400009 SE Political Economy of Governemental Institutions (2012W)

The course compares major institutional structures, such as presidentialism vs. parliamentarism, unicameralism vs. bicameralism, federal vs. unitary government, government coalitions, etc. We will also use all this information to discuss a very unusual political system, the EU.

The method of analysis is rational choice: we will assume that political actors are rational and that each one of them tries to do the best possible given existing institutional constraints, and the behavior of other actors. We will see that this assumption leads to the conclusion that institutions affect political outcomes in systematic ways. We will focus on what political outcomes will be produced by different institutions.