Lasse Aaskoven defends his PhD thesis at the Department of Political Science

Candidate

Lasse Aaskoven

Title

“The Politics of the Public Purse: Causes and Consequences of Fiscal Institutions”. The thesis can be purchased as an e-book via Academic books

Time and venue

Tuesday 15 May 2018 at 12:00 at University of Copenhagen, Centre for Health and Society, Øster Farimagsgade 5, 1353 Copenhagen K., room 4.2.26. Kindly note that the defence will start precisely at the announced time.

Assessment committee

Professor Jacob Gerner Hariri, Department of Poltiical Science, Universityo of Copenhagen (chair)

Professor Lars P. Feld, Freiburg Institute for Advanced Studies, Albert-Ludwigs-Universität Freiburg, Germany

Professor Mark Hallerberg, Hertie School of Governance, Berlin, Germany

Abstract

The dissertation is about the causes and consequences of fiscal institutions, the rules, procedures and regulations governing fiscal policy decisions, in a comparative perspective. The dissertation finds, similar to previous research, that fiscal transparency dampen the extent to which incumbent governments expand the public sector in election years but also that this depend on the government’s short term ability to finance these expansions. Fiscal transparency also seems to affect somewhat whether voters are more or less likely to vote out an incumbent government for electoral term increases in public revenue and expenditure. The dissertation also finds that more centralized budget procedures tend to increase the level of taxation. Furthermore, the dissertation argues and finds evidence that national governments increase the stringency of their national fiscal rules’ framework when government debt is high and around national elections. However, enacting fiscal rules seems to have little effect of the conduct of national politics, as fiscal rules seem to be unrelated to decreases in political polarization and electoral turnout. Overall, the results of the dissertation suggest that fiscal institutions do indeed seem to matter. However, they primarily seem to affect public policies and the behavior of incumbent government rather than fundamentally changing the national politics of the countries they are enacted and function in.