Syllabus for Graduate Course
Theoretical Models and Empirical Methods
in Political Economy
Universität Konstanz, Winter Semester 2015/16
Professor: Michael Becher
Class meeting: Thursday 13:30-15:00, Room E405
Office: E208
Email: michael.becher@uni-konstanz.de
Office hours: Tuesday 16:00-18:00 and by appointment
Overview. This course surveys recent work in political economy that focuses on testing
empirical implications of theoretical models. Substantively, we will cover topics such agency
problems in democracies, party competition, distributive politics, electoral rules, voter turnout,
vote buying in legislatures, income inequality and party polarization, and coalition governance. In
broad terms, the fundamental question underlying most of this research concerns whose interests
are represented in contemporary democracies and to what extent the answer to this question
depends on the rules of the game. Methodologically, the focus will be on linking theory and data.
While we start from theoretical work on political institutions and behavior, the primary focus of
the course is empirical. That is, we will concentrate on the empirical implications of the models
and their potential for organizing our knowledge about the topics. We will pay special attention
to innovative approaches to research design for causal inference and measurement. The course
assumes that students have taken Research Design I or an equivalent course.
Learning goals. Students will be able to derive empirical implications from theoretical models
as well as to critically evaluate and employ advanced research designs to test them.
Requirements. Participants are expected to carefully read the required readings (marked by *)
prior to each class and be prepared to discuss them. The readings are available online through
ILIAS, the university’s e-learning platform (https://ilias.uni-konstanz.de/). In addition,
there are two types of writing assignments:
Four short response papers (1-2 A4 pages). A response paper should address at least one
empirical paper assigned for the given week and briefly summarize and evaluate its empirical
approach to testing a hypothesis, using criteria discussed in the first two sessions. Response
papers are due via email by 8pm on Wednesday before the Thursday class. At least two response
papers are to be written in the first half of the course (until the last December class).
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Final research paper (15-25 double-spaced A4 pages). A research paper should carefully spell out
a research design to test an observable implication from a theoretical model related to the topics
covered in the course. It may also report preliminary empirical results, though this is not a
requirement. The focus should be on justifying the research question, deriving observable
implications from a theoretical framework, and proposing a research design to test the
implications. The research design should be feasible given the constraints of a MA or Ph.D.
thesis. Make sure to talk to me about your paper topic early. A short proposal (1-2 pages
stating research question, theoretical motivation and hypotheses, research design and data
availability) is due January 14, 2016, before class. The final paper is due via email by April 15,
2016. It must follow good scientific practice and upon submission include the university’s
statement that it is free from plagiarism. The form (Erklärung über selbstständig verfasste
Hausarbeiten) is available from the website of the Department of Politics
https://www.polver.uni-konstanz.de/studienorganisation/formulare/.
Course policy. The final grade is based on course participation (10%), response papers (30%),
and a final research paper (60%).
Books. To review empirical approaches applied in articles we are discussing, we will frequently
refer to the following book:
Thad Dunning (2014): Natural Experiments in the Social Sciences. Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press. [below abbreviated as DUNNING]
It provides a non-technical discussion of the methods and provides a guide on how to evaluate
them. I recommend purchasing it. Furthermore, some of the canonical theoretical models we
consider are also explained in Scott Gehlbach’s textbook:
Scott Gehlbach. 2013. Formal Models of Domestic Politics. Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press. [GEHLBACH]
Introduction (October 22, 2015)
Theoretical models and causal inference (October 29, 2015)
TIME CHANGE: this class will be held 18:45-20:15 (in E405).
*DUNNING, ch. 1 and ch. 5.1 (pp. 103-121). (Potential outcome notation.)
*Clark, Willam Roberts and Matt Golder. 2015. “Big Data, Causal Inference, and Formal
Theory: Contradictory Trends in Political Science?” PS: Political Science & Politics 48(1):65-70.
*Ashworth, Scott, Christopher R. Berry and Ethan Bueno de Mesquita. 2015. “All Else Equal in
Theory and Data (Big or Small).” PS: Political Science & Politics 48(1): 89-94.
Huber, John. 2013. “Is Theory Getting Lost in the ‘Identification Revolution’ ?” The Monkey
Cage, http://themonkeycage.org/2013/06/
is-theory-getting-lost-in-the-identification-revolution/.
Angrist, Joshua D. and Jörn-Steffen Pischke. 2010. “The Credibility Revolution in Empirical
Economics: How Better Research Design is Taking the Con out of Econometrics.” Journal of
Economic Perspectives 24(2):3-30.
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No class this week (November 5, 2015)
Monetary incentives and politicians’ performance (November 12, 2015)
*John Ferejohn. 1986. “Incumbent Performance and Electoral Control.” Public Choice 50 (1).
Or GEHLBACH ch. 7.
*Stefano Gagliarducci and Tommaso Nannicini. 2013. “Do better paid politicians perform
better? Disentangling incentives from selection.” Journal of the European Economic Association
11(2): 369-398.
*Dunning 5.2, 6.1. Review: sharp regression discontinuity design.
Andrew C. Eggers, Ronny Freier, Veronica Grembi, and Tommaso Nannicini. 2015. “Regression
Discontinuity Designs Based on Population Thresholds: Pitfalls and Solutions.” DIW Discussion
Paper 1503, http://www.diw.de/discussionpapers.
Claudio Ferraz and Frederico Finan. 2009. “Motivating Politicians: The Impacts of Monetary
Incentives on Quality and Performance.” NBER Working Paper No. 14906,
http://www.nber.org/papers/w14906.
Mattthias Messner and Mattias K. Polborn. 2004. “Paying politicians” Journal of Public
Economics 88: 2423-2445.
Andrea Mattozi and Antonio Merlo. 2015. “Mediocracy.” Journal of Public Economics 130:
32-44.
Daniel Diermeier, Michael Keane, and Antonio Merlo. 2005. “A Political Economy Model of
Congressional Careers.” American Economic Review 95(1): 347-373.
Competing politicians: converging or not? (November 19, 2015)
*Lee, David S. and Moretti, Enrico and Butler, Matthew J. 2004. “Do Voters Affect or Elect
Policies? Evidence from the U. S. House.” The Quarterly Journal of Economics. 119(3): 807-859.
*Vincenzo Galasso and Tommaso Nannicini. 2011. “Competing on Good Politicians.” American
Political Science Review. 105(1): 79-99.
*DUNNING, ch. 8. How plausible is as-if random?
Caughey, David and Jasjeet S. Sekhon. 2011. “Elections and the Regression-Discontinuity
Design: Lessons from Close U.S. House Races, 1942-2008.” Political Analysis 19(4): 385-408.
Eggers, Andrew, Olle Folke, Anthony Fowler, Jens Hainmueller, Andrew B. Hall and James M
Snyder. 2015. “On the Validity of the Regression Discontinuity Design for Estimating Electoral
Effects: New Evidence from Over 40,000 Close Races.” American Journal of Political Science
59(1): 259-274.
Pablo Montagnes and Jon C. Rogowski. 2015. “Testing Core Predictions of Spatial Models:
Platform Moderation and Challenger Success.” Political Science Research and Methods 3(3):
619-640.
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Dewan, Torun and Kenneth A. Shepsle. 2011. “Political Economy Models of Elections.” Annual
Review of Political Science 14: 11-30.
GEHLBACH ch. 1.1-1.3.
Elected vs. appointed policymakers (November 26, 2015)
*Eric Maskin and Jean Tirole. 2004. “The Politician and the Judge: Accountability in
Government.” American Economic Review 94(4): 1034-1054.
*Júlio Canello, Daniel Hidalgo and Renato Lima. “Can Politicians Police Themselves? Natural
Experimental Evidence from Brazil’s Audit Courts.” Mimeo, MIT.
*Mark Partridge and Tim R. Sass. 2011. “The productivity of elected and appointed officials:
the case of school superintendents.” Public Choice 149: 133-149.
Brandice Canes-Wrone, Tom S. Clark and Jason P. Kelly. 2014. “Judicial Selection and Death
Penalty Decision.” American Political Science Review. 108(1): 23-39.
Matias Iaryczower, Garrett Lewis, Matthew Shum. 2013. “To elect or to appoint? Bias,
information, and responsiveness of bureaucrats and politicians.” Journal of Public Economics 97:
230-244.
Luca Corazzini, Sebastian Kube, Michel André Maréchal and Antonio Nicolò. 2014. “Elections
and Deceptions: An Experimental Study on the Behavioral Effects of Democracy.” American
Journal of Political Science 58(3): 579-592.
Distributive politics (December 3, 2015)
*Avinash Dixit and John Londregan. 1996. “The Determinants of Success of Special Interests in
Redistributive Politics.” Journal of Politics 58(4): 1132-1155.
*Valentino Larcinese, James M. Snyder, JR. and Cecilia Testa. 2013. “Testing Models of
Distributive Politics using Exit Polls to Measure Voters’ Preferences and Partisanship.” British
Journal of Political Science 43(4): 845 - 875.
*DUNNING, ch. 9.1 and 9.3. How credible is the model?
Miriam Golden and Brian Min. 2013. “Distributive Politics Around the World.” Annual Review
of Political Science 16: 73-99.
Eric Kramon and Daniel N. Posner. 2013. “Who Benefits from Distributive Politics? How the
Outcome One Studies Affects the Answer One Gets.” Perspectives on Politics 11(02): 461-474.
Juan Pablo Couyoumdjian and John B. Londregan. 2012. “Cultivating Votes in Rural Chile.”
Legislative Studies Quarterly 37(03): 355-388.
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Coalition governments and public spending (December 10, 2015)
*Torsten Persson, Gerard Roland and Guido Tabellini. 2007. “Electoral Rules and Government
Spending in Parliamentary Democracies.” Quarterly Journal of Political Science 2: 155-88.
*Thushyanthan Baskaran 2013. “Coalition governments, cabinet size, and the common pool
problem: Evidence from the German states.” European Journal of Political Economy 32:
356-376.
*DUNNING, ch. 5.3. Analyzing instrumental variable designs. 8.2.4 Diagnostics in
instrumental-variable designs.
Lanny W. Martin and Georg Vanberg. 2013. “Multiparty Government, Fiscal Institutions, and
Public Spending.” Journal of Politics 75(4): 953-967.
Torben Iversen and David Soskice. 2006. “Electoral Institutions and the Politics of Coalitions:
Why Some Democracies Redistribute More than Others.” American Political Science Review
100(2).
Funk, Patricia and Christina Gathmann. 2013. ”How do Electoral Rules Affect Fiscal Policy?
Evidence From Cantonal Parliaments, 1890-2000.” Journal of the European Economic
Association 11(5):1178-1203.
Income inequality and party politics (December 17, 2015)
*John Voorheis, Nolan McCarty and Boris Shor. 2015. “Unequal Incomes, Ideology and
Gridlock: How Rising Inequality Increases Political Polarization.” Working Paper available at
SSRN, http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.2649215.
*Erlin Barth, Henning Finseraas, and Karl O. Moene. 2015. “Political Reinforcement: How
Rising Inequality Curbs Manifested Welfare Generosity.” American Journal of Political Science
59(3): 565-577.
*DUNNING, ch. 7. The central role of qualitative evidence.
Timothy Feddersen and Faruk Gul. 2015. “Polarization and Income Inequality: A Dynamic
Model of Unequal Democracy.” Mimeo.
Jonas Pontusson and David Rueda. 2010. “The Politics of Inequality: Voter Mobilization and
Left Parties in Advanced Industrial States.” Comparative Political Studies 43(6): 675-705.
Nolan McCarty, Keith Poole and Howard Rosenthal 2006. Polarized America: The Dance of
Ideology and Unequal Riches. Cambridge, MA: Massachusetts Institute of Technology Press.
(Ch. 1-3; in ch. 3, focus on pp. 71-92)
Adam Bonica, Nolan McCarty, Keith T. Poole, and Howard Rosenthal. 2013. “Why Hasn’t
Democracy Slowed Rising Inequality?” Journal of Economic Perspectives 27(3): 103-24.
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Electoral rules and parties: re-examining Duverger (January 7, 2016)
*Gary Cox. 1997. Making Votes Count. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Ch. 2.
*Steven Callander. 2005. “Electoral Competition in Heterogeneous Districts.” Journal of
Political Economy 113(5): 1116-1145.
*William Roberts Clark and Matt Golder. 2006. “Rehabilitating Duvergeris Theory: Testing the
Mechanical and Strategic Modifying Effects of Electoral Laws.” Comparative Political Studies 39:
679-708.
*André Blais, Romain Lachat, Airo Hino, and Pascal Doray-Demers. 2011. “The Mechanical and
Psychological Effects of Electoral Systems: A Quasi-Experimental Study.” Comparative Political
Studies 44 (12): 1599-621.
Thomas Fujiwara. 2011. “A Regression Discontinuity Test of Strategic Voting and Duverger’s
Law.” Quarterly Journal of Political Science 6: 197-233.
Jon H. Fiva and Olle Folke. 2015. “Mechanical and Psychological Effects of Electoral Reform.”
British Journal of Political Science Forthcoming.
Steven Callander and Catherine H. Wilson. 2007. “Turnout, Polarization, and Duverger’s Law.”
Journal of Politics 69(4): 1047-1056.
Octavio Amorim Neto and Gary W. Cox. 1997. “Electoral Institutions, Cleavage Structures, and
the Number of Parties.” American Journal of Political Science 41(1): 149-174.
Karine Van der Straeten, Nicolas Sauger, Jean-François Laslier and André Blais. 2013. “Sorting
Out Mechanical and Psychological Effects in Candidate Elections: An Appraisal with
Experimental Data.” British Journal of Political Science 43 (4): 937 - 944.
Electoral rules and turnout: theory (January 14, 2016)
Proposal for final paper is due via email before class.
*Gary Cox. 1999. “Electoral Rules and the Calculus of Mobilization.” Legislative Studies
Quarterly 24: 387-420.
*Helios Herrera, Massimo Morelli and Salvatore Nunnari. 2015. “Turnout Across Democracies.”
American Journal of Political Science In press, published online.
Gary Cox. “Electoral Rules, Mobilization, and Turnout” Annual Review of Political Science
18:49-68.
Helios Herrera, Massimo Morelli and Thomas Palfrey. 2014. “Turnout and Power Sharing.” The
Economic Journal 124: F131-F162.
Melis Kartal. 2015. “A Comparative Welfare Analysis of Electoral Systems with Endogenous
Turnout.” The Economic Journal 125: 1369-1392.
Carlise Rainey. 2015. “Strategic mobilization: Why proportional representation decreases voter
mobilization.” Electoral Studies 37: 86-98.
GEHLBACH, Ch. 2.5.
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Electoral rules and turnout: evidence (January 21, 2016)
*Andrew C. Eggers. 2015. “Proportionality and Turnout: Evidence From French Municipalities.”
Comparative Political Studies 48(2): 135-167.
*Gary W. Cox, Jon H. Fiva and Daniel M. Smith. 2015. “The Contraction Effect: How
Proportional Representation Affects Mobilization and Turnout.” Mimeo, University of Oslo.
*DUNNING, ch. 10. How relevant is the intervention?
Andrew C. Eggers, Ronny Freier, Veronica Grembi, and Tommaso Nannicini. 2015. “Regression
Discontinuity Designs Based on Population Thresholds: Pitfalls and Solutions.” DIW Discussion
Paper 1503, http://www.diw.de/discussionpapers.
Peter Selb. 2009. “A Deeper Look at the Proportionality-Turnout Nexus.” Comparative Political
Studies 42(4): 527-548.
André Blais, Jean-Benoit Pilet, Karine Van der Straeten, Jean-François Laslier, Maxime
Héroux-Legault. 2014. “To vote or to abstain? An experimental test of rational calculus in first
past the post and PR elections” Electoral Studies 36: 39-50.
Vote buying in legislatures (January 28, 2016)
*Eddie Dekel, Matthew O. Jackson and Asher Wolinsky. 2009 “Vote Buying: Legislatures and
Lobbying.” Quarterly Journal of Political Science 4(2): 103-128.
*Dan Alexander, Christopher R. Berry and William G. Howell. 2015. “Distributive Politics and
Legislator Ideology.” Mimeo, University of Chicago.
In Song Kim and Kosuke Imai. 2014. “On the Use of Linear Fixed Effects Regression Estimators
for Causal Inference.” Mimeo, Princeton University.
Eddie Dekel, Matthew O. Jackson and Asher Wolinsky. 2008 “Vote Buying: General Elections.”
Journal of Political Economy 116(2): 351-380.
Tim Groseclose and James M. Snyder, Jr. 1996 “Buying Supermajorities.” American Political
Science Review 90(2): 303-315.
GEHLBACH, Ch. 3.
Delegation and policymaking in parliamentary democracies (February 4, 2016)
*Torun Dewan and Arthur Spirling. 2011 “Strategic Opposition and Government Cohesion in
Westminster Democracies.” American Political Science Review 105(2): 337-358.
*Christopher Kam, William T. Bianco, Itai Sened and Regina Smith. 2010 “Ministerial Selection
and Intraparty Organization in the Contemporary British Parliament.” American Political
Science Review 104(2): 289-306.
*Lanny W. Martin and Georg Vanberg. 2014 “Parties and Policymaking in Multiparty
Governments: The Legislative Median, Ministerial Autonomy, and the Coalition Compromise.”
American Journal of Political Science 58(4): 979-996.
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Kaare Strøm, Wolfgang C. Müller and Daniel Markham Smith. 2010 “Parliamentary Control of
Coalition Governments.” Annual Review of Political Science. 13: 517-35.
Huber, John. 1996. “The Vote of Confidence in Parliamentary Democracies.” American Political
Science Review 90(2): 269-282.
GEHLBACH ch. 6.1-6.3.
Wrapping up (February 11, 2016)
*DUNNING, Ch. 11. Building strong research designs through multi-method research.
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