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This study explains why Buddhists, Protestants, and Catholics in Korea have shown different voting behavior since democratization. The study argues that the differing institutional adjustments of the major religions during the democratic transition affect believers' electoral decisions. While Buddhists have supported conservative parties, Protestants and Catholics have changed their voting choices.

Recent leadership transition in China was a mixture of institutional formalization and political personalization. Intra-party democracy has been conducted within the framework of one-party rule and guided by the predetermined principle of democratic centralism. Past choices of rules constrain China's institution building, while providing new opportunities for the reform elite.

ABSTRACT. Viewed retrospectively, the early research program in public choice was intellectually exciting, and especially as that program found its institutional home in Blacksburg, Virginia, in the 1970s and 1980s. The time was ripe for such a scientific development, and the events of the 1960s gave impetus to particular thrusts of the still‐emerging research agenda.

A country's form of government has important economic and political consequences, but the determinants that lead countries to choose either parliamentary or presidential systems are largely unexplored. This paper studies this choice by analyzing the factors that make countries switch from parliamentary to presidential systems (or vice versa). The analysis proceeds in two steps. First, we identify the survival probability of the existing form of government (drawing on a proportional hazard model). In our model, which is based on 169 countries, we find that geographical factors and former colonial status are important determinants of survival probability. Also, presidential systems are, ceteris paribus, more likely to survive than parliamentary ones. Second, given that a change has taken place, we identify the underlying reasons based on panel data logit models. We find that domestic political factors are more important than economic ones. The most important factors relate to intermediate internal armed conflict, sectarian political participation, degree of democratization, and party competition, as well as the extent to which knowledge resources are distributed among the members of society.

A country's form of government has important economic and political consequences, but the determinants that lead societies to choose either parliamentary or presidential systems are largely unexplored. This paper studies this choice by analyzing the factors that make countries switch from parliamentary to presidential systems (or vice versa). The analysis proceeds in two steps. First, we identify the survival probability of the existing form of government (drawing on a proportional hazard model). In our model, which is based on 169 countries, we find that geographical factors and former colonial status are important determinants of survival probability. Also, presidential systems are, ceteris paribus, more likely to survive than parliamentary ones. Second, given that a change has taken place, we identify the underlying reasons based on panel data logit models. Wefind that domestic political factors are more important than economic ones. The most important factors relate to intermediate internal armed conflict, sectarian political participation, degree of democratization, and party competition, as well as the extent to which knowledge resources are distributed among the members of society.

This dissertation examines the last thirty years of internal reforms in the Swedish Government Offices. Analysis of the evolution of personnel politics, the formation of one agency and the attempts to introduce a collective activity planning model, show that the immediate problems of the early 1970's – an over dimensioned staff, territory battles and unclear division of responsibility for personnel and organisation – remains to this day, notwithstanding the many reforms to approach them. One principal explanation behind this is that the key players for successful reorganisations – the politicians – do hardly ever partake. Instead, and on the basis of the perspective of bureaucratic politics, this dissertation demonstrates that the internal development of the Government Offices should be explained as the result of struggles between different bureaucratic actors, with diverse views on problems and their solutions, and with various prospects and strengths to affect the outcome. Due to the choice of politicians to leave this policy field open to bureaucratic politics, the policy is essentially shaped and decided within a bureaucratic context. The dissertation ends in a conclusion that there is an almost constant bureaucratic battle behind internal organisation of the Government Offices, a conflict where tradition, values and strong bureaucratic actors play an important part, and where institutional change is exceptional, since the preserving powers in these processes have the upper hand. But politicians can change – in spite of these traditions, values and bureaucratic agents – if they have the determination. The theoretical aim of this dissertation, through a critical assessment of the bureaucratic politics perspective – an evaluation motivated by the empirical data and inspired by two challenging and related theoretic models; sociological and historical institutionalism – is to display the qualities and shortcomings of the bureaucratic politics model, to develop and improve the original model of bureaucratic politics, and making it more expedient for future studies of institutional change in central political organisations.

The article, by juxtaposing the Polish and the American democratic consolidations, examines the deficiencies of the state transformation in Poland, focusing specifically on the conflict between a procedural and a substantive interpretation of democratic order. The analysis of the act that initiated the process of transition to democracy, the Roundtable Accord of 1989, is followed by a case study of an imperfect consensus and political compromise, the choices of electoral laws. After discussion of some other cases of ill-conceived institutional designs, the article concludes with an analysis of the socio-political background of the institutional transformation in Poland.

This essay addresses the question, "Why do different democracies pursue different public policies?" through an examination of taxation policy in the United States, Sweden, and Britain. The essay demonstrates how the different decision-making structures found in these three democracies (characterized as pluralist, corporatist, and party government systems, respectively) bias each polity toward different types of policy outcomes. The key argument is that institutional structures are the context in which political actors must necessarily define their policy preferences and determine their strategic objectives. Institutional structures thus provide a central link between individual choice behavior and macro policy outcomes.

This volume brings together a set of key writings of Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences co-recipient Elinor Ostrom and public choice political economy cofounder Vincent Ostrom, in which the two scholars introduce, elaborate and explain their approaches, conceptual frameworks and analytical perspectives to the study of institutions and institutional performance. The book brings together a number of texts representing the main analytical and conceptual vehicles articulated and used by the Ostroms and their collaborators in the creation of the so-called Bloomington School of public choice and institutional theory. The focus is hence on the conceptual lenses and theoretical apparatus that shaped the construction of their work; an attempt to illustrate them, via selected readings organized using a tentative interpretative framework. Its ultimate objective is not only to offer a direct introduction to the conceptual, theoretical and epistemic perspectives that shaped and inspired this prominent research program, but also to point out the fascinating intellectual avenues opened by the Ostroms' and that invite further exploration and investigation.--

Chapter 1:Transformation Crises and Adaptive Governance in China: A Historical Comparative Perspective -- Chapter 2: From Political Development Theory to Policy Process Theory -- Chapter 3: China's Incremental Political Reform Based on Political Stability -- Chapter 4: Political Reform Policy: Goal-Setting and the Choice of the Tactics -- Chapter 5: Orientation of the Political System Reform and Policy Choice After the 18th National People's Congress of the CPC -- Chapter 6: The Rise of Technocrats: Bureaucratic Elite Transformation in Post-Mao China -- Chapter 7: Experimental Reform of Grassroots Democracy Under the Party-controlled Cadre System -- Chapter 8: Village Governance in China under the Complexities of the "Three Rural Issues" -- Chapter 9: Theoretical Misunderstandings and Space for the Development of NGOs -- Chapter 10: The Relationship Between Government and Enterprises in the Reform of State-owned Enterprises -- Chapter 11: Institutional Restriction and System Innovation in the Reform of the Administrative Examination and Approval System -- Chapter 12 Structural Restraints and Institutional Innovation in Local Governance.

The struggle to develop Africa : the failure of development theory -- The struggle to develop Africa : lessons from public choice theory -- The African economies today : an overview -- The state and a legacy of perverse economic policies -- Structural adjustment programs, the Bretton Woods institutions, and development in Africa -- Perpetuating poverty in Africa : official development assistance -- Raping Eden : property rights and the destruction of Africa's environmental resources -- Preparing Africa for the new millennium and beyond -- Institutions, structure of the constitution, and development in Africa

The transaction cost economics (TCE), in the field of New Institutional Economics, have been shown as one of the most elaborate theoretical and explanatory constructs of arrangements existing in organizational reality. However, recent studies have sought on the Resource Based View (RBV) approach the theoretical foundations about setting these arrangements, in addition to highlighting a required complementarity between TCE and the RVB in understanding how they are formed. In this sense, the objective in this article was to understand how the complementarity theory TCE and RBV explain the configuration of the governance structures in the context of New Institutional Economics. The discussion presented in the form of essay, demonstrated that resources and differentiated capabilities could provide the basis for the proper choice of governance structures. These structures, in turn, are chosen in order to protect and achieve sustainable competitive advantages from these resources. Thus, that the complementary view of TCE with RBV is able to encompass more fully the aspects related to the choice of firm boundaries, minimizing the individual limitations of these approaches in terms of strategic analysis.

ABSTRACTMajor institutional reforms are currently under way to improve the performance of the public water sector in Kenya. However, a historical perspective is needed in order to achieve sustainable improvements that will also benefit the urban poor. This article seeks to provide such a perspective, applying a cross-disciplinary and socio-technical approach to urban water supply over the last century, in which institutions, organisations and technology are seen to interact with political, economic and demographic processes. Despite a series of reforms over the years, the socio-technical structure of the urban water sector in Kenya has shown a remarkable stability since the 1920s, and into the 1980s. However, the sustainability of the public service systems has been eroded since independence, due to changes in the institutional framework surrounding the systems, while exclusive standards and technological choices have essentially been preserved from the colonial era. Current sector reform must create incentives for addressing technology choices and service standards in order to provide public water services also for the urban poor.