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  3. Political Economy of Institutions and Decisions

The Political Economy of Institutions and Decisions series focuses on two central questions: How do institutions evolve in response to individual incentives, strategies, and choices, and how do institutions affect the performance of political and economic systems? The series concentrates on answers to these questions based in methodological individualism. Its scope is comparative and historical rather than international or specifically American. Its focus is positive rather than normative, but many of the studies in the series offer analyses of informal institutional factors, such as social norms and culture, based on a rational-choice approach.

  • General Editors: Jeffry Frieden, Harvard University, Massachusetts, John Patty, University of Chicago, Elizabeth Maggie Penn, University of Chicago
  • Founding Editors: James E. Alt, Harvard University, Massachusetts, Douglass C. North, Washington University, St Louis

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83 results in Political Economy of Institutions and Decisions

Page 5 of 5

Timber Booms and Institutional Breakdown in Southeast Asia
  • Michael L. Ross
  • Published online:
    30 July 2009
    Print publication:
    08 January 2001
  • Scholars have long studied how institutions emerge and become stable. But why do institutions sometimes break down? In this book, Michael L. Ross explores the breakdown of the institutions that govern natural resource exports in developing states. He shows that these institutions often break down when states receive positive trade shocks - unanticipated windfalls. Drawing on the theory of rent-seeking, he suggests that these institutions succumb to a problem he calls 'rent-seizing' - the predatory behavior of politicians who seek to supply rent to others, and who purposefully dismantle institutions that restrain them. Using case studies of timber booms in Indonesia, Malaysia and the Philippines, he shows how windfalls tend to trigger rent-seizing activities that may have disastrous consequences for state institutions, and for the government of natural resources. More generally, he shows how institutions can collapse when they have become endogenous to any rent-seeking process.

Globalization, Politics, and Financial Turmoil
  • Asia's Banking Crisis
  • Shanker Satyanath
  • Published online:
    24 July 2009
    Print publication:
    22 December 2005
  • In a world where capital moves freely across national borders, developing countries have increasingly been subjected to devastating financial crises caused by the sudden withdrawal of foreign capital. How do such crises come about? This book focuses on a novel causal path: that of miscommunication. By examining the determinants of Asia's financial crisis of 1997–8, it demonstrates why developing democracies are exceptionally vulnerable to breakdowns in communication between financial officials and the chief executive and outlines the disastrous consequences of such breakdowns. The book offers a framework for predicting where chief executives are most likely to be ill informed about critical economic variables. It also considers those situations in which politicians are dependent on financial officials whom they cannot completely trust or in which multiple veto players damage the flow of information.

The Politics of Constitutional Review in Germany
  • Georg Vanberg
  • Published online:
    11 July 2009
    Print publication:
    06 December 2004
  • Constitutional courts have emerged as central institutions in many advanced democracies. This book investigates the sources and the limits of judicial authority, focusing on the central role of public support for judicial independence. The empirical sections of the book illustrate the theoretical argument in an in-depth study of the German Federal Constitutional Court, including statistical analysis of judicial decisions, case studies, and interviews with judges and legislators. The book's major finding is that the interests of governing majorities, prevailing public opinion, and the transparency of the political environment exert a powerful influence on judicial decisions. Judges are influenced not only by jurisprudential considerations and their policy preferences, but also by strategic concerns. By highlighting this dimension of constitutional review, the book challenges the contention that high court justices are largely unconstrained actors as well as the notion that constitutional courts lack democratic legitimacy.

Page 5 of 5