Date: 2018
Type: Article
Crises, investments, and political institutions
Journal of theoretical politics, 2018, Vol. 30, No. 4, pp. 410-430
ANDERSSON, Per F., LINDVALL, Johannes, Crises, investments, and political institutions, Journal of theoretical politics, 2018, Vol. 30, No. 4, pp. 410-430
- https://hdl.handle.net/1814/59955
Retrieved from Cadmus, EUI Research Repository
On the basis of a game-theoretic model, this paper argues that governments typically manage crises more effectively in systems where political power is concentrated in a single party, but they are more likely to make investments in future welfare in systems where political power is shared among several parties. The paper makes two contributions. First of all, it shows that both crisis-management failures and investment failures can be explained by a common mechanism: an inter-temporal commitment problem that arises from the inability of political agents to commit to future policy choices. Second, it shows that power-sharing institutions are often associated with more effective government than power-concentration institutions, in contrast to much of the normative literature in comparative politics, in which power-sharing institutions are often justified on other grounds, such as representativeness, responsiveness, or social cohesion. In a world where crises dominate, power-concentration institutions typically perform better in a world where investment problems dominate, power-sharing institutions typically perform better.
Additional information:
First published: 01 August 2018
Cadmus permanent link: https://hdl.handle.net/1814/59955
Full-text via DOI: 10.1177/0951629818791032
ISSN: 0951-6298; 1460-3667
Publisher: Sage
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