This chapter surveys the new institutional economics, a rapidly growing literature combining economics, law, organization theory, political science, sociology and anthropology to understand social, political and commercial institutions. This literature tries to explain what institutions are, how they arise, what purposes they serve, how they change and how they may be reformed. Following conven...

Many philosophers, sociologists, and political scientists defend the claim that rational choice theory can provide the basis for a unified and comprehensive theory of social behaviour. Rational choice models are theoretically generalized to explain the behaviour studied by nearly all social science disciplines, from political science to psychology and sociology. Specific applications include go...

Panel data analysis is a method of studying a particular subject within multiple sites, periodically observed over a defined time frame. Within the social sciences, panel analysis has enabled researchers to undertake longitudinal analyses in a wide variety of fields. In economics, panel data analysis is used to study the behavior of firms and wages of people over time. In political science, it ...

This article reviews how major theorists of nationalism – from Ernest Renan to Benedict Anderson – have tried to come to grips with the puzzle that Swiss nationalism and the Swiss state present in view of the monoethnic states that surround it. I will argue that this puzzle disappears when assuming a political sociology perspective that highlights the networks of political alliances underlying ...

Political sociologists have typically studied the state as a self-enclosed institution hovering above civil society. In this formulation, is rendered omniscient, gazing out over passive society if it were naturalized landscape. But in special issue, we think about how states “see” relation to whom and what seen, these subjects collective actors become visible first place. We advocate relational...