In this paper, I analyze the effects of government tenure on public investments. Particularly, long term investments incur short-term costs and the benefits will be reaped in the future. Who will politically benefit from these investments is often not clear apriori. When politicians stay longer in office the likliohood is higher that benefits start to pay-off during their term in office. Hence, the tenure length of politicians might affect public investment activities. To test this hypothesis, I examine a reform in the German state of Lower-Saxony where mayors tenure length was reduced from 8 to 5 years. Exploiting exogenous variation generated by asynchronous elections, I apply a Difference-in-Difference approach to compare treated and not yet treated municipalities. I find preliminary evidence that shorter term periods reduce the level of public investments. Reform induced changes in political selection are unlikely to be the driver of the reform.

The COVID-19 pandemic presented governments with unprecedented challenges, requiring decisions that balanced public health measures against substantial social and economic impacts. This study examines the strategic and opportunistic behaviors of regional officials in Germany during the pandemic. Using a comprehensive empirical analysis based on hundreds of statements from state incumbents, we shed light on the dynamics of state level political behavior.

Our findings reveal that German regional leaders emphasized their autonomy when performance metrics were favorable but strategically shifted responsibility when outcomes were less favorable. This behavior underscores the dual potential of federal systems as both laboratories of democracy and breeding grounds for responsibility-avoiding (opportunistic) behavior.

Building durable fiscal capacity requires that the state obtains compliance with its tax demands, a struggle for weak states that lack enforcement capacity. One potential option for governments in weak states is to enhance their legitimacy and thereby foster voluntary compliance. In this study, we report results from a participatory budgeting policy experiment in Sierra Leone that attempted to increase legitimacy and tax compliance by inviting public participation in local policy decision-making. In phone based town halls, participants shared policy preferences with neighbors and local politicians and then voted for local public services that were subsequently implemented. We find that the intervention durably increased participants’ perceptions of government legitimacy. However, against influential models of tax compliance, we find a robust null effect on tax compliance behavior. In exploratory analyses, we document that partisan affiliation strongly conditions the interventions’ effects on tax compliance and attitudes towards paying taxes.

This paper analyses how partisan alignment shapes the allocation of intergovernmental grants. Two-Way Fixed-Effects (TWFE) and Regression Discontinuity (RD) estimations are applied to a sample comprising all 308 Portuguese municipalities from 1998-2022. TWFE results indicate that municipalities led by mayors politically aligned with the national government receive more national non-formula-determined grants, on average, and in local and national election years. Preliminary RD results are consistent with those of TWFE estimations, being also suggestive of partisan effects. Further tests are necessary to more thoroughly check for a causal effect of partisan alignment on the allocation of intergovernmental grants to Portuguese municipalities.