Gretchen Helmke

INFORMAL INSTITUTIONS AND COMPARATIVE POLITICS: A RESEARCH AGENDA

Mainstream comparative research on political institutions focuses primarily on formal rules. Yet in many contexts, informal institutions, ranging from bureaucratic and legislative norms to clientelism and patrimonialism, shape even more strongly political behavior and outcomes. Scholars who fail to consider these informal rules of the game risk missing many of the most important incentives and constraints that underlie political behavior. In this article we develop a framework for studying informal institutions and integrating them into comparative institutional analysis. The framework is based on a typology of four patterns of formalinformal institutional interaction: complementary, accommodating, competing, and substitutive. We then explore two issues largely ignored in the literature on this subject: the reasons and mechanisms behind the emergence of informal institutions, and the nature of their stability and change. Finally, we consider challenges in research on informal institutions, including issues of identification, measurement, and comparison.

Inequality under Democracy: Explaining the Left Decade in Latin America

Inequality is generally thought to affect the electoral fortunes of the left, yet the theory and evidence on the question are unclear. This is the case even in Latin America, a region marked by enormous inequalities and by the stunning return of the left over the last decade. We address this shortcoming. Our game-theoretic model reveals that the probability that the left candidate is elected follows an inverted U-shaped relationship. At low levels of inequality, the rich do not bribe any voters and poor voters are increasingly likely to vote for the left candidate based on redistributive concerns. At high levels of inequality, the rich want to avoid redistribution and bribe poor voters, causing the left candidate to be elected with decreasing probability. We find support for our hypothesis, using 110 elections in 18 Latin American countries from 1978 to 2008.

Modeling Motivations: A Method for Inferring Judicial Goals from Behavior

The consensus among most scholars of American politics is that judges are policy seekers. Yet we know very little about what motivates judges in other parts of the world. To begin to address this gap, we develop a systematic method for inferring goals from behavior. Using a simple game-theoretic framework, we generate a series of testable propositions linking behavioral outcomes to goals for four ideal types of judges: loyalists, policy seekers, institutionalists, and careerists. We illustrate the power of our method with original data on individual and collective judicial decision making on the Argentine Supreme Court (1976–2000).

Inducing independence: A strategic model of World Bank assistance and legal reform

Legal reforms matter for economic growth and democratic consolidation. As part of the “second-generation reforms”, international financial institutions have sought to build the rule of law by funding a vast array of legal and judicial reform projects throughout the developing world. Yet aside from scattered anecdotal evidence, the general effects of international assistance on legal reform and the rule of law remain poorly understood. This article addresses this gap by developing a theoretical framework that explores the strategic interaction among international financial institutions, national governments and non-governmental actors. Using original data on World Bank legal and judicial reform projects, we show that World Bank assistance can in fact encourage some types of incumbent governments to promote reforms that increase judicial independence.