The 3rd, "Democracy and the quality of institutions", discusses whether democracy and democratic transitions can affect institutional outcomes. The evidence suggests that democratic transitions do lead to better institutional outcomes and that those improvements may materialize within a few years.

The 2nd, "Grease the wheels hypothesis", discusses the argument that corruption can be a second-best phenomenon allowing to compensate other distortions. It surveys the theoretical and empirical literatures and discusses the challenges involved in testing competing theories.

The 1st, "Elections and norms of behaviour", with @mgiani.bsky.social, surveys the recent literature on the relationship between social norms and electoral outcomes. It argues that the relation goes both ways: social norms can affect electoral outcomes and vice versa.

Learn the answers to these questions and explore data on life expectancy in our article by @eortizospina.bsky.social: ourworldindata.org/life-expecta...

Fun fact: René Coty, who had voted the enabling act before peacefully spending the war in Le Havre, was allowed to run again.
He became President of the Republic in 1953.

We analyze 17,589 documents in individual defendants’ files to explain this difference: Indirect connections – connections through third parties – enabled transmission of information to the judges, highlighting how connected elite groups can navigate transitions despite institutional safeguards.

Using a difference-in-differences strategy, we find that Law graduates – an influential group with ties to one of the courts – had a 10 to 14 percentage point higher acquittal rate.

We examine how connections shaped transitional justice during France’s post-WWII democratic transition. Parliamentarians who had supported the Vichy regime faced a two-stage purge process involving two courts.