We offer a simple model of policymaking emphasizing socialization and limits on human cognition to explicate mechanisms of change in emergent (as opposed to established) institutions. Emergent institutions are more susceptible to change, and their opponents may use frames or existing reference...

In this paper we examine the effects of interest group pressure and the structure of political institutions on infrastructure deployment by state-owned electric utilities in a panel of 78 countries during the period 1970 – 1994. We consider two factors that jointly influence the rate of...

Why do some countries adopt market-oriented reforms such as deregulation, privatization and liberalization of competition in their infrastructure industries while others do not? Why did the pace of adoption accelerate in the 1990s? Building on neo-institutional theory in sociology, we argue that...

This paper demonstrates that a structurally derived, internationally comparable index of checks and balances on executive discretion created by variation in political structures and party systems affects relative rates of basic telecommunications infrastructure deployment in 147 countries during...

Coercive isomorphism is a prominent source of institutional change. The literature to date has emphasized how actors that are powerful and legitimate (for example, a national government) may coerce the adoption of reforms by dependent actors (for example, state governments and other...

We apply the logic of comparative institutional analysis to the question of the governance of the relationship between private investors and the government. We consider two strategies that investors may follow: lobbying for the creation of a specialized political governance structure and relying...

Checks and balances that limit the discretion of policy-makers reduce the volatility of government expenditure and revenue. While this assumption is at the heart of a large body of empirical work, the association between political institutions and policy volatility has itself been the focus of...

The empirical evidence that links political institutions to economic outcomes has grown dramatically in recent years. However, virtually all of this analysis is undertaken using data from the past three decades. This paper extends this empirical framework by performing a two-century long...