Advocates of parliamentary rule have been highly critical of presidentialism for dividing powers and providing the opportunity for gridlock between branches. Yet the great theorists of presidential rule saw in the same institutions a desirable combination of strong leadership with checks on executive discretion. These diverse assessments arise because we have surprisingly little comparative work on how presidential democracies function. The essays in this volume show, through case studies from Asia, Latin America, and Central Europe, how presidential democracies deal with the challenges of...

Individuals, Institutions, and Markets offers a theory of how the institutional framework of a society emerges and how markets within institutions work. The book shows that both social institutions, defined as the rules of the game, and exchange processes can be analyzed along a common theoretical structure. Mantzavinos' proposal is that a problem solving model of individual behavior inspired by the cognitive sciences provides such a unifying theoretical structure. Integrating the latest scholarship in economics, sociology, political science, law, and anthropology, Mantzavinos offers a...

Advocates of parliamentary rule have been highly critical of presidentialism for dividing powers and providing the opportunity for gridlock between branches. Yet the great theorists of presidential rule saw in the same institutions a desirable combination of strong leadership with checks on executive discretion. These diverse assessments arise because we have surprisingly little comparative work on how presidential democracies function. The essays in this volume show, through case studies from Asia, Latin America, and Central Europe, how presidential democracies deal with the challenges of...

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.

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...

In Making a Market, Jean Ensminger analyzes the process by which the market was introduced into the economy of a group of Kenyan pastoralists. Professor Ensminger employs new institutional economic analysis to assess the impact of new market institutions on production and distribution, with particular emphasis on the effect of institutions on decreasing transaction costs over time. This study traces the effects of increasing commercialization on the economic well-being of individual households, rich and poor alike, over considerable time and analyzes the process by which institutions...

This book explains why citizens sometimes comply with and sometimes disobey the demands of democratic governments. It argues that citizens are more likely to comply and even give active consent when they perceive government as procedurally fair in both decisionmaking and implementation processes and when they believe other citizens are also doing their share. The author develops her argument by exploring over two hundred years of military service policies in six democratic countries.

Does establishing representative democracy increase commitment to repaying public debt? This book develops a new theory about the link between debt and democracy and applies it to a classic historical comparison: eighteenth century Great Britain (which had strong representative institutions and sound public finance) vs. ancien regime France (which had neither). The study asserts that whether representative institutions improve commitment depends on the opportunities for government creditors to form coalitions with other groups. It is relevant to developing country governments with...

Most citizens seem underinformed about politics. Many experts claim that only well-informed citizens can make good political decisions. Is this claim correct? In The Democratic Dilemma, Professors Lupia and McCubbins combine insights from political science, economics and the cognitive sciences to explain how citizens gather and use information. They show when citizens who lack information can (and cannot) make the same decisions they would have made if better informed. As a result, they clarify the debate about citizen competence.

This book investigates strategic coordination in elections worldwide. Although the classics of electoral studies have dealt with issues of coordination, this is the first book that employs a unified game-theoretic model to study strategic coordination--including both strategic voting and strategic entry--worldwide and that relies primarily on constituency-level rather than national aggregate data in testing theoretical propositions about the effects of electoral laws.