= Institutional Design = '''Institutional design''' is a field that studies the game theoretic and comparative outcomes of structures. <> ---- == Description == Institutional design is the study of how actors behave within an institution (or otherwise-defined rule set) and of how to shape an institution to yield certain behavior. It implicitly assumes [[PoliticalScience/Instrumentalism|instrumentalism]] in that the form of institutions derives from utility rather than [[PoliticalPhilosophy|philosophy]]. Beyond this, it generally builds from either public choice or social choice methods for measuring and comparing utility. Legislators are generally characterized by some combination of [[CongressTheElectoralConnection|credit claiming]] and [[ThePoliticsOfBlameAvoidance|blame avoiding]]. If assumptions about rationality and utility functions are not being made, the work is better classified under [[PoliticalScience/ElectoralSystems|comparative politics]]. For studies of democratic (little d, one-person-one-vote) voting rules, the [[PoliticalScience/RationalChoiceVoting|theory of rational choice voting]] is the appropriate specialization. ---- == Reading Notes == * [[TheTheoryOfPoliticalCoalitions|The Theory of Political Coalitions]] William H. Riker, 1962 * [[TheClosedRuleAndTheParadoxOfVoting|The Closed Rule and the Paradox of Voting]], John C. Blydenburgh, 1971 * [[CongressmenInCommittees|Congressmen in Committees]], Richard F. Fenno, Jr., 1973 * [[CongressTheElectoralConnection|Congress: The Electoral Connection]], David R. Mayhew, 1974 * [[ThePoliticsOfBlameAvoidance|The Politics of Blame Avoidance]], R. Kent Weaver, 1986 * [[IncentivesToCultivateAPersonalVote|Incentives to Cultivate a Personal Vote: a Rank Ordering of Electoral Formulas]], Matthew Shugart and John Carey, 1995 * [[DidHamiltonJeffersonAndMadisonCauseTheUSGovernmentShutdown|Did Hamilton, Jefferson, and Madison “Cause” the U.S. Government Shutdown? The Institutional Path from an Eighteenth Century Republic to a Twenty-first Century Democracy]], John H. Aldrich, 2015 * [[TheLimitsOfParty|The Limits of Party: Congress and Lawmaking in a Polarized Era]], Frances E. Lee, 2020 * [[DemandingMoreThanWhatYouWant|Demanding more than what you want]], Zuheir Desai and Scott A. Tyson, 2025 * [[PersistentUnilateralAction|Persistent unilateral action]], David Foster, 2025 * [[LegislativeReciprocity|Legislative reciprocity: Using a proposal lottery to identify causal effects]], Semra Sevi and Donald P. Green, 2025 * [[DecentralizationAndIdeology|Decentralization and ideology]]; Anna M. Wilke, Georgiy Syunyaev, and Michael Ting; 2026 ---- CategoryRicottone