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Do local elections under autocracy help the poor? We argue that local appointees in electoral authoritarian regimes have political incentives that undermine public service provision; regime leaders' preoccupation with national electoral control encourages them to overlook local governance problems if subnational officials can still deliver requisite votes in national elections. Using geographic and temporal variation across Russian cities (2002–12) in the elimination of mayoral elections, we investigate how mayoral appointments affect the maintenance of aging housing infrastructure. We find that, compared to elected mayors, appointed mayors allow more of their Soviet-era housing stock to become dilapidated and unsafe. Moreover, bad housing increases more in cities where appointees deliver high vote shares to the ruling party in national elections. Thus, while local elections under authoritarianism can improve local governance, the holding of semi-competitive national elections can actually undermine incentives for local appointees to provide public services. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Are economic actors equally sensitive to institutional conditions? While existing research recognizes that institutions can have varying effects on actors' interests, the implicit assumption is that actors are homogeneous in how sensitive they are to their institutional environment. We investigate this assumption in the context of foreign direct investment, arguing that actors from countries with weaker institutions will be less affected by information about host country institutional conditions—both good and bad. We test this argument using survey data from a diverse group of managers-in-training at an international business school. We find that when asked to evaluate a potential foreign investment location, respondents from developing countries are significantly less sensitive to information about the host country's courts than their counterparts from developed economies. In contrast, we find that economic actors from both developed and developing countries respond similarly to information about the stability of economic policies. The findings suggest that sensitivity to the risks and safeguards of certain institutional conditions vary systematically across actors, depending on both the home environment to which economic actors have been exposed and the type of host institution. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Does decentralization affect how voters attribute blame for poor economic performance? This question is particularly important in authoritarian regimes, where economic performance legitimacy is a key source of regime stability. Using political and economic data from large Russian cities for 2003–12, we investigate how replacing direct mayoral elections with appointments affects the way voters attribute blame for economic outcomes. We find that the ruling party is more likely to be punished for poor economic performance in cities with centrally appointed mayors than it is in cities with elected mayors. This research suggests that having locally elected officials may help electoral authoritarian regimes deflect responsibility for some unfavorable outcomes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

What determines whether political centralization helps or hurts economic performance? This article identifies preexisting patterns of political competition as a critical factor in determining the impact of political centralization on subnational economies. In competitive regions, political centralization undermines economic performance by removing a functioning electoral mechanism that makes leaders responsive to a wide range of economic concerns. In uncompetitive regions, however, centralization encourages economic improvement by reducing leaders’ reliance on narrow interests and making previously unassailable local leaders answerable to central political bosses. I test competing hypotheses about the economic effects of political centralization using a set of Russian regional reforms that removed the direct election of governors in favor of a system of centralized appointments. The data show that, on a number of different dimensions, economic performance suffered after centralizing reforms were adopted in Russia’s politically competitive regions; in contrast, political centralization improved economic performance in those regions where strong incumbent governors had previously depressed political competition. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

What determines whether policy environments attract or deter investment? Scholars worried about the vulnerability of market-supporting institutions to political manipulation have identified delegation to independent actors as way to increase policy environments’ predictability. Extant arguments, however, risk overgeneralizing from the experience of developed democracies. I argue that investors’ response to bureaucratic discretion—agents’ leeway to make decisions and act independently of political bodies—depends upon the broader institutional context. Where robust political institutions are lacking, bureaucratic discretion acts as a source of unpredictability that deters investors; conversely, political institutions that share the cost of monitoring help to mitigate uncertainty about how bureaucrats will use discretion in applying regulatory rules. Using survey data from over 600 enterprises in Russia, I find that perceptions of bureaucratic discretion are negatively associated with firm managers’ willingness to invest; this effect is particularly pronounced in regions where the institutional environment discourages political competition. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]