Political Institutions and Economic Policy

This is a multiyear attempt to bring together scholars of political economy from the two broad traditions that make up that enterprise-- the analysis of the impact of political institutions on political behavior and political outcomes, and the analysis of the making of economic policy.

Despite the richness of both kinds of scholarship, and the general similarity in spirit and method, connections between work in the political-institutional and economic-policy traditions are inadequate.  Students of political institutions often examine the operating characteristics and equilibrium properties of political institutions in a world with no economy.  Students of economic policymaking, on the other hand, often study their subject in a world with only rudimentary political institutions.  In short, too many of us employ reduced-form (at best) conceptualizations of something that all would acknowledge to be central to phenomena of interest. We want to generate interaction among scholars from these two research traditions, in order to produce a better synthesis.