Political Institutions

Political Institutions PDF

Author: Josep M. Colomer

Publisher: OUP Oxford

Published: 2001-02-01

Total Pages: 266

ISBN-13: 9780191529252

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The role of institutions is to establish the domains of public activity and the rules to select leaders. Democratic regimes organize in simple institutional frameworks to foster the concentration of power and alternative successive absolute winners and losers. They favour political satisfaction of relatively small groups, as well as policy instability. In contrast, pluralistic institutions produce multiple winners, including multiparty co-operation and agreements. They favour stable, moderate, and consensual policies that can satisfy large groups' interests on a great number of issues. The more complex the political institutions, the more stable and socially efficient the outcome will be. This book develops an extensive analysis of this relationship. It explores concepts, questions and insights based on social choice theory, while empirical focus is cast on more than 40 democratic countries and a few international organizations from late medieval times to the present. The book argues that pluralistic democratic institutions are judged to be better than simple formula of their higher capacity of producing socially satisfactory results.

Political Institutions

Political Institutions PDF

Author: Josep Maria Colomer

Publisher: OUP Oxford

Published: 2001-02-01

Total Pages: 256

ISBN-13: 9780199241835

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This ground-breaking book examines the relationship between the complexity of political institutions and the stability of socially effective outcomes in more than 40 countries. - ;The role of institutions is to establish the domains of public activity and the rules to select leaders. Democratic regimes organized in simple institutional frameworks to foster the concentration of power and alternative successive absolute winners and losers. They favour political satisfaction of relatively small groups, as well as policy instability. In contrast, pluralistic institutions produce multiple winners, including multiparty co-operation and agreements. They favour stable, moderate, and consensual policies that can satisfy large groups' interests on a great number of issues. The more complex the political institutions, the more stable and socially efficient the outcome will be. This book develops an extensive analysis of this relationship. It explores concepts, questions and insights based on social choice theory, while empirical focus is cast on more than 40 democratic countries and a few international organizations from late medieval times to the present. The book argues that pluralistic democratic institutions are better than simple formulas for their higher capacity of producing socially satisfactory results. -

Political Institutions

Political Institutions PDF

Author: Josep Maria Colomer

Publisher:

Published: 2001

Total Pages: 256

ISBN-13: 9780191598975

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Examining the relationship between the role and complexity of political institutions, and the effect of these factors on their policies, this text explores concepts, questions and insights based on social choice theory.

Social Choice and Legitimacy

Social Choice and Legitimacy PDF

Author: John W. Patty

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2014-07-31

Total Pages: 223

ISBN-13: 1139915487

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Governing requires choices, and hence trade-offs between conflicting goals or criteria. This book asserts that legitimate governance requires explanations for such trade-offs and then demonstrates that such explanations can always be found, though not for every possible choice. In so doing, John W. Patty and Elizabeth Maggie Penn use the tools of social choice theory to provide a new and discriminating theory of legitimacy. In contrast with both earlier critics and defenders of social choice theory, Patty and Penn argue that the classic impossibility theorems of Arrow, Gibbard, and Satterthwaite are inescapably relevant to, and indeed justify, democratic institutions. Specifically, these institutions exist to do more than simply make policy - through their procedures and proceedings, these institutions make sense of the trade-offs required when controversial policy decisions must be made.

Collective Decision-Making:

Collective Decision-Making: PDF

Author: Norman Schofield

Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media

Published: 2013-03-09

Total Pages: 430

ISBN-13: 9401587671

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In the last decade the techniques of social choice theory, game theory and positive political theory have been combined in interesting ways so as to pro vide a common framework for analyzing the behavior of a developed political economy. Social choice theory itself grew out of the innovative attempts by Ken neth Arrow (1951) and Duncan Black (1948, 1958) to extend the range of economic theory in order to deal with collective decision-making over public goods. Later work, by William Baumol (1952), and James Buchanan and Gordon Tullock (1962), focussed on providing an "economic" interpretation of democratic institutions. In the same period Anthony Downs (1957) sought to model representative democracy and elections while William Riker (1962) made use of work in cooperative game theory (by John von Neumann and Oscar Morgenstern, 1944) to study coalition behavior. In my view, these "rational choice" analyses of collective decision-making have their antecedents in the arguments of Adam Smith (1759, 1776), James Madison (1787) and the Marquis de Condorcet (1785) about the "design" of political institutions. In the introductory chapter to this volume I briefly describe how some of the current normative and positive aspects of social choice date back to these earlier writers.

Social Choice and Democratic Values

Social Choice and Democratic Values PDF

Author: Eerik Lagerspetz

Publisher: Springer

Published: 2015-11-26

Total Pages: 448

ISBN-13: 3319232614

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This book offers a comprehensive overview and critique of the most important political and philosophical interpretations of the basic results of social choice, assessing their plausibility and seeking to identify the links between the theory of social choice and the more traditional issues of political theory and philosophy. In this regard, the author eschews a strong methodological commitment or technical formalism; the approach is instead based on the presentation of political facts and illustrated via numerous real-life examples. This allows the reader to get acquainted with the philosophical and political dispute surrounding voting and collective decision-making and its links to social choice theory.

Liberalism against Populism

Liberalism against Populism PDF

Author: William H. Riker

Publisher: Waveland Press

Published: 1988-07-01

Total Pages: 311

ISBN-13: 1478648708

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The discoveries of social choice theory have undermined the simple and unrealistic nineteenth-century notions of democracy, especially the expectation that electoral institutions smoothly translate popular will directly into public policy. One response to these discoveries is to reject democracy out of hand. Another, which is the program of this book, is to save democracy by formulating more realistic expectations. Hence, this book first summarizes social choice theory in order to explain the full force of its critique. Then it explains, in terms of social choice theory, how politics and public issues change and develop. Finally, it reconciles democratic ideals with this new understanding of politics.

Democratic Planning and Social Choice Dilemmas

Democratic Planning and Social Choice Dilemmas PDF

Author: Tore Sager

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2020-07-24

Total Pages: 307

ISBN-13: 1000152251

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Using the economic approach of social choice theory, this unique book examines difficulties found in democratic processes involved in the creation and implementation of planning policies. Social choice theory focuses on the hard trade-offs to be made between rationality in decision-making on the one hand, and political values such as democracy, liberalism and freedom from manipulation on the other. As an institution can be seen as a set of rules, the focus on rules and procedures of collective choice makes social choice theory well suited for analysing important political aspects of planning institutions. Special attention is given to communicative planning and the logical reasons why all the desirable properties of dialogue cannot be simultaneously attained. The analysis provides original and significant new insights into the process and the institutions involved. It highlights weak spots of present planning techniques and procedures and suggests further steps towards institutionally enriched planning theory.

Deliberation, Social Choice and Absolutist Democracy

Deliberation, Social Choice and Absolutist Democracy PDF

Author: David van Mill

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2007-01-24

Total Pages: 376

ISBN-13: 1134166842

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Social choice theory and theories of deliberative discourse have deeply impacted on the way political scientists understand the dynamics of democratic politics and decision-making. Deliberation, Social Choice and Absolutist Democracy addresses the dispute between these competing schools of thought. Deliberative democracy and social choice theorists offer the two dominant and competing conceptions of participation in contemporary democratic theory. With the former holding that theories of discourse tell us that through the democratic process we can arrive at consensus, rational outcomes and even principles of justice, while the latter suggest that fair and equal participation is more likely to lead to instability and irrational outcomes. With an in-depth examination of social choice theory and deliberative democracy, David van Mill: presents two case studies on the American Continental Congress 1774-1789 provides an assessment of the types of institutions that will promote radical democracy and create stable outcomes with the minimum sacrifice of the freedom and equality of participants defends a more radical idea of absolutist democracy, gleaned from the writings of Hobbes, against the claims made in favour of limited constitutional government. This book will be of interest to students and researchers of political theory, particularly those with an interest in democracy and social choice theory.

The Oxford Handbook of Political Institutions

The Oxford Handbook of Political Institutions PDF

Author: R. A. W. Rhodes

Publisher: OUP Oxford

Published: 2008-06-13

Total Pages: 840

ISBN-13: 0191563390

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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.