Engaging Executives

Analyzing Politics 

Rationality, Behavior and Institutions

Kenneth A. Shepsle and Mark S. Bonchek

W.W. Norton & Company, 1997

From Amazon Review:

Awesome Book, January 29, 2008

Simply, this book is awesome. It can basically economize your time understanding the tenets and applications of rational choice theory as well as the comparative politics itself. You don't need to read expensive, thick, and wordy textbooks in the rational choice any more, which ironically have you more complicated through the mathematical representation. Unlike such textbooks, "Analyzing Politics" is inexpensive, thin, and non-formal; but at the same time, you will come out of the reading with a fair understanding of the agenda at issues.

This book actually covers everything you need for the fundamental understanding of rational choice; rationality, social choice, majority rule, voting methods, electoral systems, collective action problem, public/private goods, externalities, institutions, legislatures, bureaucracy, courts, and even parliamentary democracies.

I have to admit that this is among few academic books that I have actually re-visited for the second reading. Reading mathematically-oriented renowned books does not necessary make you tough, but sometimes, reading the basics (like this book) will make you more confident to explain what you need to explain (at exams or conversations). Once in a while, some say that numbers are more important than words, but in a rational choice, words still speak for themselves, demonstrating the contribution made by Shepsle and Bonchek for making the field more accessible, and more importantly for soothing the wider misunderstanding that "rational choice is difficult to understand."

Honestly, I am glad that I come to find and read this book as late as in 2008. I am late in the game in this sense, but finally.

Part I Introduction

• 1. It Isn’t Rocket Science, But...
• 2. Rationality: The Model of Choice

Part II Group Choice

• 3. Getting Started on Group Choice Analysis
• 4. Group Choice and Majority Rule
• 5. Spatial Models of Majority Rule
• 6. Strategic Behavior
• 7. Voting Methods and Electoral Systems

Part III Cooperation, Collective Action, and Public Goods

• 8. Cooperation
• 9. Collective Action
• 10. Public Goods, Externalities, and the Commons

Part IV Institutions

• 11. Institutions: General Remarks
• 12. Legislatures
• 13. Bureaucracy and Intergovernmental Relations
• 14. Leadership
• 15. Courts and Judges
• 16. Cabinet Government and Parliamentary Democracy
• 17. Final Lessons

Case Studies

• Case 2.1 Governor Weld’s ElectoralOptions
• Case 4.1 Civil War Taxes, Great Depression Taxes, 1980s Tax Reform
• Case 4.2 Legislative Intent
• Case 5.1 Sunset Provisions and Zero-Based Budgeting
• Case 5.2 The Importance of Compromise and Strategic Thinking
• Case 6.1 "Need-Blind" College Admissions
• Case 6.2 Congressional Pay Raise Dilemmas
• Case 6.3 Presidential Veto Stories
• Case 6.4 Aid to Education and the Powell Amendment
• Case 6.5 Not Wasting One’s Vote
• Case 8.1 The Paradox of Cooperation: Nuclear Disarmament in the Cold War and Congressional Pork-Barreling
• Case 9.1 Who Is Represented?
• Case 9.2 The Large and the Small
• Case 9.3 What Does the Evidence Say?
• Case 10.1 Public Goods, Property Rights, and the Radio Spectrum
• Case 10.2 Fishing and the Tragedy of the Commons
• Case 12.1 Campaign Contributions
• Case 12.2 Interest-Group
• Case 13.1 Congressional Oversight: Police Patrols, Fire Alarms, and Fire Extinguishers
• Case 13.2 How to Test Niskanen?
• Case 14.1 FDR and World War II
• Case 14.2 Only Nixon Could Go to China
• Case 15.1 The Best Judges Money Can Buy?
• Case 15.2 Legislators in Robes Revisited