The purpose of this volume is to help develop, through a variety of exploratory essays, the art and science of institutional design. The authors look at a variety of good societies as artifacts, as products--at least partly--of design, and consider how such societies can be crafted. They identify themselves with the New Constitutionalism movement, which aims to develop and promote the knowledge necessary for institutional reform and institutional creation through understanding the designer's, creator's, founder's, or reformer's perspective.

The first part of the volume considers...