Norman Schofield is Taussig Professor of Political Economy at Washington University in St. Louis. He has served as Fulbright Distinguished Professor of American Studies at Humboldt University Berlin in 2003–04, a Fellow at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences at Stanford in 1988–89, and Shrman Fairchild Distinguished Scholar at the California Institute of Technology in 1983–84. Professor Schofield is the author of Mathematical Methods in Economics and Social Choice (2003), Multiparty Government (coauthored with Michael Laver, 1990), and Social Choice and Democracy (1985). He received the William Riker Prize in 2002 for contributions to political theory and is co-recipient with Gary Miller of the Jack L. Walker Prize for the best article on political organizations and parties in the American Political Science Review for 2002–04.

"Intellectual creativity often takes the form of arbitrage, taking insights and ideas from one area of scholarship and transporting them to, and thereby illuminating, other scholarly provinces. Norman Schofield is the master of arbitrage. He links the theory of social choice (to which he has been a profound contributor in his own right) to the political philosophies of Condorcet and Madison, the accomplishments of political giants of American history (Franklin, Washington, and Jefferson in the 18th century, Lincoln in the 19th, and Johnson in the 20th), the transforming impact of the creators of the Atlantic alliance (Keynes in particular), and then back again to social choice theory (and the role of beliefs in voting and elections). Schofield's The Architects of Political Change is a masterpiece." Kenneth A. Shepsle, Harvard University

• Preface; 1. Constitutional quandaries and rational choice; 2. Power, prosperity and social choice; 3. Franklin and the War of Independence: 1776-1783; 4. Madison, Jefferson and condorcet; 5. Lincoln and the Civil War; 6. Johnson and the critical realignment of 1964; 7. Keynes and the Atlantic constitution; 8. Preferences and beliefs; 9. Political change; 10. Notes; 11. Figures and tables.