Political Economy

Economic growth requires confidence in the state's ability to enforce secure exchange. But when states selectively enforce rule of law, political considerations can moderate the trust that buyers have in sellers.

Existing theories of democratic reversals emphasize that economic incentives should determine when elites resist democracy. Naidu, Robinson and Young (2017) argue that the capacity to organize coups against democracy is also important, and is shaped by the structure of the social network.

Based on primary data collected from private enterprises, we show that political connection is practiced in Burkina Faso’s public procurements.

Existing theories of coups against democracy emphasize that elite incentives to mount a coup depend on the threat that democracy represents to them and what they stand to gain from dictatorship.

Political connection is multiform, and each of its components may affect the enterprise in different ways. In this article, published in SAGE Open, Akouwerabu (2016) studied the advantages of two types of political connections with data from private enterprises.

This project examines how the political power of market associations and local government effectiveness affect contractual trade and extortion in Lagos.

This study collected yearly historical data on 140 rural villages in Eastern Democratic Republic of Congo to identify the conditions under which armed groups can create institutions favorable to private sector development in areas over which the central state has little or no authority.