Why the world needs more globalisation, not less

The perceived negative effects of globalisation have frequently been the subject of criticism and political opposition. Jason Sorens writes that much of this scepticism toward globalisation is misplaced. He argues that social scientists have a responsibility to tackle the ‘anti-foreign’ and ‘anti-market’ biases that underpin many of these perspectives, and that removing trade restrictions such as agricultural subsidies should be a key priority for those who wish to tackle poverty in the developing world

Corruption as a response to regulation

Previous research has found a negative effect of corruption on growth in the United States. However, some theory suggests corruption might have a positive impact in places with dysfunctional political institutions. This paper investigates whether the corruption-growth link is conditional on the extent of government involvement across U.S. states. Even though no state approaches the level of government intervention found in many developing countries, we still find evidence that corruption’s harmful effects on growth are smaller when regulation is greater

Corruption as a response to regulation

Previous research has found a negative effect of corruption on growth in the United States. However, some theory suggests corruption might have a positive impact in places with dysfunctional political institutions. This paper investigates whether the corruption-growth link is conditional on the extent of government involvement across U.S. states. Even though no state approaches the level of government intervention found in many developing countries, we still find evidence that corruption’s harmful effects on growth are smaller when regulation is greater

SDM:A New Data Set on Self-determination Movements with an Application to the Reputational Theory of Conflict

This dataset, of self-determination movements (SDMs) with universal coverage for the period from 1945 to 2012, corrects the selection bias that characterizes previous efforts to code SDMs and significantly expands coverage relative to the extant literature. For a random sample of cases, we add information on state–movement interactions and several attributes of SDM groups. The data can be used to study the causes of SDMs, the escalation of self-determination (SD) conflicts over time, and several other theoretical arguments concerning separatist conflict that have previously been tested with incomplete or inferior data.The creators request that the associated paper is cited in place of this dataset

Fiscal Federalism, Jurisdictional Competition, and the Size of Government

Abstract Fiscal federalism is commonly held to reduce the size of government, but how does it do so: through shrinking the welfare state, cutting government consumption, or reducing public investment? This paper examines tax competition under fiscal federalism through the lens of imperfect competition theory, derives new empirical implications from different theories of fiscal federalism, and tests those hypotheses with new variables and data. Cross-national statistical results show that jurisdictional competition under fiscal federalism is associated with reductions in the administrative expense of government but not the size of the welfare state. Moreover, the apparent impact of fiscal federalism with a high degree of jurisdictional competition is larger than that estimated in previous research. Once the models have been appropriately specified, the United States is no longer an outlier among high-income democracies on either government consumption or social spending. Close examination of the data reveals that some fiscally federal systems better approximate a "market-preserving model" and others a "capital-privileging" or "state-corroding" model

Replication Data for: Sorens & Ruger, "Globalisation and Intrastate Conflict: An Empirical Analysis"

This dataset contains the replication dataset and do file in Stata format for the cited article

Replication Data for: "The Effects of Housing Supply Restrictions on Partisan Geography"

This dataset contains data and code necessary to replicate the tables and figures in "The Effects of Housing Supply Restrictions on Partisan Geography" by Jason Sorens

The Politics and Economics of Official Ethnic Discrimination: A Global Statistical Analysis, 1950–2003

It is argued that ethnic competition, triggers for ethnic mobilization, and political institutions together affect changes in government-imposed political and economic restrictions on ethnic groups worldwide. Due to the fact that the only existing comparative data set on ethnic discrimination, produced by the Minorities at Risk project, uses discrimination as a criterion for including ethnic groups, a new data set of 620 additional groups has been created to predict the selection process through a full-information, maximum-likelihood Heckman probit model, but selection bias is found not to affect the results. Discrimination is modeled as a dynamic Markov process, and central and regional government institutions, economic conditions, and minority group characteristics are found to influence the initiation and continuation of discriminatory policies

Replication Data for: Cappelen & Sorens, "Precolonial Centralisation, Traditional Indirect Rule, and State Capacity in Africa"

This dataset contains the replication data for the empirical analyses in this paper and a Stata do file for replicating the published tables

Mineral production, territory, and ethnic rebellion: The role of rebel constituencies

Several possible relationships between natural resources and civil conflict have been hypothesized and tested in the literature. The impact of resources on conflict should depend on the circumstances of the group that (potential) rebels see themselves as representing and depend upon for support. While 'lootable' resources such as alluvial diamonds have been shown to increase the likelihood of insurgency, among territorially concentrated ethnic groups looting by rebels recruiting from the group is counterproductive because it imposes negative externalities on the rebel constituency. However, local mineral abundance could encourage rebellion indirectly, by promoting the development of secessionist objectives, since autonomy or independence would allow the rebel constituency to enjoy a larger share of the benefits flowing from mineral revenues. On the other hand, mineral abundance could encourage the government to exercise greater surveillance and control over potentially restive minority populations. On balance, then, mineral abundance should affect ethnoregional conflict primarily by encouraging ethnic rebels to adopt limited, territorial-autonomy objectives as opposed to governmental objectives. This hypothesis is tested with a new, global dataset of substate mineral production. Local mineral resource abundance is indeed negatively associated with governmental conflict among ethnoregional groups and positively related to secessionist or territorial conflict. Moreover, it is the total value of mineral production that matters, not specific types of minerals such as oil or diamonds. The net effect of mineral abundance on the total risk of intrastate conflict onset among ethnoregions is essentially zero.internal conflict; natural resources; secession