Study Of Political Institutions Research Articles

Government and Change in Lesotho, 1800-1966: A study of political institutions

Government and Change in Lesotho, 1800-1966: A study of political institutions

Government and Change in Lesotho, 1800-1966: A Study of Political Institutions

Institutions of government and control of power among the Basotho of the Mohokare Valley (c.1750-1870) the subjugation of the Kingdom the establishment of the National Council, its constitutional status and challenges during the first two decades of its existence (1903-1920) commoner's political agitation and the dilemma of the chieftaincy the regency and the reforms the establishment of the legislative council the placing of the Westminster model.

Case-based reasoning, legal reasoning, and the study of politics

Case-based reasoning (CBR) is an active area of research within artificial intelligence that emphasizes the function of memory in problem-solving. It proceeds from the premise that people cope with new problems or situations by reusing the strategies that have proved effective in similar situations in the past. Rather than deduction or the application of rules, the basic inferential process is that of recognition. Because the reasoning characteristic of politics is largely of this type, we suggest that the concepts and formalisms developed within this branch of artificial intelligence can be usefully applied to the study of political institutions and political behavior. But we argue, critically, that if CBR is to be applied to politics, it must be generalized to accommodate multiple agents who act repeatedly in multiple tasks. We outline what these extensions to CBR would involve, using the history of liability in tort law as a worked example.

Coordination versus Prisoners' Dilemma: Implications for International Cooperation and Regimes

The study of political institutions in general and international cooperation in particular has been beneficially influenced by the Prisoners' Dilemma (PD) game model, but there is a mistaken tendency to treat PD as representing the singular problem of collective action and cooperation. By relaxing the assumptions of 2 × 2 games and developing an alternate model of the coordination game, I show how some cooperation problems have very different properties from those found in PD. The analytical results of the two games are compared across several important dimensions: number of strategies available, number of iterations of the game, numbers of players, and the distribution of power among them. The discussion is illustrated with specific problems of international cooperation, and the implications of alternative cooperation problems for the formation and performance of international regimes are explored. The basic solutions for PD and coordination have divergent ramifications for the institutionalization, stability, and adaptability of regimes and for the role of hegemony in the international system. However, the coordination model does not replace the PD model but complements and supplements it as a way to understand the diversity of political institutions. These results are widely applicable to areas of politics beyond international relations.

On Riker's Theory of Political Succession

Riker's view of the dynamical forces of political systems singles out disequilibrium, strategic voting and agenda‐manipulation as the pervasive features determining the nature of political change. We shall investigate these characteristics in some detail and thereafter evaluate the methodological aspects of Riker's theory. Some observations on the general relevance of the equilibrium analysis of multi‐dimensional spatial voting models for the study of political institutions are also made.

Separation of Powers, the Rule of Law & the Study of Political InstitutionsJudicial Review and the National Political Process: A Functional Reconsideration of the Role of the Supreme Court. By Jesse H. Choper The Constitution between Friends: Congress, the President, and the Law. By Louis Fisher The Supreme Court, the Constitution, and Presidential Power. By Michael A. Genovese Social Order

The political institutions examined by the five authors include the classic three branches of the national government, the rule of law, and the bureaucracy. Jesse Choper, Louis Fisher, and Michael Genovese are most interested in the institutions of the national government. Choper examines the relative power of the judiciary compared to that of Congress and the president, and he argues that it must be restrained. Geno-

Graham Wallas and Liberal Democracy

During his lifetime (1858–1932) Graham Wallas's pioneering contributions to the study of politics were widely acknowledged. Thus, his Human Nature in Politics (1908) was rightly acclaimed as a turning point in British and American political science, away from the study of political institutions and toward the study of political behavior. With his later works, notably The Great Society (1914), Our Social Heritage (1921) and The Art of Thought (1926), Wallas's influence spilled over into other fields of social inquiry provoking a chain of serious debates among the pundits of various disciplines. And the term “Great Society,” by which Wallas meant a complex, mechanized industrial society, the monster-child of the Industrial Revolution, became a household phrase in the 1930's among the New Deal liberals in the United States, where, according to historian Samuel Eliot Morison, he had been the most influential English political philosopher since Herbert Spencer.