Political Institutions Democracy and Social Choice [Paperback]

More complex political institutions produce more stable and socially efficient the outcomes; this book develops an extensive analysis of that relationship. It explores concepts, questions, and insights based on social choice theory, focusing on more than forty democratic countries and several international organizations from late medieval times to the present.

1. Politics and Social Choice
2. Who Can Vote
3. How Votes are Counted
4. What is Voted For
5. Choosing Socially Effective Institutions

Political Institutions is an outstanding contribution to the growing literature challenging the conventional wisdom that majoritarian, concentrated-power democracy provides the most 'decisive' and effective government. Instead, as Colomer's logical and empirical analysis convincingly demonstrates, sharing power and dividing power are much more advantageous. A first-rate scholarly achievement! --Arend Lijphart, University of California, San Diego

Josep Colomer has produced a rigorous, accessible analysis of social choice in democratic settings. Its empirical scope is broad, its emphasis on institutions is crisp, and its arguments are persuasive. Political Institutions graces Oxford UP's new series on comparative politics. --KennethShepsle, Harvard University

A happy marriage of social choice theory with comparative politics, well worth reading, and including on syllabi . One strength is the author's knack for supplying historical material that illustrates the relevance of social choice theory to the study of political institutions. In this sense, Colomer's book follows in the tradition of William H. Riker's 'Liberalism Against Populism' (1982), although 'Political Institutions' is empirically richer, and much more accessible to a non-technical audience Colomer does this so well, with such a keen sense for how the basic intuitions from social choice theory map onto real-world politics, that Politicl.