This book models the emergence and evolution of the rule-of-law state. The protector or ruler is assumed to be self-seeking. Individuals will install a protector only after they create institutions to control him. Organized protection engenders legal institutions that enforce rights. A "state of nature" then gradually turns into a rule-of-law state. Individuals employ both the state and other third parties for enforcement. The fraction of agreements that the state enforces determines its scope. Rule-of-law states encourage market transactions and standards that facilitate trade. The larger...

The Efficient Secret is an analysis of the institutional changes in parliamentary government in nineteenth-century England, concentrating on the years between the first and third Reform Acts. Professor Gary W. Cox employs a rational choice model to analyze the problems of voter choice and to examine the emergence of party loyalty in the electorate, the development of cabinet government, and their legislative consequences. The introductory chapters provide the historical setting for this study and briefly survey nineteenth-century political and economic events. Professor Cox then focuses on...

Focusing on how the President and the Senate influence monetary policy by appointing Federal Reserve Board members, this book answers three questions about the appointment process and its effects. First, do politicians influence monetary policy via Federal Reserve appointments? Second, who influences the process--only the President or the President and the Senate? Third, how is the structure of the Federal Reserve appointment process explained? The study extends the analysis of the Federal Reserve Board to the European Central bank.

This study of institutional failure in Russia's first democratic legislature claims that inadequate rules and a chaotic party system combined to make it nearly impossible for the legislature to pass a coherent legislative program, including a new constitution. It studies a peculiar form of chaos; cycling; that can exist in majority rule institutions when institutional rules are weak. It identifies cycling in an important institutional setting--the Russian national legislature--and shows that poor institutional design has important consequences for the consolidation of democracy in...

This book empirically analyzes how a minority can succeed in having its way in a modern democracy. The author applies modern rational choice theory to examine such paradoxical triumphs in Swedish domestic politics over the past 100 years. Identifying Arrow's paradox, Prisoner's Dilemma, and other famous game-theoretic matrices, eight important issues in Swedish parliamentary history are explained: the tariff issue in the 1880s, the introduction of universal suffrage, the introduction of parliamentary government, the new economic politics during the 1930s, the debate on planned economies, the...

This book empirically analyzes how a minority can succeed in having its way in a modern democracy. The author applies modern rational choice theory to examine such paradoxical triumphs in Swedish domestic politics over the past 100 years. Identifying Arrow's paradox, Prisoner's Dilemma, and other famous game-theoretic matrices, eight important issues in Swedish parliamentary history are explained: the tariff issue in the 1880s, the introduction of universal suffrage, the introduction of parliamentary government, the new economic politics during the 1930s, the debate on planned economies, the...

Continuing his groundbreaking analysis of economic structures, Douglass North develops an analytical framework for explaining the ways in which institutions and institutional change affect the performance of economies, both at a given time and over time. Institutions exist, he argues, due to the uncertainties involved in human interaction; they are the constraints devised to structure that interaction. Yet, institutions vary widely in their consequences for economic performance; some economies develop institutions that produce growth and development, while others develop institutions that...

Many of the fundamental questions in social science entail an examination of the role played by social institutions. Why do we have so many social institutions? Why do they take one form in one society and quite different ones in others? In what ways do these institutions originally develop? And when and why do they change? Institutions and Social Conflict addresses these questions in two ways. First it offers a thorough critique of a wide range of theories of institutional change, from the classical accounts of Smith, Hume, Marx and Weber to the contemporary approaches of evolutionary...

The states of Egypt, India, Mexico, and Turkey have all developed extensive public enterprise sectors and have sought to regulate most economic activities outside the state sector. Their experiences have been typical of scores of developing countries that followed similar paths of industrialization. This study examines the origins of these state sectors, the dynamics of their growth and crises, and the efforts to reform or liquidate them. It is argued that public ownership creates its own culture and pathology that are similar across otherwise different systems. The logic of principal-agent...

This book explores how the political process in the United States influences the economy and how economic conditions influence electoral results. It explains how the interaction between the President and Congress lead to the formulation of macroeconomic policy and how the American voters achieve moderation by balancing the two institutions. Fluctuations in economic growth are shown to depend on the results of elections and, conversely, electoral results to depend on the state of the economy. The final chapter of the book establishes striking similarities between the American political economy...