Norman Schofield & Gonzalo Caballero (Eds.), The Political Economy of Governance: Institutions, Political Performance and Elections

Abstract

Abstract. This edited conference volume is another from Springer on the Studies in Political Economy under the editorship of Prof. Norman Schofield, the Dr. William Taussig Professor of Political Economy Professor, Department of Political Science at Washington University. Political Economy is a fast growing field that uses the logic of economics to study issues pertaining to politics and governance and of which Prof. Schofield has been one the most prolific contributors over the last four decades. This volume brings together the papers presented at the Political Economy of Governance, Institutions and Elections workshop that took place in Baiona, Spain in April 2014. Political Economy is a vast and growing field as such this volume is only representative of the many issues and the modelling techniques—both theoretical and empirical—used to address them. The topics and issues addressed in this volume span a great variety of subjects covering—as the title indicates—issues dealing with governance, institutions and elections. The chapters in this volume are not only innovative, but they challenge and engage the reader into thinking more deeply about the issues addressed. One of the major characteristic of this volume is that most papers directly or indirectly contest the existing body of knowledge by either providing alternatives ways of thinking about a problem not addressed in the main stream literature or by studying issues that have up to know been ignored in the literature. This review is organized as follows. Section 1 gives an overview of how institutions work or change over time within a country; Section 2, those dealing with different aspects of democracy and Section 3 those dealing with the workings of elections. Concluding comments are given in Section 4. Keywords. Political economy, Institutions, Democracy, Elections. JEL. F50, D72.