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This paper presents an experimental study on the ability of human groups to escape the tragedy of the commons through institutional change. It shows that the groups identify institutional change as a means of resolving social dilemmas and are ready to apply it even if the change requires an unanimous vote. At the same time, the groups who were given the right to change the rules performed poorer on average than the control-groups. This result stands in contradiction to elementary economic reasoning as well as the results of previous experimental studies.

Part I: -- 1. Introduction: choice, constraint, and European Union institutions -- 2. Theorizing procedural politics: issues, interests, and institutional choice -- 3. The EU as a procedural system: Rules, preferences, and Strategic interaction -- 4. Patterns: Determinants and Effects of EU procedural politics -- 5. Greening the market? Procedural politics and EU Environmental policy -- 6. Mad cow and Englishmen: procedural politics and EU agricultural policy -- 7. Conclusion: procedural politics and rule governance in the EU and beyond.

Cover -- Title -- Copyright -- CONTENTS -- LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS -- LIST OF TABLES -- PREFACE -- LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS -- ONE Choosing Legislative Institutions in Russia -- TWO Forming a Parliamentary Party System -- THREE Creating the Council of the Duma -- FOUR Setting a Framework for Party-Committee Relations -- FIVE Choosing an Electoral System -- SIX Party Discipline in the Russian Duma -- SEVEN Institutional Choice -- Appendix on Data and Methods -- REFERENCES -- INDEX

Events in Russia since the late 1980s have created a rare opportunity to watch the birth of democratic institutions close at hand. Here Steven Smith and Thomas Remington provide the first intensive, theoretically grounded examination of the early development of the State Duma, the lower house of the Russian Federation's parliament created by the 1993 constitution. They offer an integrated account of the choices made by the newly elected members of the Duma in establishing basic operating arrangements: an agenda-setting governing body, a standing committee system, an electoral law, and a party system. Not only do these decisions promise to have lasting consequences for the post-communist Russian regime, but they also enable the authors to test assumptions about politicians' goals from the standpoint of institutional theory. Smith and Remington challenge in particular the notion, derived from American contexts, that politicians pursue a single, overarching goal in the creation of institutions. They argue that politicians have multiple political goals--career, policy, and partisan--that drive their choices. Among Duma members, the authors detect many cross currents of interests, generated by the mixed electoral system, which combines both single-member districts and proportional representation, and by sharp policy divisions and an emerging party system. Elected officials may shift from concentrating on one goal to emphasizing another, but political contexts can help determine their behavior. This book brings a fresh perspective to numerous theories by incorporating first-hand accounts of major institutional choices and placing developments in their actual context.