Approaches the question of whether ideas--world views, principled beliefs, and causal beliefs--have an impact on political outcomes, and if so, under what conditions. Contributions address such topics as the weight of ideas in decolonization; human rights policies in the US and western Europe; change in Parliament in early Stuart England; and coping with terrorism--norms and internal security in Germany and Japan. Annotation copyright by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR
An analytical framework for explaining the ways in which institutions and institutional change affect the performance of economies is developed in this analysis of economic structures.
For a decade Russia has been building a new political order. This collection of essays offers a progress report on this effort, recording the projects for institutional reform, their successes and their many failures. Institutions covered include the presidency, the State Duma, regional government, the judiciary, the 'power ministries', the foreign policy and economic policy making establishments. Other chapters examine popular attitudes towards institutions and the crises of state-society relations in Russia.
The authors propose a new theory of political behavior that re-invigorates the role of institutions—from laws and bureaucracy to rituals and symbols—as essential to understanding the modern political and economic systems that guide contemporary life.
The study of political institutions is among the founding pillars of political science. With the rise of the 'new institutionalism', the study of institutions has returned to its place in the sun. This volume provides a comprehensive survey of where we are in the study of political institutions, covering both the traditional concerns of political science with constitutions, federalism and bureaucracy and more recent interest in theory and the constructed nature of institutions. The Oxford Handbook of Political Institutions draws together a galaxy of distinguished contributors drawn from leading universities across the world. Authoritative reviews of the literature and assessments of future research directions will help to set the research agenda for the next decade.
To citizens and political analysts alike, United States trade law is an incoherent conglomeration of policies, both liberal and protectionist. Seeking to understand the contradictions in American policy, Judith Goldstein offers the first book to demonstrate the impact of the political past on today's trade decisions. As she traces the history of trade agreements from the antebellum era through the 1980s, she addresses a fundamental question: What effects do shared ideas about economics—as opposed to national power or individual self-interest—have on the institutions that make and enforce trade law? Goldstein argues that successful ideas become embedded in institutions and typically outlive the time during which they served social interests. She sets the stage with a discussion of the shifting commercial policy of the first half of the nineteenth century. After examining the consequences of the Republican party's decision to promote high tariffs between 1870 and 1930, she then considers in detail the political aftermath of the Great Depression, when the Democratic party settled on a reciprocal trade platform. Because the Democrats did not completely dismantle the existing system, however, the combined legacies of protection and openness help explain the intricacies in the forms of protectionism that political leaders have advocated since World War II. Readers in such fields as political science, political economy, policy studies and law, international relations, and American history will welcome Ideas, Interests, and American Trade Policy.
Understanding the governance of nations is a key challenge in contemporaneous political economy. This book provides new advances and the latest research in the field of political economy, dealing with the study of institutions, governance, democracy and elections. The volume focuses on issues such as the role of institutions and political governance in society, the working of democracy and the electoral performance in several case studies. The chapters involve cutting edge research on many different countries, including the USA, Great Britain, Germany, Spain and the Third World. The authors of the chapters are leading scholars in political economy from America, Europe and Asia.
A thorough critique of theories of institutional change followed by the development of a new theory emphasising the role of distributional conflict in the emergence of social institutions.
Do people's beliefs help to explain foreign policy decisions, or is political activity better understood as the self-interested behavior of key actors? The collaborative effort of a group of distinguished scholars, this volume breaks new ground in demonstrating how ideas can shape policy, even when actors are motivated by rational self-interest. After an introduction outlining a new framework for approaching the role of ideas in foreign policy making, well-crafted case studies test the approach. The function of ideas as "road maps" that reduce uncertainty is examined in chapters on human rights, decolonialization, the creation of socialist economies in China and Eastern Europe, and the postwar Anglo-American economic settlement. Discussions of parliamentary ideas in seventeenth-century England and of the Single European Act illustrate the role of ideas in resolving problems of coordination. The process by which ideas are institutionalized is further explored in chapters on the Peace of Westphalia and on German and Japanese efforts to cope with contemporary terrorism.
In this book, Miles Kahler examines both global and regional institutions and their importance in the world economy. Kahler explains the variation in these institutions and assesses the role they play in sustaining economic cooperation among nations.
