Abstract: A vast literature documents better economic institutions in common law compared with civil law countries. The present paper argues that legal origin alone is insufficient to explain differences in the quality of economic institutions across countries. Rather, it is the interaction between legal origin and the quality of political institutions that is important. Empirical evidence from...

■ Abstract Wrestling with basic problems of causal inference between institutions and outcomes has been a central focus of political science over the last decade, and as elsewhere in the discipline, scholars of postcommunism have begun to make some headway on these problems. Their efforts have not only advanced important debates about postcommunism, but also in many cases addressed long-standin...

It is our contention that information technology is a cultural commodity whose influence is spread through economic and political action of institutions such as the government and corporations. Informed by Bourdieu’s sociology of language, we conduct a content analysis of political speeches regarding “digital opportunities” delivered by U. S. government officials. In this analysis we demonstrat...

An intense scholarly and public policy debate concerns the optimal design of political institutions for new democracies, particularly those facing deep ethnic or cultural cleavages. Drawing on a book-length study of political engineering in the AsiaPacific region, this paper surveys the differences between consociational and centripetal approaches to institutional design. After examining the ke...

In this paper we provide a political game where agents decide whether to become legislators or politicians. Legislators determine the political institutions constraining politicians’ behavior and politicians compete for gaining the power to make decisions about the level of the public good. We derive a number of interesting results: i) Political competition is a necessary but not a sufficient c...

The rule of law entails government accountability, equal access to justice and the political process, efficient judicial and political systems, clear laws, generally stable laws, and the protection of fundamental human rights. This paper explores whether Islamic law conforms to these principles in theory and in practice. Three conclusions are reached. First, various early Islamic institutions w...

My research fields are development economics and political economy. One strand of my research focuses on the role of property rights institutions — the laws, rules and norms that govern how property is allocated, how property can be transferred, and how property is secured. The second strand focuses on political institutions: the constraints and rules governing policy makers, and the representa...

This article contends that legitimacy in the exercise of power comes from the consent of those subject to it. In global health, this implies that the participation of poor country citizens is required for the legitimacy of major actors and institutions. But a review of institutions and processes suggests that this participation is limited or absent. Particularly because of the complex political...

Do societies choose inefficient policies and institutions, in contrast to what would be suggested by a reasoning extending the Coase Theorem to politics? Do societies choose inefficient policies and institutions because of differences in the beliefs and ideologies of their peoples or leaders? Or are inefficiencies in politics and economics the outcome of social and distributional conflicts? Thi...