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The Politics of Economic Reform: Redistributive Promises, Transfers to Special Interests, and the Dynamics of Public Support for Economic Policy Reform

Walk the Line: Conflict, State Capacity and the Political Dynamics of Reform, Sanjay Jain, Sumon Majumdar and Sharun Mukand, (2014) Journal of Development Economics, Vol 111, pp. 1-274.

Abstract: This paper develops a dynamic framework to analyze the political sustainability of economic reforms in developing countries. First, we demonstrate that economic reforms that are proceeding successfully may run into a political impasse, with the reform's initial success having a negative impact on its political sustainability. Second, we demonstrate that greater state capacity, to make compensatory transfers to those adversely affected by reform, need not always help the political sustainability of reform, but can also hinder it. Finally, we argue that in ethnically divided societies, economic reform may be completed not despite ethnic conflict, but because of it.

 

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Dr. Sanjay Jain

 

Dr Sanjay Jain is Senior Fellow in the Department of Economics at Oxford. His research interests are in Development Economics, Political Economy, and Applied Microeconomic Theory.

 

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