Despite the importance of politicians, empirical work rarely examines who decides to enter
politics and why. This survey presents conceptual issues in measuring political entry; …

This article reviews the changing status of single-country research in comparative politics, a
field defined by the concept of comparison. An analysis of single-country research published …

Using data on over a million land transactions during 2004–2016 where local governments
are the sole seller, we find that firms linked to members of China's supreme political elites …

Politicians in developing countries misuse foreign aid to get reelected by fiscally
manipulating foreign aid resources or domestic budgets. Our article suggests another …

We test the longstanding hypothesis that ethnic groups organized around “segmentary
lineages” are more prone to conflict. Ethnographic accounts suggest that in such societies …

Close-kin marriage, by sustaining tightly knit family structures, may impede development.
We find support for this hypothesis using US state bans on cousin marriage. Our measure of …

The social networks of voters have been shown to facilitate political cooperation and
information transmission in established democracies. These same social networks …

Diversity in the characteristics of political leaders increases the quality of policy, perceptions
of legitimacy, and accountability to constituents. Yet, increasing leaders' diversity proves one …

Although democracy is, in principle, the antithesis of dynastic rule, families with multiple
members in elective office continue to be common around the world. In most democracies …

We theoretically and empirically study an incomplete information model of social learning.
Agents initially guess the binary state of the world after observing a private signal. In …