I exploit a reform that required Italian municipalities to disclose their balance sheetsbefore elections to study whether having more informed voters aects the political budgetcycle. To start, inve ...

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Political budget cycles with informed voters:evidence from Italy

We study distributive politics inside cities by analysing how local governments allocate investment projects to voters across neighbourhoods. In particular, we ask whether politicians use investment to target their own supporters. To this aim, we use detailed geo-located investment data from Plan E, a large fiscal stimulus program carried out in Spain in 2009-2011. Our empirical strategy is based on a close-elections regression-discontinuity design. In contrast to previous studies – which use aggregate data at the district or municipal level – we exploit spatial variation in both investment and voter support within municipalities and find no evidence of supporter targeting. Complementary results indicate that voters may be responding to investment by increasing turnout. Overall, our findings suggest that distributive politics only play a minor role inside the city.

Distributive Politics Inside the City? The Political Economy of Spain's Plan E

This study focuses on asylum cases decided at Sweden’s migration courts. More precisely, it analyses how the highest legal instance, the Migration Court of Appeal (hereafter MCA), legitimizes decisions that concern asylum seekers. Using critical discourse analysis (CDA), the study makes power relations visible. Investigating central discursive claims that are expressed in the precedents of Swedish asylum law, certain power relations are identified as particularly unbalanced. Based on the identification of what I subsequently call the institutionalized power imbalance of the asylum system, the study’s findings compel me to challenge this imbalance. After conducting ten interviews with judges at Sweden’s four (second-instance) Migration Courts as well as at the (third-instance) MCA, I reviewed 200 precedents (published 2006-2016) that concern people who applied for a residence permit in Sweden. Of these 200, 75 precedents of relevance for Swedish asylum law appear in the study. Drawing on Robert Stake’s understanding of a collective case study, the interviews are used to sample six precedents for in-depth analysis. Through a CDA of these last-instance decisions it is demonstrated how precedents of Swedish asylum law discursively represent 1) families with children, 2) class, race, ethnicity and religion, gender and sexuality, and 3) the policy of ‘regulated immigration’. Building on Norman Fairclough’s conceptualization of discursive legitimation strategies, and with the help of Robert Alexy’s and Jurgen Habermas’ approaches to legal discourse, it is argued that precedents of Swedish asylum law are not only legitimized based on I) the authority of law, but also by reference to II) the rationalization of empirical reasoning, III) the utility of institutionalized actions that can use law as means for political ends, IV) those moral evaluations that permeate legal discourse, and V) the storytelling that appears when legal texts are read as narratives. This argumentation highlights uncertainty, which affects the social reality of asylum processes and which appears to be represented when precedents of Swedish asylum law are legitimized by reference to rationalization, moral evaluation, and/or as narratives. Providing the respective decisions with some meaning, rather than merely making sure that they are legally correct, the analysed precedents are, thus, legitimized not only by reference to the authority of law. Referring to Seyla Benhabib and her usage of Robert Cover’s distinction between ‘law as power’ and ‘law as meaning’, a CDA of precedents of Swedish asylum law can, in this sense, illustrate how judges pay notice to the complexity of refugee migration in the world of today. (Less)

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Legitimized Refugees : A Critical Investigation of Legitimacy Claims within the Precedents of Swedish Asylum Law

This study presents a new database, the Swedish National Wealth Database (SNWD), which contains annual data on private, public and national wealth and sectoral saving rates in Sweden over the past ...

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The national wealth of Sweden, 1810–2014

In this paper I compare the effect of entering parenthood on the spousal income gaps inlesbian and heterosexual couples using Swedish population wide register data. Comparingcouples with similar pr ...

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Does the gender composition in couplesmatter for the division of labor after childbirth

Several countries practice a system where laymen, who lack legal education, participate in the judicial decision making. Yet, little is known about their potential influence on the court rulings. I ...

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Linna Martén

Papers

Political Bias in Court? Lay Judges and Asylum Appeals