept of suffrage for women and people of color was an even more radical suggestion given their putative lack of rational capacities. Dominant gender roles confined women to the domestic sphere while husbands or other male kinfolk represented their political interests, and challenging these ideas was difficult. Even when women gained voting rights, these were frequently partial (allowing participation in some elections but not others), restricted by marital status, education, property qualifications, and race, and did not automatically grant other civil rights. Winning full suffrage required hard work by determined women—it was never a “gift”—and success was the result of multiple factors. These include: (1) educational advances; (2) the growing presence of women in the workforce and trade unions; (3) the increasing political sophistication and mobilization of women in clubs and reform organizations; (4) affiliations between suffragists and progressive reform movements; (5) fluid political environments in territories, provinces, and colonies; (6) the adoption of direct action techniques; and (7) transnational activism, although these relationships could be problematic. Keywords: citizenship; democracy; feminism; women; Americas; Eastern Asia; Europe

The nuclear freeze movement was an American campaign against nuclear weapons based around an ostensibly moderate demand with radical implications: a negotiated and bilateral end to the testing, production, and deployment of nuclear weapons. Neither the freeze idea, nor opposition to the arms race more generally, was new in 1980 when the freeze emerged, amid resurgent allied antinuclear weapons movements across Western Europe. Astute activist opportunism, in conjunction with a series of more aggressive foreign policies from the US government, aligned to produce unusually heightened attention to national security policy in general, and nuclear weapons in particular. In this regard, the nuclear freeze movement loudly echoed previous periods of mobilization and concern, including antinuclear campaigns following the first use of weapons at Hiroshima and Nagasaki (1945–1947), surrounding the long debate about a ban on testing (1954–1963), and in opposition to the deployment of antiballistic missile systems in the US (1968–1973). Although some activists are constantly trying to draw public attention to the costs and dangers of nuclear weapons, they only succeed episodically. The cyclic mobilization against nuclear weapons reflects more vigorous institutional debates about nuclear weapons strategy. Keywords: political sociology; movements; peace; United States of America

After the last EU enlargement, state borders have been partially replaced by internal border controls of state bureaucracies to regulate westward migration. Existing ideas of threat associated with non-EU migrants are accompanied by a 'new menace' referring to criminal ’insiders’ who might profit from the freedom of mobility within the EU. Accordingly, social security and immigration policies are increasingly intertwined within surveillance practices of member states, blurring the line between welfare and crime control measures. Therefore, new geopolitical measures and local risk management strategies are introduced for tracing and screening mobile groups. These monitoring practices, such as spidergrams, are taking new forms in technocratic bureaucracies and changing the means of interaction between newcomers and administrative bodies in host societies. In order to understand how these welfare service based financial monitoring structures facilitate spatial population control, we need to understand how selective incentives are invented in order to make undesired groups voluntarily leave the executive territory of host societies. This targeted social sorting is a dynamic process, shaped by narratives of politicians, academics and the civil society, in which economic and ethnic connotations of migrants are regularly intertwined. As full EU citizens, large Roma populations now enjoy freedom of movement throughout Europe. The long-standing prejudiced perception of Roma as profiteers living on welfare, involved in illegal activities and unwilling to integrate has become a basis for Western concerns about a “threatening flood” of westward-bound benefit tourists. This has been used to justify new control measures in several Western member states. Based on empirical case studies, this study will analyse these asymmetries of surveillance within the virtual walls of Fortress Europe, and uncover coping of Central European Roma migrants in daily bureaucratic welfare procedures in London.

The thesis consists of three self-contained essays. Local Banking and Historical Innovation: the Effect of Swedish Savings Banks How does access to credit affect innovation at the early stages of development? This essay uses digitized records from the Swedish savings banks movement, in combination with novel data on the universe of historical patenting, to study how savings banks affected innovation in Sweden between 1900 and 1949, a period when the country was still a developing economy. The empirical strategy exploits local variation in the openings and closings of the savings banks. Municipalities with bank presence experienced increased innovation, measured by more patents from innovators seated in the municipality. In particular, the head offices of the banks impacted innovation, as they were the executive unit and administered lending. Patents from industries more dependent on financing from external sources are driving the effect, along with places with a relatively high population, a developed industry, and a previous history of innovation. The results emphasize the importance of financial institutions with strong local ties and the ability to encourage and redirect savings to promote innovation in developing economies. The Effects of Local Banking: Historical Evidence from the Swedish Savings Bank Movement What is the long-term effect of local banking on industrial growth and economic progress in a developing economy? We shed light on this question using rich data covering the staggered rollout of the Swedish savings bank movement and information on industrial development, population statistics, and mortality in 2400 Swedish municipalities during the first half of the 20th century. The first part of the empirical analysis shows that the presence of a savings bank substantially affected industry structure and industry growth by increasing the number of firms, the degree of mechanization, and industry sales value. More advanced industries, reliant on external financing, experienced the most substantial impact. The second part shows that the savings banks also impacted general economic development, captured by population growth and reduced infant and child mortality. The study provides novel insights into the merits of local banking systems in the early stages of economic development. Lethal Police Violence and the Public Perception of the Police: Evidence from US Counties The public perception of the police is significant for the validity of the democratic system. Compared to white citizens, Afro-Americans have low confidence in the police. They are also more likely to fall victim to police violence with lethal outcomes. Therefore, ethnicity and group identity may influence how the public views police violence and, by extension, how police violence affects public perceptions. This essay explores this relationship using the timing of an individual-level survey and the occurrence of local police killings. Survey participants interviewed after a police killing of a black victim obtained worse attitudes toward the police. Mainly black participants and those who are young and have a high income or education level induce the effect. In contrast, events with non-black victims elevate the status of the police among non-black respondents and those with a lower level of education. The results are consistent with group identity theory and provide insight into how controversial events affect confidence in a political institution.

As has been well documented in the social movement literature, movements can take multiple forms. Accordingly, analyses of coordinated challenge tend to array social movements along a spectrum of variable dimensions. Snow and Soule 2010 suggest that social movements can be relegated to one of two general types of challenge, such that the challenge is either direct (including various forms of specifically targeted protest) or indirect (including movements that exit from or divest in authority). Indirect challenges—the less often examined form of collective action—relate to movements that are covert or ambiguous with respect to the action they employ; that may endeavor to actualize broad-based change through individual conversion; and finally, that bypass authority structures by literally “exiting” or withdrawing from undesirable systems or relations (Snow & Soule 2010). Keywords: political sociology; emigration; immigration; movements; revolution; sectarianism; sects; terrorism; utopianism

Post-apartheid South Africa pursued a pro-multilateral stance in world – regarding multilateral institutions as crucial instruments for reinforcing its new-found image as a champion for southern African and African causes. Challenging the hegemony and dominance of western powers in particular, powerful countries in general, was at the heart of South Africa’s multilateral strategies. Central to all multilateral engagements was respect for international law and the centrality of the United Nations (UN), stressing the promotion of human rights, debt relief, peace and stability, an equitable global trading system and sustainable development. Also of priority was reform of the UN and institutions of global governance, including the World Bank and International Monetary Fund., A África do Sul pós-Apartheid seguiu uma postura pró-multilateral no mundo - considerando instituições multilaterais como instrumentos cruciais para reforçar sua recém-descoberta imagem de defensora das causas africanas e do sul da África. Desafiar a hegemonia e a dominação das potências ocidentais em particular, os países poderosos em geral, estava no cerne das estratégias multilaterais da África do Sul. Primordial para todos os compromissos multilaterais estava o respeito ao direito internacional e a centralidade das Nações Unidas (ONU), enfatizando a promoção dos direitos humanos, o alívio da dívida externa, paz e estabilidade, um sistema global de comércio equitativo e o desenvolvimento sustentável. Também como prioridade estava a reforma da ONU e as instituições de governança global, incluindo o Banco Mundial e o Fundo Monetário Internacional (FMI).

Esta tese é composta por três ensaios relacionados à Economia Política. Os dois primeiros investigam o movimento migratório do início do século XXI para o Brasil, sua relação com os resultados eleitorais e compartilham do mesmo banco de dados. O terceiro examina o impacto sociopolítico de um declínio econômico na região cacaueira no estado da Bahia, Brasil. O primeiro capítulo analisa o impacto da imigração nas eleições presidenciais no Brasil entre 2006 e 2018. Para tanto, utilizo duas variáveis instrumentais: (i) com base na distância geográfica e (ii) no shift-share. Os resultados sugerem que se um município recebe a média da proporção dos imigrantes na população local, a parcela de votos do PT diminui em 5,25 pontos percentuais (p.p.). Para o efeito heterogêneo, o impacto é mais forte para os municípios que (i) abrigam uma parcela menor de imigrantes, (ii) têm uma população menor, (iii) têm uma taxa de desemprego mais alta e (iv) têm menor qualidade educacional. Maior participação de imigrantes aumenta a participação de votos do PT na região Sul do Brasil. Além disso, restringindo as estimativas para diferentes ciclos eleitorais, o impacto passa a ser positivo no ciclo 2007-2010 e negativo no restante. A análise do mecanismo sugere que o impacto eleitoral se dá potencialmente pelo aumento da participação de estudantes estrangeiros, o que pode ser uma proxy de competição por bens públicos. Além disso, os resultados mostram que os imigrantes reduzem os homicídios, aumentam o gasto per capita do município e sua receita líquida. O segundo capítulo examina se os imigrantes tomam decisões sobre para onde ir dentro de um país com base nos resultados das eleições. Utilizo os resultados das eleições para prefeito no Brasil de 2004 e 2008 sobre o número de pedidos de visto de longa duração em nível municipal. As variáveis políticas são três: partidos políticos de esquerda e centro, PT e PSDB. A investigação emprega a abordagem da variável instrumental para verificar o efeito causal do fenômeno. As estimativas sugerem que 1 p.p. de aumento da parcela de votos dos partidos de esquerda e centro está correlacionado com o aumento da imigração em 0,7 por município. Os resultados, no entanto, não devem ser interpretados como causais, uma vez que as verificações de robustez sugerem que os pressupostos das variáveis instrumentais não são satisfeitos. O terceiro capítulo avalia as consequências eleitorais do declínio econômico da região cacaueira mais produtiva do Brasil após a infecção pela vassoura-de-bruxa. Aplico duas abordagens de pesquisa, a saber, a diferença em diferenças e a variável instrumental. Encontro evidências de que os eleitores da área afetada puniram o candidato presidencial do titular no curto prazo, aumentando a parcela de votos do Partido dos Trabalhadores. Com relação à eleição para governador, os resultados sugerem o mesmo movimento: os eleitores puniram persistentemente o partido do titular ao longo de todo o período analisado, atribuindo maior parcela de votos ao Partido da Frente Liberal. Os eleitores são mais receptivos entre os municípios com maior PIB per capita, maior produção de cacau e maior população rural. A análise do mecanismo revela que o fenômeno elevou a taxa de desemprego, a pobreza e a desigualdade This thesis is composed of three essays related to Political Economy. The first two investigate the migratory movement of the beginning of the 21st century to Brazil, its relationship with electoral results, and they share the same database. The third examines the sociopolitical impact of an economic decline in the cacao region in the state of Bahia, Brazil. The first chapter analyzes the impact of the international immigration on the presidential elections in Brazil between 2006 and 2018. For this purpose, it uses two instrumental variables: (i) based on the geographical distance, and (ii) the shift-share. The results suggest that if a municipality hosts the mean of the immigrant share of the local population, the PT’s vote share reduces by 5.25 percentage points (p.p.). For the heterogeneous effect, I find that the impact is stronger for municipalities that (i) host a lower share of immigrants, (ii) have a lower population, (iii) have a higher unemployment rate, and (iv) hold a lower educational quality. Higher immigrant share increases the PT’s vote share in the Brazilian South region. Besides, restricting the estimations for different election cycles, the impact becomes then positive in the 2006–2010 cycle and negative for the remainder. The mechanism analysis suggests that the electoral impact potentially run through the increase of foreign student share in the educational system, which may be a proxy of competition for public goods. Moreover, I find that immigrants reduce homicide, increase municipality spending per capita, and its net revenues. The second chapter examines whether immigrants make decisions about where to go within a country based on the election outcomes. I use the results of the Brazilian mayoral elections of 2004 and 2008 on the number of long-term visa requests at the municipality level. The political variables are three: left and center political parties, PT, and PSDB. The investigation employs the instrumental variable approach to verify he causal effect of the phenomenon. The estimates suggest that a 1 p.p. increase of the left and center parties’ vote share is correlated with the raise of immigration by 0.7 per municipality. The results, though, should not be interpreted as causal, since the robustness checks suggest that the the instrumental variable assumptions are not satisfied. The third chapter assesses the electoral consequences of the economic decline of Brazil’s most productive cocoa region after infection with the witches’ broom disease. I run tworesearch designs, namely, the difference in differences and the instrumental variable. I find evidence that the voters in the affected area punished the incumbent’s presidential candidate in the short-run, by increasing the Workers’ Party vote share. With respect to the gubernatorial election, the results suggest the same movement: the voters punished the incumbent’s party persistently throughout the entire period analyzed by giving a higher share of votes to the Liberal Front Party. Voters are more responsive among the municipalities with the highest GDP per capita, highest cocoa production, and highest rural population. The mechanism analysis reveal that the phenomenon raised the unemployment rate, the poverty, and the inequality.

Caste has been in existence for centuries in South Asia, though its forms and contents vary across the region. Caste is a mode of power, a weapon of action and one of the criteria of making people’s collective identity within groups. I argue, in this paper, that caste is a product of complex histories and exists today in multiple forms. There has been a major change from treating caste as a rigid ritual stratum to caste as “identity to negotiate power and resources.” It operates as a symbol of collective identity and a basis for collective bargaining of limited resources and representation in various organizations and administrative institutions. The caste system eroded at the ritual level, but emerged at the political and economic levels in India and Nepal.

Development economics must be rethought. Not only has it hindered the liberation of the Global South, it has also deflected attention from the most critical questions of underdevelopment. Much economics inspires dirty growth, while Western political economy risks defending recolonisation under the guise of protecting nature in the Global South. Most alternative development theorising is similarly Western-centric. Georgist political economy is a possible exception. The systems of land economics Georgist political economy offers is functional and adaptable, often reflecting and supporting ancient knowledge of the earth, facilitating the decolonisation of society, economy, and ecology. The challenge is how to bring about this transformation when many interests potentially run counter to this non-Western alternative development economics. Development economics must be rethought. Not only has it hindered the liberation of the Global South, it has also deflected attention from the most critical questions of underdevelopment. Much economics inspires dirty growth, while Western political economy risks defending recolonisation under the guise of protecting nature in the Global South. Most alternative development theorising is similarly Western-centric. Georgist political economy is a possible exception. The systems of land economics Georgist political economy offers is functional and adaptable, often reflecting and supporting ancient knowledge of the earth, facilitating the decolonisation of society, economy, and ecology. The challenge is how to bring about this transformation when many interests potentially run counter to this non-Western alternative development economics.

Existing theories of democratic reversals emphasize that elites mount actions like coups when democracy is particularly threatening to their interests. However, existing theory has been largely silent on the role of elite social networks, which interact with economic incentives and may facilitate antidemocratic collective action. We develop a model where coups generate rents for elites and show that the effort an elite puts into a coup is increasing in their network centrality. We empirically explore the model using an original dataset of Haitian elite networks that we linked to firm-level data. We show that central families were more likely to be accused of participating in the 1991 coup against the democratic Aristide government. We then find that the retail prices of staple goods that are imported by such elites differentially increase during subsequent periods of nondemocracy. Our results suggest that elite social structure is an important factor in democratic reversals.

Does the involvement of foreign third parties in the management of a country in the wake of a civil war have positive or negative economic effects? The approaches used to address this quest...

The relationship between democracy and inequality and the role of democratic participation in fostering redistribution has been a critical question of interest to economists over time. My dissertation focuses on a key aspect of democratic participation - the ability of citizens to form political parties and contest elections - and empirically identifies the relationship between the distribution of political power, and the distribution of public resources. To this effect, I study the economic impacts emanating from the political mobilization of historically underprivileged and socio-economically disadvantaged citizen groups in India - the low caste and indigenous communities - which has occurred over the past three decades. While comprising over half the nation's population, citizens from these groups have faced institutionalized discrimination through the hierarchical caste system, severely restricting their access to education, public institutions and basic services. This process of political mobilization by low caste citizens resulted in the formation of powerful caste-based political parties which contested elections in an attempt to capture political power through the democratic process, and subsequently, use their nascent state power to redirect public resources to their communities. The core chapters of this dissertation empirically document the economic and social impacts emanating from this change in the distribution of political power through democratic processes, resulting in the political empowerment of marginalized citizen groups. The first chapter of my dissertation identifies the economic impacts of this process of political mobilization. Using the outcome of close elections between parties exclusively representing low caste interests and other mainstream parties as the source of exogenous variation, the paper shows that the marginal legislator from low caste parties increases the share of state expenditures allocated towards targeted and untargeted welfare schemes benefitting low caste citizens by 2 and 1 percent. In a departure from existing studies in the literature which have exploited the system of mandated representation of low caste politicians in India, my paper shows that the mandated representation of low caste politicians has no impact on welfare transfers for low caste citizens when unaccompanied by a strong ex-ante party commitment in favour of low caste welfare. This paper also highlights the trade-offs emanating from the redistributive spending choices of fiscally constrained legislators by identifying the negative impact of the marginal legislator from low caste parties on public investments in road construction and electricity generation. Using tests of heterogeneity, the paper argues that the redistributive spending preferences of legislators from low caste parties is one of the mechanisms explaining the negative causal impact between the electoral success of these parties and regional inflows of private investment. Low caste citizens in India have often been victims of targeted violence by social elites in an attempt to preserve the existing social hierarchy and consolidate economic rents. This forms the motivation for the second chapter of my dissertation, identifying the causal impact of low caste parties on the incidence of targeted crimes against low caste citizens. The empirical results from this paper show that the marginal legislator from low caste parties reduces the incidence of violent crimes against low caste citizens by 4-14 percent and contribute significantly to the protection of civil rights. The paper also identifies the mechanisms explaining the reduced form impact - first, through higher rates of arrest, prosecution and diligence with which law enforcement agencies pursue such cases of targeted violence; second, through changes in the attitudes of low-caste citizens towards state institutions which affect the enforcement of criminal law.Finally, the third chapter of my dissertation focuses on a major question of interest in the field of development economics and economic growth - the role of agricultural growth in the process of structural transformation. Using data from a panel of 273 Indian districts over a twenty-five year period and rainfall shocks as an instrument for agricultural growth, I present causal evidence that rainfall-induced agricultural growth has a significant impact on the structural transformation process by increasing the share of rural workers employed in the manufacturing sector. My results show that the non-farm employment gains from higher agricultural growth is concentrated amongst unskilled workers with relatively low levels of education, signalling the poverty alleviating aspect of agricultural growth. By studying the differential impact of agricultural productivity across regions with initially low levels of agricultural productivity and urbanization, I also document the potential of agricultural growth to facilitate convergence across regions in terms of rural employment diversification.

This piece of paper analyzes post-1991 Ethio-China political and economic relations by raising the following questions: What is the nature of the bilateral political and economic relations? What are the factors which enhanced the bilateral political and economic relations between Ethiopia and China? What are the arguments raised by different scholars about Ethiopia and China relations? There are a number of factors that contributed to the growth of bilateral relations. Ethiopia needs China for economic assistance; as an alternative source to the west and China’s development is generally considered as a role model for Ethiopia to follow. China also supports Ethiopia on different international issues. On the part of China, there are also several factors egging China to look towards Ethiopia especially in terms of Ethiopia’s strategic importance and market potential. Ethiopia could be a commercial launch pad for Chinese companies and China is also getting diplomatic support from Ethiopia for its policy on Taiwan among others. There are also common factors both from Ethiopia and China’s side which enhanced the bilateral relations. However, there are many arguments raised following Chinese deep engagement to Ethiopia. Among others on the economic front the bilateral relations are imbalanced; dumping of low price export; underbidding local companies and ideological differences among others.Generally, the paper agues the ethio-Chinese relations motivated by political and economic factors.

The study of warfare is one of the oldest and most important dynamics of interest for students of politics. This area of research is predominantly − but not exclusively − undertaken within the sub-field of international relations (IR). IR theorists argue that war is the contingent outcome of the interaction among variables operating at three “levels of analysis”: the international level, the domestic level, and the individual level. The international level explores variables that operate exclusively “above” states such as anarchy and the distribution of power. The domestic level explores variables that operate exclusively within states, such as regime type and bureaucratic design. The individual level explores the ways in which individual psychology (i.e. beliefs, culture, personality) contributes to the outbreak of war. We also offer a discussion of new puzzles and challenges in the study of warfare, such as the decline of war hypothesis and the growing prevalence of civil war, insurgency and non-state violence.

Atenco represents one of the most important contemporary social movements in Mexico, not only because of its historical importance in defense of the collective ownership of the land, but because of the actions that followed this territorial defense. These included conflict with the state, including state repression, growing alliances at regional, national, and international levels, and variation in the structure of political opportunities. The Atenco farmers are defined as collective actors, because of the social and historical particularity of their community, with high social density and communitarian relations in which collective identity is built up, with the land as the axis of the farmers' identity. Keywords: collective behavior, conflict, protests

Some studies find that democratic states are more amenable to third party forms of conflict management, while other studies indicate that democracies are able to resolve contentious issues on their own through bilateral negotiations. Using data from the Issue Correlates of War (ICOW) Project, the authors investigate peaceful and militarized conflict management strategies that democratic states employ to resolve contentious issues. Theoretically, the authors focus on how militarized conflict history, relative capabilities, and issue salience influence the tools of conflict management that democratic states employ. Empirical analyses suggest that democratic dyads employ bilateral negotiations more often to resolve contentious issues when the issue has been militarized previously, when the issue is more salient, and when they are facing an equal adversary. Democratic dyads seek out non-binding third party settlement more frequently in situations of power preponderance than non-democratic dyads, although binding forms of third party settlement occur most often in relatively equal democratic dyads. Pairs of democracies are more likely to employ militarized conflict management strategies when they have resorted to force over the issue previously, when the issue is highly salient, and when they are evenly matched.

What do we learn about politics between Russia’s federal center and its regions from examining governors’ tenures during the period of Kremlin control? We use survival analysis of data from all of Russia’s regions from 2005-2012 to estimate the factors influencing when a governor is replaced, including the region’s size and ethnic composition, the governor’s age, and aspects of the governor’s administrative and political performance. We find that the Kremlin targeted its replacements on governors who could not deliver pro-Kremlin votes in federal elections. Yet this tool of political control over the regional leaderships did not prevent the weak showing of the Kremlin’s party in the 2011 legislative election or the mediocre showing of Putin in the 2012 presidential election. The appointment era now looks more like a failed experiment than an inexorable tightening of authoritarian control over the country.

The aim of this paper is to contribute to the debate on constitutional rules and their economic effects by extending focus to the de jure–de facto constitutional gap. First, evidence is provided that size of this gap matters as higher gaps lower the effectiveness of the constitutional commitment mechanism. Second, several explanations of this gap are identified, in particular relating to the democratization process, political conflict, age and comprehensiveness of the constitution. The conclusions are based on an empirical study for the unique setting of the post‐socialist countries of Europe and Asia, which all enacted new constitutional frameworks after 1989 and it is shown that in some of these countries constitutions acted as blueprints.

The COVID-19 outbreak is not the first nor last series of recent real or potential catastrophes - be they natural disasters, terrorist attacks or pandemics - that have taken by surprise governments, globalised firms and the citizenry. 1Yet, due to its near-unprecedented impact on the highly interconnected but vulnerable systems that define the modern world, this pandemic has been testing our ability to govern risk more than any other crisis before. The last time the world responded to a global emerging disease epidemic of the scale of the current novel coronavirus without having access to vaccines was the 1918-1919 H1N1 influenza pandemic. 2Ironically, the measures mobilised today to counter COVID-19 - the so-called “non-pharmaceutical interventions” 3- are essentially the same as those deployed a century ago, and that despite significant social, technological as well as governance differences between 1918 and today. 4