Introduction: micro foundations of comparative politics 1
Politics as a series of principal-agent games 4
Politics as principal-agent contracting 6
Institutional mechanism: rule of law 11
Political agents and incentives 12
Political agents: outputs and outcomes 25
Rules and preferences 21
Conclusion 30
PARTⅠ States: stability and performance 33
1 The states of the world 35
Introduction 35
Weber's concept of the state 36
The identification of present states 40
States as institutional probabilities 43
State longevity and regime stability 49
Institutional foundations of states 54
Regimes 58
Regime longevity and constitutionalchanges 64
State stability and political unrest 68
Conclusion 70
2 Rule of law 75
Introduction 75
Performance analysis 76
Rule of law measure 76
The public sector 83
Social outcomes 89
Conclusion 95
PARTⅡ Conditions that support rule of law 97
3 Environmental factors 99
Introduction 99
Size and climate 99
Social structure 103
Religion 108
Family values: individualism versus collectivism 112
Economic conditions 114
Relevance of social, cultural and economic conditions 123
Conclusion 125
4 Impact of political institutions 126
Introduction 126
Institutions, principals and agents 126
Participation 127
Adversarial, concurrent and consociational democracy 129
Federations and confederations 132
Presidentialism 135
Parliamentarianism and bicameralism 137
Authoritarian institutions 138
Institutional consolidation or decay 144
Judicial institutions 147
Relevance of institutions 149
Conclusion 150
5 Changing principal-agent institutions 152
Introduction 152
Introducing the market economy 152
Third World state transformation 158
Political stability 161
Conclusion 166
6 Party system instability and volatility from the principal-agent perspective 169
Introduction 169
Party system stability and democratic stability 170
Volatility and the vitality of democracy 173
The data 174
Net volatility 176
Party system frationalisation 179
Volatility and /rationalisation 181
A regression model of volatility 183
Conclusion 184
Appendix 6.1 185
PARTⅢ Towards an evolutionary regime theory 189
7 Regime fitness: on the survival of polities 191
Introduction 191
Polity forms, fitness and evolutionary mechanisms 192
Capacity 194
Efficacy and legitimacy of a political regime 197
Conclusion 198
8 The concept of a polity: from the city-state to the empire 201
Introduction 201
The Greek heritage 202
Emergence of the Hellenistic empires and Pax Romana 208
Conclusion 210
9 The ancient empires: Oriental despotism or the patrimonial state 212
Introduction 212
Wittfogel 213
Weber 214
The Aztecs 216
The Mayas 217
The Incas 218
West African empires 219
China 222
Mughal India 226
Conclusion 221
10 Feudalism: political, economical and modern 230
Introduction 230
Occidental and Oriental feudalism 230
Political feudalism 232
Economic feudalism: manorial ism 233
An ideal-type feudal polity? 234
Modern feudalism: the war lords 236
Conclusion 231
11 The nation-state and colonial empires 238
Introduction 238
West European nation-states 238
Birth of the nation-state 242
Colonial empires 241 African colonialism 255 Towards an American empire? 258 The post colonial state 260 Conclusion 263
12 Regionalisation of the state 264
Introduction 264
Basic modes of regional organisation 265
The regional forum 266
Regional facilities 268
EconomicsⅠ: FT As and customs unions 269
EconomicsⅡ: monetary unions 271
Economics Ⅲ: the common market 272
The regional regimes: will they replace the state? 274
Conclusion 277
Conclusion: evolutionary advantage of ruleof law regimes 278
Can stable authoritarian regimes survive? 279
Politics as principal-agent contracting 281
Conclusion 287
Bibliography 289
Index 307