Philippe Aghion, Alberto Alesina, and Francesco Trebbi — Endogenous Political Institutions

62 published claims from this book.

• A distinct literature studies how polities endogenously choose their own voting rules
• Aggregate uncertainty about reform outcomes strengthens status quo bias
• American-style constitutions predict political freedom better than British ones
• Closed amendment rules concentrate strategic power in the executive
• Compensating reform losers requires distorting taxes fixed before outcomes are known.
• Constitutional choices made by informed incumbents diverge from social optimum
• Constitutional design varies in how insulated policymakers are from ex post control
• Constitutional designers protect property from majority rule using supermajorities and courts
• Constitutional insulation choices depend on voter preferences, uncertainty, risk aversion
• Constitutional restraints on expropriation inevitably impair governing capacity
• Constitutions must balance unchecked leader power against legislative paralysis
• Constitutions need larger supermajorities because voters fear radical rule changes.
• Constitutions written when voting rights were narrow protect property from redistribution
• Coordinating reform requires a leader, and leaders exploit that necessity
• Courts defending property rights repeatedly stalled US welfare-state expansion.
• Crises push democratic systems toward less accountability and more concentrated power
• Democracy is defined by constraints on rulers, not by elections alone.
• Electoral rules shape how many constraints bind governing parties.
• Elites design insulated constitutions to lock in favorable property-rights treatment
• Ethnic fractionalization raises the probability a state is less democratic
• Ethnically fractionalized countries tilt toward less democratic, more presidential rule
• Ethnically fragmented societies choose political institutions that insulate dominant groups.
• Expropriation is easy while targeted compensation demands sophisticated state capacity.
• Expropriation requires buying off a fraction of the population
• FDR’s court-packing threat made the Supreme Court yield on social policy
• Fractionalization indices measure the odds two random citizens differ by group.
• Greater polarization pushes voters to reduce insulation against policy reform.
• High inflation drives countries to insulate monetary policy from democratic control
• Income and colonial legal origin shape how fragmented states adopt presidentialism
• Institutional insulation resists clean measurement across many countries.
• Insulating leaders raises reform odds but also expropriation risk
• Insulation levels shape leader incentives and voter selection jointly
• Insulation of a half guarantees majority rule tracks ex ante utilitarian welfare
• Insulation of leaders can be summarized by the legislative majority required
• Insulation thresholds determine whether leaders can pass reforms or expropriate
• Low political insulation delays fiscal reforms in advanced democracies
• Lowering the bar for citizens to block reforms trades efficient reform for heavier taxation
• Majority rule has no automatic superiority over supermajority rules in constitutional theory
• More risk-averse voters prefer less insulated systems so reforms stay blockable.
• Polarization among the poorest can both increase and decrease support for reform
• Politically dominant groups knowingly design more insulated institutions.
• Presidential regimes produce more discretionary fiscal policy than parliamentary ones
• Presidential systems concentrate power because they have fewer veto players
• Racial fragmentation is measured by competing linguistic and ethnic indices.
• Real constitution-writing is bargaining among unequally affected parties, not impartial design.
• Reform insulation rises with blocking thresholds and falls with aggregate uncertainty
• Richer economies need fewer large reforms and choose lower institutional insulation
• Risk aversion alone produces an interior solution without expropriation
• Supermajority debate pits fear of tyranny against majority rule as democracy
• Targeted side-payments to pivotal voters make reform affordable only where preferences stay observable.
• The blocking-minority threshold is the decisive lever in constitutional design
• Unanimity rules stop expropriation but also block all non-Pareto legislation.
• Under a veil of ignorance, risk-neutral voters act as the average voter
• Under majority rule the median voter dictates the level of political insulation.
• Veil-of-ignorance results hold across alternative modelling strategies
• Vote thresholds set how insulated leaders are from opposition
• Voter preferences over constitutional insulation are single-peaked
• Voters form settled preferences about reforms only as reform unfolds
• Wartime routinely suspends democratic rule even in democratic countries
• Weak property rights let insulated leaders expropriate for themselves and allies.
• Weak property-rights protection makes policy insulation less valuable
• Weak tax capacity and targeting problems push developing states toward insulated governments.