It is often argued that democracy is the least imperfect form of government mainly because of the existence of a ‘self-correcting’ mechanism stemming from voice and accountability embedded in democracies. Using text analysis from about a billion newspaper articles in 28 languages, this column shows that the intensity of reform chatter increases during economic downturns and that the increase is more significant in democracies. During downturns, democracies appear to benefit disproportionately from changing popular attitudes translating into actual reforms.
Politics and economics
Protectionism, nationalism, left- and right-wing populism are on the rise all over the world. This column tests the premise that the value a person attaches to consuming an object or possessing an attribute increases in others' unmet excess desire for it, terming this behaviour as mimetic dominance seeking. On the basis of two experiments designed to provide direct evidence of this behaviour, it finds that mimetic dominance leads to a reluctance to trade and a direct preference for objects that become scarcer, with the latter generating a motive for exclusion.
Many Western countries pursued deep austerity measures in response to debts from the financial crisis of 2007-2008, and may again do so in the wake of COVID-19 stimulus packages. This column reviews how in the early 1930s, austerity measures worsened social suffering and contributed to political unrest paving the way for the rise of the Nazi Party in Germany. The authors argue that the absence of a coherent response to social suffering from the Weimar government worsened the slump, contributing to the radicalisation and polarisation of the German electorate.
Xenophobic attacks are on the rise around the world. Does social media help cause them? Maria Petrova tells tim Phillips about shocking new research from Russia.
The political-economy trilemma, introduced by Dani Rodrik (2000), asserts that the three policy goals of national sovereignty, democracy, and globalisation, cannot all be achieved to the full extent simultaneously. This column investigates this trilemma by developing indexes that measure the extent of attainment of the three factors during 1975-2016. It finds that there is a linear relationship between globalisation and national sovereignty (i.e. a dilemma) for industrialised countries, while all three indexes are linearly correlated (i.e. a trilemma) for developing countries.
Events
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1 - 3 September 2020 / The London School of Economics and Political Science / Central Bank Research Association
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2 - 30 September 2020 / Zoom webinar / CEPR and INSEAD
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3 - 4 September 2020 / Blavatnik School of Government at University of Oxford (Oxford, UK) / Government Outcomes Lab, Blavatnik School of Government, University of Oxford.
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4 - 4 September 2020 / Online /
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7 - 12 September 2020 / Guildford, Surrey, UK / University of Surrey
