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Intro -- Contents -- Acknowledgments -- What's This Book About? -- Part I - Basic Ideas -- 1. Rule Breaking - Introduction -- 2. Imagination -- Part II - Institutions, Rule Breaking, and Imagination -- 3. Thick Institutions and Rule Breaking: Sulla and Caesar, Reed and Johnson -- 4. Breaking Rules in Breaking the Filibuster -- 5. Political Imagination after Filibuster Reform: The Postcloture Filibuster and Its Demise -- 6. A Third Take on the Filibuster: Breaking Rules by Reinterpreting Rules -- 7. Obstruction and Urgency in the Nineteenth- Century House of Commons -- 8. Violating Legislative Rules: Resolving Bicameral Differences -- 9. Stealing Elections -- Part III - Bits and Bobs -- 10. King David and Old Testament Rule Breaking -- 11. Foreclosure, Bankruptcy, and Contract -- 12. Gimmickry -- 13. Intelligence Agencies: Breaking the Rules by Making Up Their Own Rules -- 14. Vigilantism -- Conclusions -- References -- Index.

"Imagination may be thought of as a 'work-around.' It is a resourceful tactic to 'undo' a rule by creating a path around it without necessarily defying it. . . . Transgression, on the other hand, is rule breaking. . . . There is no pretense of reinterpretation; it is defiance pure and simple. Whether imagination or disobedience is the source, constraints need not constrain, ties need not bind." So writes Kenneth A. Shepsle in his introduction to Rule Breaking and Political Imagination. Institutions are thought to channel the choices of individual actors. But what about when they do not? Throughout history, leaders and politicians have used imagination and transgression to break with constraints upon their agency. Shepsle ranges from ancient Rome to the United States Senate, and from Lyndon B. Johnson to the British House of Commons. He also explores rule breaking in less formal contexts, such as vigilantism in the Old West and the CIA's actions in the wake of 9/11. Entertaining and thought-provoking, Rule Breaking and Political Imagination will prompt a re-assessment of the nature of institutions and remind us of the critical role of political mavericks. Book jacket.

In this Top Twenty Commentaries section of the Centennial Issues of the journal, the author reviews the highly cited article A Method for Evaluating the Distribution of Power in a Committee System(1954) by L. S. Shapley & Martin Shubik. A definition of the Shapley-Shubik power index delineates the measure as a use of simple games in von Neumann & Morgenstern's cooperative game theory by hypothesizing the ex ante likelihood that an individual will be pivotal in transforming a nonwinning coalition into a winning one, despite that fact that the term "power" is acknowledged to never have been resolved in the political science disciplines. The two authors goal of pinning down the operating characteristics of a decision-making mechanism, & their nonobvious conclusions about power are delineated. The article is concluded to constitute an effort to bring rigor to the ambiguous subject of power, & is one of the earliest exemplars of formal political theory in the modern scholarly landscape. References. J. Harwell