The Quality of Terror

I present a model of the interaction between a government, a terrorist organization, and potential terrorist volunteers in which, as a result of an endogenous choice, individuals with low ability or little education are most likely to volunteer to join the terrorist organization. However, the terrorist organization screens the volunteers for quality. Consequently, the model is consistent with two seemingly contradictory empirical findings. Actual terrorist operatives are not poor or lacking in education. And yet lack of economic opportunity and recessionary economies are positively correlated with terrorism. The model also endogenizes the effect of government counterterrorism on mobilization. Government crackdowns have competing effects on mobilization: they decrease the ability of terrorists to carry out effective attacks (making mobilization less attractive), and they foment ideological opposition to the government and impose negative economic externalities (making mobilization more attractive). This provides conditions under which government crackdowns increase or decrease mobilization.     

Who are the Darfurians? Arab and African identities, violence and external engagement

This article examines processes of identity formation in Darfur,now part of the Republic of Sudan, over the last four centuries.The basic story is of four overlapping processes of identityformation, each of them primarily associated with a differentperiod in the region's history: namely, the ‘Sudanic identities’associated with the Dar Fur sultanate, Islamic identities, theadministrative tribalism associated with the twentieth-centurySudanese state, and the recent polarization of ‘Arab’and ‘African’ identities, associated with new formsof external intrusion and internal violence. It is a story thatemphasizes the much-neglected east-west axis of Sudanese identity,arguably as important as the north-south axis, and redeems theneglect of Darfur as a separate and important locus for stateformation in northern Sudan, paralleling and competing withthe Nile Valley states. It focuses on the incapacity of boththe modern Sudanese state and international actors to comprehendthe singularities of Darfur, accusing much Sudanese historiographyof ‘Nilocentrism’, namely, the use of analyticalterms derived from the experience of the Nile Valley to applyto Darfur.     

Economic Threats or Societal Turmoil? Understanding Preferences for Authoritarian Political Systems

Why do some individuals prefer to be governed in an authoritarian political system? One intuitive answer is that citizens prefer authoritarian rule when the economy and society are in turmoil. These are common explanations for democratic backsliding, and the emergence and success of authoritarian leaders in the twentieth century. Which of these explanations better explains preferences for authoritarian rule? Both types of threat coincide in small samples and high-profile cases, creating inferential problems. I address this by using three waves of World Values Survey data to look at individual-level preferences for different forms of authoritarian government. Using multiple macroeconomic and societal indicators, I find that economic threats, especially increasing income inequality, better explain preferences for authoritarian government. I conclude with implications for understanding the emergence of support for authoritarianism in fledgling democracies.     

Robert Tollison and operationalizing public choice

In this tribute to Robert Tollison, I will outline his contributions to the development of public choice. I focus on Tollison’s work on rent-seeking, the political economy of reform, and the rules level of analysis in sports economics. Throughout his career, Tollison brilliantly figured out ways to take insights from price theory and public choice theory and operationalize them using multiple methods of empirical analysis, including historical interpretation and statistical testing.     

A Different Carbon Tax: The Sustainable Green Tariff

Two heated current political arguments focus on carbon taxes and tariffs. This essay will develop an argument for linking carbon emissions with tariffs, through a tax on goods entering a country based on the method of transport and distance traveled, rather than based on the country of origin or category of the product. The result would be to encourage more sustainable local production, to reduce currently externalized costs of carbon emissions, to generate new tax revenues to fund reductions in regressive social insurance taxes, and to provide benefits for those adversely affected by carbon emissions.     

Appeal rate and caseload: evidence from civil litigation in Korea

Courts of modern democratic societies have generally implemented appeal procedures to correct potential errors in ruling. However, considering the time and effort that both litigants spend, availability of an appeal cannot be better than reaching the correct judgment in the original case. This difficulty raises the policy issue of how to reduce the rate of appeals and improve welfare of litigants. In this paper, we assert that lower caseloads allow judges to expend more time and effort on each case, contributing to lower appeal rates. Analysis of court-level data from Korea corroborates our inference.