'With this important collection, Hardy Hanappi and Wolfram Elsner, have brought together an outstanding volume that is likely to have its impact on the development of evolutionary economics. Expansive in its scope, the innovative contributions range from evolutionary and institutional mechanisms, dynamic market complexity as well as ontological groundwork of the rapidly emerging new evolutionary economics science. The book will be of great interest to academics, students and researchers of evolutionary and institutional economics.' - Kurt Dopfer, University of St Gallen, Switzerland

The discipline of public administration and public policy is experiencing a renaissance of research in which explicit attention is paid to political insti tutions. This renewed interest in institutions is not simply an extension of the 'classical' paradigm in the study of public administration, which peaked in the 1920s and 1930s, but offers a new orientation on political institutions. While 'classical' institutionalism is known for its focus on the formal stroctures of the executive branch of government, the 'new' institutionalism concentrates on the interaction between political institutions and the behavior of policy makers. This interaction, which until recently was largely neglected in public administration and public policy, forms the basic theme of this volume. To advance the study of political institutions, two rather basic problems need to be addressed: What are institutions and what are adequate ways to analyze them? We briefty discuss both questions, which determine the strocture of this book.

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.

This is part of a ten volume set of reference books offering authoritative and engaging critical overviews of the state of political science. This work explores the business end of politics, where theory meets practice in the pursuit of public good.

This handbook provides a survey of the American welfare state. It offers an historical overview of U.S. social policy from the colonial era to the present, a discussion of available theoretical perspectives on it, an analysis of social programmes, and on overview of the U.S. welfare state's consequences for poverty, inequality, and citizenship.

Political sociology is the interdisciplinary study of power and the intersection of personality, society and politics. The field also examines how the political process is affected by major social trends as well as exploring how social policies are altered by various social forces. Political sociologists increasingly use a wide variety of relatively new quantitative and qualitative methodologies and incorporate theories and research from other social science cognate disciplines. The contributors focus on the current controversies and disagreements surrounding the use of different methodologies for the study of politics and society, and discussions of specific applications found in the widely scattered literature where substantive research in the field is published. This approach will solidly place the handbook in a market niche that is not occupied by the current volumes while also covering many of the same theoretical and historical developments that the other volumes cover. The purpose of this handbook is to summarize state-of-the-art theory, research, and methods used in the study of politics and society. This area of research encompasses a wide variety of perspectives and methods that span social science disciplines. The handbook is designed to reflect that diversity in content, method and focus. In addition, it will cover developments in the developed and underdeveloped worlds.

Often dismissed as window-dressing, nominally democratic institutions, such as legislatures and political parties, play an important role in non-democratic regimes. In a comprehensive cross-national study of all non-democratic states from 1946 to 2002 that examines the political uses of these institutions by dictators, Gandhi finds that legislative and partisan institutions are an important component in the operation and survival of authoritarian regimes. She examines how and why these institutions are useful to dictatorships in maintaining power, analyzing the way dictators utilize institutions as a forum in which to organize political concessions to potential opposition in an effort to neutralize threats to their power and to solicit cooperation from groups outside of the ruling elite. The use of legislatures and parties to co-opt opposition results in significant institutional effects on policies and outcomes under dictatorship.

This book argues that fiscal federalism will consistently deliver on its governance promises only when democratic decentralization is combined with the integration of political parties. It formalizes this argument and, using new data on subnational political institutions, tests it with models of education, health, and infrastructure service delivery in 135 countries across 30 years. It also presents comparative case studies of Senegal and Nigeria. The book emphasizes that a “fine balance” in local governance can be achieved when integrated party structures compensate for the potential downsides of a decentralized state.

Institutions shape every dimension of politics. This volume collects original essays on how such institutions are formed, operated, and changed, both in theory and in practice. Ranging across formal institutions of government such as legislatures, courts, and bureaucracies and intermediary institutions such as labor unions and party systems, the contributors show how these instruments of control give shape to the state, articulate its relationships, and express its legitimacy. Rethinking Political Institutions captures the state of the art in the study of the art of the state. Drawing on some of the leading scholars in the field, this volume includes essays on issues of social power, public policy and programs, judicial review, and cross-national institutions. Rethinking Political Institutions is an essential addition to the debate on the significance of political institutions, in light of democracy, social change and power. Contributors: Elisabeth S. Clemens, Jon Elster, John Ferejohn, Terry M. Moe, Claus Offe, Paul Pierson, Ulrich K. Preuss, Rogers M. Smith, Kathleen Thelen, Mark Tushnet, R. Kent Weaver, Margaret Weir, Keith E. Whittington

In times of climate change and public debt, a concern for intergenerational justice should lead us to have a closer look at theories of intergenerational justice. It should also press us to provide institutional design proposals to change the decision-making world that surrounds us. This book provides an exhaustive overview of the most important institutional proposals as well as a systematic and theoretical discussion of their respective features and advantages. It focuses on institutional proposals aimed at taking the interests of future generations more seriously, and does so from the perspective of applied political philosophy, being explicit about the underlying normative choices and the latest developments in the social sciences. It provides citizens, activists, firms, charities, public authorities, policy-analysts, students, and academics with the body of knowledge necessary to understand what our institutional options are and what they entail if we are concerned about today's excessive short-termism.