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.     

The belt and road initiative: domestic interests,bureaucratic politics and the EU-China relations

Asia Europe Journal - This article explores the linkages between domestic affairs and foreign policies in China in fulfilling its grand ambition of Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). It examines the...     

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.     

上游沿江城市融入长江经济带发展研究——以泸州市为例

泸州地处川滇黔渝结合部,长江、沱江交汇处,是长江上游重要港口城市,是成渝经济区连接南贵昆经济区走向东南亚的重要门户,也是大西南融入长江经济带和海上丝绸之路的桥头堡。该文从城乡规划、流域规划、产业规划的视角出发,遵循科学发展观和城乡统筹发展的原则,运用了区域经济学、发展经济学、城市经济学和产业经济学等相关理论,采取了理论和实践相结合,实证与对策研究为主的研究方法,研究泸州如何融入长江经济带建设,实现泸州又好又快发展,同时为长江上游港口城市发展提供可供参考的模式,为中国区域经济协调发展发挥实践作用。     

论农村社会保障法律制度构建中的政府责任——基于社会法视阈

农村社会保障法律关系错综复杂,政府、社会及农民在农村社会保障中既有相应的权力(利),也要履行一定的义务。行政法、经济法和社会法各自具有独特的法律价值和调整对象,本文分别基于这三个法域检视农村社会保障法律制度构建中的政府责任,考察农村社会保障法律制度构建中政府责任的越位和缺位,反思政府在构建农村社会保障法律制度中所发挥的主导和基础作用,提出在社会法视阈下政府应定位在承担法律制度构建、财政支撑和监督管理之责任。