Election cycles and mining-sector governance in post-conflict Kosovo

Luca J. Uberti, Geoffrey Pugh, Endrit Lami and Drini Imami

Post-Communist Economies, 2019, vol. 31, issue 5, 623-645

Abstract: Political business cycles are typically linked to the manipulation of fiscal or monetary policy instruments. In a recent article, Imami, Lami and Uberti (ILU) argue that opportunistic politicians may also choose to manipulate non-fiscal/non-monetary policy instruments. Here, we extend ILU’s study using time-series data on mining-sector licensing from post-conflict Kosovo (2001–2018). We find robust evidence that is consistent with electoral opportunism in the allocation of mining permits, despite the checks-and-balance mechanisms introduced by Kosovo’s international administrators in an attempt to reduce the politicisation of licensing. That said, the cycle effect is only observed prior to scheduled, as opposed to early, elections. Disaggregating the data by licence type, in addition, we find that the observed election cycle is driven primarily by the manipulation of licences for the mining of construction materials. We argue that, in the context of post-conflict Kosovo, this is the category of licences whose strategic manipulation offers the greatest pay-off to the incumbent. The results raise some questions about the feasibility of fighting political opportunism (and, relatedly, corruption) by establishing formal check-and-balance mechanisms.

Date: 2019
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/14631377.2019.1578583 (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:taf:pocoec:v:31:y:2019:i:5:p:623-645

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.tandfonline.com/pricing/journal/CPCE20

DOI: 10.1080/14631377.2019.1578583

Access Statistics for this article

Post-Communist Economies is currently edited by Roger Clarke

More articles in Post-Communist Economies from Taylor & Francis Journals
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Chris Longhurst ().