POLEC - The Political Economy of Power Relations

Political economists want to understand conflict, electoral competition, special interest politics, regimes and institutional choices, and in all these subfields the term power appears frequently: power of countries, power of ethnic groups, power of interest groups, power of parties, power of the bureaucracy.Power is multidimensional and endogenous, and hence the standard theoretical and empirical analysis that takes a unified notion of power as an independent variable has led to wrong directions.By acknowledging that power is multidimensional and endogenous, and thereby studying the endogenous interactions between the different types of power, we can further significantly the frontier of political economy.In particular, I am going to show, theoretically and empirically, that all kinds of conflict, from civil war to interstate war and even class conflict, depend on the “mismatch” between the relative power of the key players on different dimensions, for example military and political power.An important byproduct of the mismatch theory is for the interpretation of the history of conflict after 1950:I claim that it is Bretton Woods that
created the ground for a significant discontinuity, cutting down the incentives to interstate wars but increasing the incentives to start civil wars.Finally, the general idea that the dynamics of one type of power can depend significantly on relative power in other spheres will be applied also to the relationship between political power and the power
of bureaucracies.The empirical part of the project will involve new measurements of power and will benefit from collection of data on political texts, policy platform texts, legal texts and economic strength of ethnic groups over time and cross-countries. 

Personal Website
http://www.massimomorelli.eu/

Final Conference
Conference Homepage
Complete Program 

• Cross-Domain Topic Classification for Political Texts, Moritz Osnabrügge, Elliott Ash, and Massimo Morelli, Political Analysis
   
• Optimal CHECKS AND BALANCES UNDER POLICY UNCERTAINTY, Gabriele Gratton,Massimo Morelli, International Economic Review
   
• From Weber to Kafka: Political Instability and the Rise of an Inefficient Bureaucracy, Gabriele Gratton, Luigi Guiso, Claudio Michelacci and Massimo Morelli, AER
   
• A Theory of Power Wars, Helios Herrera, Massimo Morelli, Salvatore Nunnari, QJPS
   
• Third Party Intervention and Strategic Militarization, Adam Meirowitz, Massimo Morelli, Kristopher W. Ramsay, Francesco Squintani, QJPS
   
• Divided Government, Delegation, and Civil Service Reform, Elliott Ash, Massimo Morelli, Matia Vannoni, PSRM
   
• Elections and Divisiveness: Theory and Evidence, Elliott Ash, Massimo Morelli, Richard Van Weelden, The Journal of Politics, volume 79, number 4, 2017
   
• Global Crises and Populism: the Role of Eurozone Institutions,Luigi Guiso,  Helios Herrera, Massimo Morell, and Tommaso Sonno,Economic Policy
   
• On Economic Interdependence and War, Massimo Morelli and Tommaso Sonno, Journal of Economic Literature 2017, 55(3), 1–14
   
• Measuring Discretion and Delegation in Legislative Texts, Matia Vannoni, Elliott Ash, Massimo Morelli, Political Analysis

• Mobilization and the Strategy of Populism: Theory and Evidence from US Elections (with Giampaolo Lecce and Gloria Gennaro)
   
• Stay, Split or Strike: Theory and Evidence on Secessionist vs Centrist Conflict, (with Joan Esteban, Sabine Flamand, and Dominic Rohner)
   
• Populism: Demand and Supply, (with Luigi Guiso, Helios Herrera, Tommaso Sonno)
   
• Economic Insecurity and the Demand of Populism in Europe (with Luigi Guiso, Helios Herrera and Tommaso Sonno)
   
• Complexity and the Reform Process (with Dana Foarta)
   
• Populism and War (with Andrea Mattozzi and Marcos Y. Nakaguma)
   
• Bureaucrats under Populism (with Greg Sasso)
   
• More Laws, More Growth? Evidence from U.S. States (with Elliott Ash and Matia Vannoni)
   
• Power Mismatch and Civil Conflict: An Empirical Investigation (with Laura Ogliari and long Hong)
   
• Economic Insecurity and the Demand of Populism in Europe (with Luigi Guiso, Helios Herrera and Tommaso Sonno)

• Regulation and economic growth: A ‘contingent’ relationship, by Massimo Morelli and Matia Vannoni, Vox.eu, 29 March 2021