By downplaying externalities, magnifying the cost of moral behavior, or suggesting not being pivotal, exculpatory narratives can allow individuals to maintain a positive image when in fact acting in a morally questionable way. Conversely, responsibilizing narratives can help sustain better social norms. We investigate when narratives emerge from a…

Seminal contributions to political economy argue that citizens will more readily engage in political action when they are being taxed, especially compared to when their governments receive nontax revenue from oil. In part this tendency is said to enable the well-known resource curse. We perform two substantively identical experiments with…

Theories of multilateral bargaining and coalition formation applied to legislatures predict that parties' seat shares determine their bargaining power. We present findings that are difficult to reconcile with this prediction. We use data from 2,898 municipal Spanish elections in which two parties tie in the number of seats. The party with slightly…