Research

Do leaders court or cut the entourage of sidelined elites during economic crises? We examine the case of Rafael Ramirez, Venezuela's former Oil Czar, who was purged from the Cabinet in late 2014. We find that Ramirez-affiliated individuals and firms...

Does poll workers' partisanship affect electoral outcomes? Many countries use partisan and adversarial vote-counting systems where poll workers are party representatives and mutual control is expected to provide fairness. Yet in countries with established...

Why are developing country bureaucracies ineffective despite repeated modernization efforts? Patronage (hiring on partisanship rather than merit) is often thought to undermine public sector performance, yet it is difficult to measure and usually studied...

Politicians rely on political brokers to buy votes throughout much of the developing world. We investigate how social networks facilitate these vote-buying exchanges. Our model suggests that brokers should be particularly well-placed within the network to...