The Theory of Institutional Design

Description

Problems of institutional design and redesign, structuring and restructuring, acquired particular poignancy through recent developments from eastern Europe to southern Africa. At the same time, scholars in each of several disciplines—political science, economics, sociology, history, and philosophy—have increasingly come to appreciate the important independent role that is, and should be, played by institutional factors in social life. In this volume, disparate theories of institutional design given by specialists in each of those several disciplines are synthesized and their peculiar power illustrated. Drawing upon traditions from Kantian ethics to public choice economics, from organizational sociology to discourse analytics, the contributors emphasize the important interpenetration of normative and empirical analysis in examples ranging from changes in the British welfare state through the reward structure of the modern university to the transition of eastern European societies. Cover......Page 1 Series......Page 5 Title......Page 6 Copyright......Page 7 Contents......Page 8 Notes on Contributors......Page 10 Preface......Page 12 1. Institutions and Their Design......Page 14 2. Institutional Design and Rational Choice......Page 67 3. Second Best Theories and the Implications for Institutional Design......Page 103 4. The Informal Logic of Institutional Design......Page 116 5. Institutional Morality......Page 139 6. The Publicity Principle......Page 167 7. Designing Institutions in East European Transitions......Page 212 8. Political Deals in Institutional Settings......Page 240 9. Self-inventing Institutions: Institutional Design and the U.K. Welfare State......Page 253 10. Selection and the Currency of Reward......Page 269 Name Index......Page 290 Subject Index......Page 294