Kenneth A. Shepsle surveys the formal literature on multiparty electoral competition.

This volume serves as an introduction to the new field of positive political economy and the various economic and political processes with which it is concerned. Grounded in the rational-actor methodology of microeconomics, positive political economy is devoted to the dual analysis of the role of economic behavior in political processes and of political behavior and constraints in economic exchange. The field has focused on three main subjects of study: models of collective action in industrialized democracies; the organization of markets and alternative mechanisms of exchange in the Third...

Making and Breaking Governments offers a theoretical argument about how parliamentary democracy works. The authors formulate a theoretical model of how parties create new governments and either maintain them in office or, after a resignation or no-confidence vote, replace them. The theory involves strategic interaction, derives consequences, formulates empirical hypotheses on the basis of these, and tests the hypotheses with data drawn from the postwar European experience with parliamentary democracy.

The formal modeling techniques of rational choice theory have become central to the discipline of political science, for example with regard to the understanding of the working of legislatures, coalition governments, executive-bureaucracy relations, or electoral systems. The collection includes the very best work in this field, as well as an editors' introduction to each volume that describes the importance of the articles and their place in political science.

A close examination of the constitutional relationship between legislature and executive in parliamentary regimes.

"Imagination may be thought of as a 'work-around.' It is a resourceful tactic to 'undo' a rule by creating a path around it without necessarily defying it. . . . Transgression, on the other hand, is rule breaking. There is no pretense of reinterpretation; it is defiance pure and simple. Whether imagination or disobedience is the source, constraints need not constrain, ties need not bind."

So writes Kenneth A. Shepsle in his introduction to Rule Breaking and Political Imagination. Institutions are thought to channel the choices of individual actors. But what about when they do not?...