Institutional Design
Institutional design is a field that studies the game theoretic and comparative outcomes of structures.
Contents
Description
Building from either public choice or social choice assumptions, this is the study of how actors behave within an institution (or otherwise-defined rule set).
For studies of democratic (little d, one-person-one-vote) voting rules, the theory of rational choice voting is the appropriate specialization.
Legislators are generally characterized by some combination of credit claiming and blame avoiding.
Reading Notes
The Theory of Political Coalitions William H. Riker, 1962
Congressmen in Committees, Richard F. Fenno, Jr., 1973
Congress: The Electoral Connection, David R. Mayhew, 1974
The Politics of Blame Avoidance, R. Kent Weaver, 1986
Foreign Policy Begins at Home, Richard N. Haass, 2013
The Limits of Party: Congress and Lawmaking in a Polarized Era, Frances E. Lee, 2020
A Case for Congress: Shared Power for a Divided Society, Frances E. Lee, 2024
Demanding more than what you want, Zuheir Desai and Scott A. Tyson, 2025
Persistent unilateral action, David Foster, 2025
Legislative reciprocity: Using a proposal lottery to identify causal effects, Semra Sevi and Donald P. Green, 2025