Efnisyfirlit

• Routledge research in comparative politics
• Contents
• Illustrations
• Figures
• Tables
• Appendices
• Foreword
• Introduction
• Politics as a series of principal–agent games
• Politics as principal – agent contracting
• Time
• Representation
• Competition among multiple agents
• Checks and balances
• Electoral volatility
• Monitoring and surveillance
• Institutional mechanism: rule of law
• Political agents and incentives
• Elite theoreticians
• Pareto
• Mosca
• Michels
• Elitism theory: agents with too few principal–agent restrictions
• Party government
• Political entrepreneurs
• Organised interests
• Institutionalism
• Political agents: outputs and outcomes
• Rules and preferences
• The primacy of rules: institutionalism
• The primacy of preferences
• Evolution of rules
• Conclusion
• Part I States
• 1 The states of the world
• Introduction
• Weber’s concept of the state
• The identification of present states
• States as institutional probabilities
• State longevity and regime stability
• Institutional foundations of states
• Constitutional diffusion
• Regimes
• Traditional regimes
• Legal rational regimes
• Democracies
• Authoritarian regimes
• Regime longevity and constitutional changes
• State stability and political unrest
• Conclusion
• 2 Rule of law
• Introduction
• Performance analysis
• Rule of law measure
• Waves of democratisation
• The public sector
• Allocative programmes
• Distributive programmes
• Growth of government
• Social outcomes
• Quality of life
• Inflation
• Conclusion
• Part II Conditions that support rule of law
• 3 Environmental factors
• Introduction
• Size and climate
• Social structure
• Modernisation
• Fragmentation: ethnicity and religion
• Religion
• Family values: individualism versus collectivism
• Economic conditions
• Affluence
• Openness of the economy
• Indebtedness
• Economic institutions
• Relevance of social, cultural and economic conditions
• Conclusion
• 4 Impact of political institutions
• Introduction
• Institutions, principals and agents
• Participation
• Adversarial, concurrent and consociational democracy
• Federations and confederations
• Presidentialism
• Parliamentarianism and bicameralism
• Authoritarian institutions
• Military regimes
• The communist model
• Institutional consolidation or decay
• Judicial institutions
• Relevance of institutions
• Conclusion
• 5 Changing principal–agent institutions
• Introduction
• Introducing the market economy
• Third World state transformation
• Political stability
• Conclusion
• 6 Party system instability and volatility from the principal–agent perspective
• Introduction
• Party system stability and democratic stability
• Volatility and the vitality of democracy
• The data
• Net volatility
• Party system fractionalisation
• Volatility and fractionalisation
• A regression model of volatility
• Conclusion
• Appendix 6.1
• Sources for party system data on net volatility and effective number of parties
• Printed sources
• General internet sources
• Electoral authorities available on the internet (recent elections in 2004 and 2005)
• Part III Towards an evolutionary regime theory
• 7 Regime fitness
• Introduction
• Polity forms, fitness and evolutionary mechanisms
• Capacity
• External capacity
• Internal capacity
• Rights
• Efficacy and legitimacy of a political regime
• Conclusion
• 8 The concept of a polity
• Introduction
• The Greek heritage
• Aristotle: the “polis”
• Survival fitness of city-states
• Herodotus: the empire
• Thucydides: the notion of hegemony
• Emergence of the Hellenistic empires and Pax Romana
• Rome and Pax Romana
• Conclusion
• 9 The ancient empires
• Introduction
• Wittfogel
• Weber
• The Aztecs
• The Mayas
• The Incas
• West African empires
• China
• Mughal India
• Conclusion
• 10 Feudalism
• Introduction
• Occidental and Oriental feudalism
• Political feudalism
• Vassalage and principalities
• Economic feudalism: manorialism
• An ideal-type feudal polity?
• Modern feudalism: the war lords
• Conclusion
• 11 The nation-state and colonial empires
• Introduction
• West European nation-states
• From the feudal regime to the nation-state
• Italian republicanism
• The rise of bureaucracy
• Birth of the nation-state
• Europe
• Asia and Oceania
• Colonial empires
• The Spanish Empire
• The British empire
• Trade, not Empire
• Home rule
• Indirect rule
• Burke’s problem
• High commissioners, governors and the Colonial Office
• African colonialism
• Towards an American empire?
• The postcolonial state
• Weak states, strong societies
• African prebendal state
• Arab rentier state
• Asian cronyism state
• Conclusion
• 12 Regionalisation of the state
• Introduction
• Basic modes of regional organisation
• The regional forum
• Regional facilities
• Economics I: FTAs and customs unions
• Economics II: monetary unions
• Economics III: the common market
• The regional regimes: will they replace the state?
• Conclusion
• Conclusion
• Can stable authoritarian regimes survive?
• Politics as principal–agent contracting
• Regalia
• Two or more agents?
• Conclusion
• Bibliography
• Index