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In a developing legislature, two types of stability are crucial for maintaining institutional viability. The first type of stability identifies legislative proposals that are invulnerable to majority rule voting cycles. The research addressing the implications of majority rule voting cycles has been rich and sustained, allowing scholars to address committee structures of institutionalized legislatures and norms. However, many formal theories of modern legislatures are not readily applicable to less structurally developed legislatures. In this paper, a simple majority rule game is used to illustrate two types of legislative stability: majority rule stability and stability against various obstructionary tactics including outright secession. For a developing legislature to become institutionalized, both types of stability are necessary.

Metadata only record ; A "thought paper" from a larger conference on project governance and sustainability, this article explores and questions how "short-termism" might be integrated into project governance to encourage effectiveness, and somewhat paradoxically, sustainability. Sjoblum et al. assert that short term projects have the ability to be more flexible in their attention to a problem, and when their experience is shared as knowledge, can be sustainable in allowing future projects to learn from past mistakes. The paper goes on to question how knowledge may be effectively communicated and how stakeholder involvement in project governance can impact sustainability. ; Available in SANREM office, FS

Efforts to better understand what prevents institutions from changing to meet contemporary demands – or what facilitates the evolution of existing constructs to address new challenges – are of particular import and relevance to environmental governance. While the existing literature provides valuable conceptualisation and empirical evaluation of institutional stability and change, the lack of a consistent and holistic typology complicates the evaluation of institutions over time. In this article, we use a combined stability–change typology to assess the dominant modes of institutional change and stability over a multi-decadal timespan across three environmental governance systems – air quality governance in the US and China, and climate governance in the European Union. Across cases, we find that these modes are not mutually exclusive but can occur simultaneously, in concert or in conflict. We also find that observed patterns of change and stability are reflective of the social and political context in which systems operate, as well as the focus of the system itself (for example, localised air quality versus global climate change). Apart from providing a proof-of-concept analysis of institutional change and stability, our findings raise questions about the mechanisms underlying spatial and temporal patterns across identified modes. Indirectly, our findings also further highlight challenges to designing systems both resilient to exogenous stressors and capable of adapting to new situations. Our combined stability–change typology may help to advance understanding of whether and how such balancing has occurred in the past, thus facilitating future efforts to address contemporary challenges.

Traditional trade theory maintains that international economic integration always yields potential welfare benefits. This result can however be maintained only in a world bereft of its institutional and cultural dimensions. In this paper we show that, once institutional factors are introduced, integration may be detrimental to welfare. Exploiting a game theoretical approach, we consider the integration between two societies that only differ in their institutional structures. Two important results are derived. First, intercommunity integration may trigger the demise of the erstwhile internal arrangements. Second, the collapse of the domestic institutional equilibrium can lead to a loss of welfare for the community as a whole.

Despite the greatly enhanced interest in processes of political change that political scientists have shown in recent years, there are still areas that have received attention in only the most speculative manner. Modernization, political development and comparative history are becoming established subdisciplines, reflecting 'the change to change'. But the political processes involved in the transformation of advanced industrial societies have as yet received only cursory empirical treatment.

Traditional trade theory obtains that international integration always yields large potential welfare benefits, even in a static constant returns competitive economy. Such a result however can only be maintained in a world bereft of its institutional and cultural dimensions. In this paper we show that once institutional factors are introduced into the discussion, integration may be detrimental to welfare in the long-run. Exploiting a game theoretical approach, we consider the integration between two societies that only differ in their institutional structures. Two important results are derived. First we illustrate that intercommunity integration may entail the disruption of the pre-existent internal arrangements in at least one of the two societies. This is crucial especially because in our model institutional diversity is the only reason that makes intercommunity integration profitable. Second, in the presence of gains from internal cooperation, the collapse of the domestic institutional equilibrium leads to a loss of welfare for the community as a whole.