Economic globalization refers to three related processes: 1) the growth in the world economy, 2) the change in the relations between first and third world countries that has resulted from the use of information technologies to reorganize production nationally and globally, and 3) the integration...

The problem of the relationship between actors and the social structures in which they are embedded is central to sociological theory. This paper suggests that the "new institutionalist" focus on fields, domains, or games provides an alternative view of how to think about this problem by...

"New Institutional" theories have proliferated across the social sciences. While they have substantial disagreements, they agree that institutions are created to produce local social orders, are social constructions, fundamentally about how powerful groups create rules of interaction and...

With the Treaty of Rome, European states designed a set of policy domains related to trade and the regulation of markets, a complex of governmental organisations, and a binding set of substantive and procedural rules to help them achieve the construction of a European Economic Community...

At the core of the European Union, has been the gradual creation of the "single market" across western Europe. The European Union began as the European Coal and Steel Community (ECSC) and expanded to become the European Economic Community (EEC). The original intent of the ECSC was to stabilize...

We assess 14 predictions from market transition theory using survey data on employment, earnings, and income in Russia, during the first five years of market reform. Although the private sector has grown, self-employment is still rare. Incomes are down, and unemployment is up. Some entrepreneurs...

I present a model of the emergence and evolution of governance, conceived (narrowly) as the continuous resolution of dyadic conflicts by a third party. The model is comprised of three core elements: normative structure, dyadic contracting, and triadic dispute resolution. I demonstrate that a...

Globalization is transforming the relationship between states and markets. Even as some authors predict the demise of the state in the face of increasingly global markets, others focus on the role states play in constructing markets themselves and making sustainable market interactions possible....

Much of the field of political sociology is defined by a confrontation between state- and society-centered theories of policy making. State-centered theories (Evans, Rueschemeyer and Skocpol 1985; Finegold 1995; Orloff, Orloff and Skocpol 1988; Shefter 1994; Skocpol 1979; Skocpol 1992; Skowronek 1982) emphasize the...