Abstract

In this dissertation, I present a unique pattern of lawmaking during crisis: laws become enacted

quicker while at the same time gaining length. This pattern is based on the study of 11,584 laws

passed by the US Congress over a period of more than four decades. The second part of the

dissertation presents theoretical explanations for this pattern of lawmaking during crisis. For this, I

rely on an entangled political economy framework. This framework allows me to go beyond most

narrow rational-choice theories and study the complex web of exchange relationships that makes up

the lawmaking process. I study four groups that enter into this process: voters, legislators, interest

groups, and bureaucrats. I argue that voters influence legislators not only by voting but also by

generating pressure during crisis. Legislators react to citizens demands and want to signal to the

electorate that they are addressing the crisis. They create what I call Christmas tree laws: laws that

contain many policy proposals while serving the interests of legislators constituencies and

themselves. Interest groups are to a large extent only reactive forces during this process since they

cannot keep up with the speed and extensiveness of lawmaking. Certain coalitions of interest groups

are able to secure rents, but that does not apply to interest groups in general. Lastly, I study

bureaucrats and find that they are crucial nodes in the political decision-making structure because

they design, interpret, and implement laws. Both bureaucrats and lawmakers have an incentive to

delegate lawmaking to bureaucracies, which enables certain powerful individuals within

bureaucracies to use formal and informal relationships to attain their personal or policy objectives.

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Acknowledgements
Probably like most dissertations, the present work evolved over many years. Starting with my

interest in debt cycles and the growth of government, my work quickly turned to the economic

study of politicspublic choice. I was astonished to learn of a disconnect between public choice

and historical works like Crisis and Leviathan by Robert Higgs. Crises are significant events in every

polity, but they are not theoretically captured within public choice. This is due to some shortcomings

of public choice in studying complex events such as crises. The first question was what, if anything,

changes during crisis. I started to study four decades of lawmaking in the United States and found a

unique pattern of lawmaking during recessions that was faster and also yielded lengthier laws.

Lengthier laws in less timewhat are the theoretical dynamics that bring about this pattern? I

learned quickly that I needed a new approach that relies on public choice but goes beyond it. I found

the approach in the entangled political economy framework, which allowed me to theoretically

understand what happens during crisis. I hope the reader will find value in the empirical presentation

of the pattern of lawmaking during the last five recessions as well as the theoretical explanations of

voter, legislator, bureaucrat, and interest group behavior that contribute to this pattern.

I am grateful for the excellent guidance by my PhD adviser Mark Pennington. Encouraging and

always helpful, he has read my chapters numerous times and provided crucial feedback. The work of

a dissertation adviser is hard, and it does not provide many tangible benefits. I could not have

wished for a better adviser. My second PhD adviser, Adam Martin, showed me the ins and outs of

academic publishing. An education that culminated in the publication of an article, Regime

Uncertainty and the Great Recession, in the Independent Review. This was a great experience, and I

have learned throughout the process many lessons that informed the present dissertation. Dr. Scott

James also generously committed time and energy in reading earlier PhD drafts and providing

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valuable feedback on the manuscript. There are many people within the Department of Political

Economy at Kings College London that I have to thank, such as Emily Skarbek and David Skarbek,

who taught me how to teach and who provided valuable advice on the academic life in general. I am

especially proud of and thankful for Anton Howes who started the PhD journey with me and who

has reduced the amount of convoluted Teutonic language in this dissertation from day one.

My academic career was only made possible through the support of my parents. Thank you for

hanging in there through my many years of studying. Ebba Karlsson, my partner during many years

of the PhD, was a huge support through the lows and highs of writing this book.

My PhD studies were supported by many organizations that had a lot of impact on my academic

development. The financial support and the great network of the Friedrich Naumann Foundation

(FNF) has to be mentioned. They have supported me since my BA studies. Without their support, I

would not even be able to speak English today since they supported me in taking intensive language

courses in Washington, DC, in 2009. I have held a PhD scholarship from the FNF from April 2013

to April 2016. FNF also published my bachelors thesis and reissued it two times, with over a

thousand copies distributed. The Institute for Humane Studies (IHS) also supported me as a fellow

over the years. Nigel Ashford from IHS was the one who told me about the new departmentthe

Department of Political Economyat Kings College London and encouraged me to apply. IHS's

seminars, especially the one on financial-market regulation in San Francisco in January 2016, had a

lot of influence on my thinking on the patterns of lawmaking.

I do not pretend that my work has even a shred of the ingenuity of Adam Smiths work. However, I

had the honor of carrying the title of an Adam Smith Fellow two years in a row. The Mercatus

Center at George Mason University in Virginia runs that program and enabled me to learn

extensively about two influences on this dissertation: the Ostroms and Virginia political economy.

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Furthermore, I presented several of my chapters through the Mercatus Center at George Mason

University. I received crucial feedback from the faculty of George Mason University. Especially

helpful were Peter Boettke, Chris Coyne, Virgil Storr, and Richard Wagner. The Mercatus Center

invited me to a two-day curriculum on Prof. Wagners recently published book Politics as a Peculiar

Business: Insights from a Theory of Entangled Political Economy. The in-depth discussion on the topic of

entanglement showed me the importance of entanglement for my own research. Richard Wagner

was also so kind as to review my chapter on the entangled political economy approach. Patrick

McLaughlin and Oliver Sherouse from the Mercatus Center were very helpful in reflecting on my

data findings and running my data through Regdata.org to generate additional insights on the

content of the laws that I study. I also want to thank the Weidenbaum Center at Washington

University in St. Louis and the George Washington University Regulatory Studies Center for their

help in studying bureaucrats and regulation. I express the same gratitude to the participants of the

workshop at the Cathay Institute of Public Administration in Beijing.

After two years at Kings, I spent the following two years within the productive research

environment of the Research Institute for Industrial Economics (IFN) in Stockholm. The institute

provided a great work environment. I wish to express my sincerest appreciation of the work of IFN

and its generosity. I also presented parts of my PhD at the brown-bag seminar series in March 2015.

I particular want to thank Magnus Henrikson, Niclas Berggren, Niklas Elert, and Henrik Horn for

their support and feedback on my PhD.

A huge thank you goes also to Edward Dehm, who has helped me to understand the data and some

of the code that was necessary to put all the empirical pieces together. My research benefitted from

the comments, conversations, and feedback from Aron Berg, Per Bylund, Mark Calabria, Art

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Carden, Wayne Crews, Stefanie Haeffele-Balch, Robert Higgs, Kalle Kappner, Cris Lingle, Ulrich

Mller, Heister Peirce, Marta Podemska-Mikluch, Chad van Schoelandt, and Aris Trantidis.

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