California Series on Social Choice and Political Economy – serie

In this important study of the abortion controversy in the United States, Kristin Luker examines the issues, people, and beliefs on both sides of the abortion conflict. She draws data from twenty years of public documents and newspaper accounts, as well as over two hundred interviews with both pro-life and pro-choice activists. She argues that moral positions on abortion are intimately tied to views on sexual behavior, the care of children, family life, technology, and the importance of the individual.

How do women choose between work and family commitments? And what are the causes, limits, and consequences of the "subtle revolution" in women's choices over the 1960s and 1970s? To answer these questions, Kathleen Gerson analyzes the experiences of a carefully selected group of middle-class and working-class women who were young adults in the 1970s. Their informative life histories reveal the emerging social forces in American society that have led today's women to face several difficult choices.

The essays in this volume represent a dialogue between theory and data. The theory is drawn from a branch of contemporary political economy which can also be labeled the collective-choice school. The data are drawn from Africa. The book extends the methods of reasoning developed in collective choice from their original base - the advanced industrial democracies - to new territory; the literature on rural Africa. Such an extension challenges the power of this form of political economy. It also enriches it, for the central questions which motivate the contemporary study of political economy are often addressed with unique clarity in the scholarship on rural Africa.

Social scientists have long recognized that solidarity is essential for such phenomena as social order, class, and ethnic consciousness, and the provision of collective goods. In presenting a new general theory of group solidarity, Michael Hechter here contends that it is indeed possible to build a theory of solidarity based on the action of rational individuals and in doing so he goes beyond the timeworn disciplinary boundaries separating the various social sciences.

Margaret Levi's wide-ranging theoretical and historical study demonstrates the importance of political relative to economic factors in accounting for revenue production policies.

An ambitious new work by a well-respected sociologist, Information and Organizations provides a bold perspective of the dynamics of organizations. Stinchcombe contends that the "information problem" and the concept of "uncertainty" provide the key to understanding how organizations function. In a delightful mix of large theoretical insights and vivid anecdotal material, Stinchcombe explores the ins and outs of organizations from both a macro and micro perspective. He reinterprets the work of the renowned scholars of business, Alfred Chandler, James March and Oliver Williamson, and looks in depth at corporations like DuPont and General Motors. Along the way, Stinchcombe explores subjects as varied as class consciousness, innovation, contracts and university administration. All of these analyses are distinguished by incisive thinking and creative new approaches to issues that have long confronted business people and those interested in organizational theory. A tour de force, Information and Organizations is a must-read for business people and scholars of many stripes. It promises to be a widely discussed and debated work.

Unprecedented in its scope, Rainbow's End provides a bold new analysis of the emergence, growth, and decline of six classic Irish-American political machines in New York, Jersey City, Chicago, San Francisco, Pittsburgh and Albany. Combining the approaches of political economy and historical sociology, Erie examines a wide range of issues, including the relationship between city and state politics, the manner in which machines shaped ethnic and working-class politics, and the reasons why centralized party organizations failed to emerge in Boston and Philadelphia despite their large Irish populations. The book ends with a thorough discussion of the significance of machine politics for today's urban minorities.

This book provides an incisive new look at the inner workings of the House of Representatives in the post-World War II era. Reevaluating the role of parties and committees, Gary Cox and Mathew McCubbins view parties in the House - especially majority parties - as a species of 'legislative cartel.' These cartels usurp the power, theoretically resident in the House, to make rules governing the structure and process of legislation. Possession of this rule-making power leads to two main consequences. First, the legislative process in general, and the committee system in particular, is stacked in favor of majority party interests. Second, because the majority party has all the structural advantages, the key players in most legislative deals are members of that party and the majority party's central agreements are facilitated by cartel rules and policed by the cartel's leadership. Debunking prevailing arguments about the weakening of congressional parties, Cox and McCubbins powerfully illuminate the ways in which parties exercise considerable discretion in organizing the House to carry out its work.This work will have an important impact on the study of American politics, and will greatly interest students of Congress, the presidency, and the political party system.

Clearly written and easily understood by the nonspecialist, "Nested Games" provides a systematic, empirically accurate, and theoretically coherent account of apparently irrational political actions.

In the past decade, China was able to carry out economic reform without political reform, while the Soviet Union attempted the opposite strategy. How did China succeed at economic market reform without changing communist rule? Susan Shirk shows that Chinese communist political institutions are more flexible and less centralized than their Soviet counterparts were. Shirk pioneers a rational choice institutional approach to analyze policy-making in a non-democratic authoritarian country and to explain the history of Chinese market reforms from 1979 to the present. Drawing on extensive interviews with high-level Chinese officials, she pieces together detailed histories of economic reform policy decisions and shows how the political logic of Chinese communist institutions shaped those decisions. Combining theoretical ambition with the flavor of on-the-ground policy-making in Beijing, this book is a major contribution to the study of reform in China and other communist countries.

The example of Old Regime France provides a source for many of the ideas about capitalism, modernization, and peasant protest that concern social scientists today. Hilton Root challenges traditional assumptions and proposes a new interpretation of the relationship between state and society.

This book presents an entirely new answer to the question: 'What is fair'? In their radical approach to ethics, Frohlich and Oppenheimer argue that much of the empirical methodology of the natural sciences should be applied to the ethical questions of fairness and justice.

This lucid, hard-hitting book explores a central paradox of the Japanese economy: the relegation of women to low-paying, dead-end jobs in a workforce that depends on their labor to maintain its status as a world economic leader. Drawing upon historical materials, survey and statistical data, and extensive interviews in Japan, Mary Brinton provides an in-depth and original examination of the role of gender in Japan's phenomenal postwar economic growth. Brinton finds that the educational system, the workplace, and the family in Japan have shaped the opportunities open to female workers. Women move in and out of the workforce depending on their age and family duties, a great disadvantage in a system that emphasizes seniority and continuous work experience. Brinton situates the vicious cycle that perpetuates traditional gender roles within the concept of human capital development, whereby Japanese society 'underinvests' in the capabilities of women. The effects of this underinvestment are reinforced indirectly as women sustain male human capital through unpaid domestic labor and psychological support.Brinton provides a clear analysis of a society that remains misunderstood, but whose economic transformation has been watched with great interest by the industrialized world.

In Latin America as elsewhere, politicians routinely face a painful dilemma: whether to use state resources for national purposes, especially those that foster economic development, or to channel resources to people and projects that will help insure political survival and reelection. While politicians may believe that a competent state bureaucracy is intrinsic to the national good, political realities invariably tempt leaders to reward powerful clients and constituents, undermining long-term competence. "Politician's Dilemma" explores the ways in which political actors deal with these contradictory pressures and asks the question: when will leaders support reforms that increase state capacity and that establish a more meritocratic and technically competent bureaucracy? Barbara Geddes brings rational choice theory to her study of Brazil between 1930 and 1964 and shows how state agencies are made more effective when they are protected from partisan pressures and operate through merit-based recruitment and promotion strategies.Looking at administrative reform movements in other Latin American democracies, she traces the incentives offered politicians to either help or hinder the process. In its balanced insight, wealth of detail, and analytical rigor, "Politician's Dilemma" provides a powerful key to understanding the conflicts inherent in Latin American politics and to unlocking possibilities for real political change.

The Fountain of Privilege applies contemporary economic and political theory to answer long-standing historical questions about modernization. In particular, it contrasts political stability in Georgian England with the collapse of the Old Regime in France. Why did a century of economic expansion rupture France’s political foundations while leaving those of Britain intact? Comparing the political and financial institutions of the two states, Hilton Root argues that the French monarchy’s tight control of markets created unresolvable social conflicts whereas England’s broader power base permitted the wider distribution of economic favors, resulting in more flexible and efficient markets. This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press’s mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1994.

Regulatory Policy and the Social Sciences brings together leading scholars from law, political science, psychology, sociology, and anthropology to examine regulation as a complex social, cultural, and political phenomenon, not merely an economic one. Originating from the 1982 Caltech/NSF Conference on Regulation and the Social Sciences, the volume begins with Roger Noll’s overview and multidisciplinary synthesis of research on regulation, situating the well-developed economics literature alongside underutilized insights from other fields. Contributors then explore regulation in wider contexts: Theodore Lowi analyzes how different types of public policy shape regulatory institutions; Lawrence Friedman considers law as the vehicle of regulatory authority; and Laura and Claire Nader apply anthropological perspectives to show how regulation intersects with cultural values and social organization.Later sections focus on the politics of regulatory change and case studies. Essays examine why legislators delegate regulatory authority, why agencies sometimes deregulate themselves, how risk perception reshapes safety standards, and how organizations navigate or even generate conflicting regulations. Mitchel Abolafia’s study of self-regulation in commodity exchanges highlights how private rules can sustain markets while responding to the looming threat of state intervention. The book concludes with commentaries by Bruce Ackerman, James Q. Wilson, and Philip Selznick, who identify neglected research directions and stress the importance of integrating social science perspectives into regulatory analysis. The enduring takeaway is that effective regulatory policy cannot be understood through economics alone: it requires a genuinely multidisciplinary approach that takes into account law, politics, culture, psychology, and organizational dynamics in shaping how rules are made, enforced, contested, and transformed.This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press’s mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1985.

In Political Survival, Barry Ames shows how public policy, especially the public budget, is used by political leaders seeking to construct coalitions insuring their survival in office. Political theorists, comparative politics specialists, public policy experts, and scholars of Latin America will want to read this book.This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press's mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1987.In Political Survival, Barry Ames shows how public policy, especially the public budget, is used by political leaders seeking to construct coalitions insuring their survival in office. Political theorists, comparative politics specialists, public policy e

Reactive Risk and Rational Action: Managing Moral Hazard in Insurance Contracts offers a sophisticated anatomy of how insurers confront losses that change precisely because insurance exists. Rather than treating pricing as a purely actuarial exercise, the book shows why markets “thin” when incentives shift and why insurers embed hierarchy inside contracts to steady calculation. Beginning with a clear definition of reactive risk—loss probabilities that move in response to policyholder behavior—the author reframes moral hazard as a strategic interaction, not just a pricing nuisance. Core chapters track how institutions convert reactive risks into fixed ones: aligning incentives through deductibles, coinsurance, and experience rating; relocating key safeguards to third parties (building codes, inspection regimes, classification societies); and continuously re-valuing property to preserve indemnity and deter fraud. Through tightly argued case studies—urban fire insurance, risks at sea, and surety bonding—the book ties rating and underwriting practices to real-world constraints like distance from decision makers, information asymmetries, and organizational control.Bridging decision theory and the economics of institutions, the study demonstrates how insurance markets endure only when contracts create a “community of fate” between insurer and insured—making prevention, not just payout, the common objective. Methodological notes on how insurers model individuals and organizations complement analyses of warranties, sue-and-labor clauses, general average, salvage, and valuation rules, revealing why some hazards prove insurable and others do not. The concluding theory of reactive risk connects calculation to governance: when incentives and oversight are designed well, insurers can price rare events without inviting them; when they are not, markets unravel. The enduring takeaway is crisp and consequential: managing moral hazard is less about better odds and more about better institutions—insurance works when contracts strategically reshape behavior so that markets can function at all.This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press’s mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1985.

Post-Revolutionary Nicaragua: State, Class, and the Dilemmas of Agrarian Policy offers a penetrating analysis of the challenges faced by the Sandinista regime following the overthrow of the Somoza dynasty in 1979. Written in the context of a developing nation grappling with revolutionary transformation, this book examines how the Sandinista Front for National Liberation (FSLN) sought to address profound social and economic inequalities while contending with structural constraints, counterrevolutionary pressures, and international interference, particularly from the United States. The study focuses on the agrarian sector, which is pivotal for both foreign exchange and the livelihoods of the majority of Nicaraguans, analyzing the government’s policies toward various agricultural strata, from large cotton and coffee producers to small farmers and wage laborers.Through a detailed sector analysis and extensive fieldwork conducted between 1981 and 1984, the author unravels the complexities of policy implementation and its socio-political ramifications. The book highlights the inherent tensions in post-revolutionary governance, including the need to balance ideological commitments with economic pragmatism. It also explores the interplay between state initiatives and rural responses, shedding light on how market interventions shaped class dynamics and political alignments. With its rigorous empirical approach and theoretical insights, this work provides a nuanced perspective on the possibilities and limitations of revolutionary change in small, developing nations, offering valuable lessons for scholars of political economy, agrarian studies, and Latin American history.This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press’s mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1986.

William Brustein’s The Social Origins of Political Regionalism: France 1849–1981 tackles a central puzzle in modern French history: why regions with similar agrarian economies—like Argentré-du-Plessis in Brittany and Bonnieux in Provence—have persistently voted in opposite ideological blocs for more than a century. Brustein notes that while western France has consistently aligned with the Right, Mediterranean France has been just as reliably Left, a striking divergence visible in national legislative elections from 1849 through 1981. He situates this pattern within the broader phenomenon of political regionalism, whereby entire areas maintain distinctive political loyalties across generations, as seen in the American South, Canadian Saskatchewan, or Indian Kerala. Existing explanations, Brustein argues, falter because they fail to bridge history’s concern with local particularities and sociology’s search for generalizable models. His solution is a theoretical framework that fuses rational-choice assumptions about individual behavior with the Marxist concept of the mode of production.According to Brustein, discrete regional modes of production shaped distinct social structures in France, which in turn generated enduring constellations of cultivators’ interests and predictable patterns of political behavior. To test this mode-of-production theory, he turns to archival data from three pivotal legislative contests: 1849, when the divisions of Left and Right were first clearly marked; 1914, on the eve of World War I; and 1981, when François Mitterrand’s Socialist victory brought the Left to power. France provides an ideal case, he contends, not only because of its long-standing and sharply polarized regional voting blocs but also because both western and Mediterranean regions were largely agrarian and politically peripheral, making economic structural differences more salient. By combining comparative theory with close empirical analysis, Brustein demonstrates that regional political cultures were not simply accidents of geography or tradition but products of deeply rooted economic and social arrangements, offering a model with implications well beyond the French case.This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press’s mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1988.

Regulatory Policy and the Social Sciences brings together leading scholars from law, political science, psychology, sociology, and anthropology to examine regulation as a complex social, cultural, and political phenomenon, not merely an economic one. Originating from the 1982 Caltech/NSF Conference on Regulation and the Social Sciences, the volume begins with Roger Noll’s overview and multidisciplinary synthesis of research on regulation, situating the well-developed economics literature alongside underutilized insights from other fields. Contributors then explore regulation in wider contexts: Theodore Lowi analyzes how different types of public policy shape regulatory institutions; Lawrence Friedman considers law as the vehicle of regulatory authority; and Laura and Claire Nader apply anthropological perspectives to show how regulation intersects with cultural values and social organization.Later sections focus on the politics of regulatory change and case studies. Essays examine why legislators delegate regulatory authority, why agencies sometimes deregulate themselves, how risk perception reshapes safety standards, and how organizations navigate or even generate conflicting regulations. Mitchel Abolafia’s study of self-regulation in commodity exchanges highlights how private rules can sustain markets while responding to the looming threat of state intervention. The book concludes with commentaries by Bruce Ackerman, James Q. Wilson, and Philip Selznick, who identify neglected research directions and stress the importance of integrating social science perspectives into regulatory analysis. The enduring takeaway is that effective regulatory policy cannot be understood through economics alone: it requires a genuinely multidisciplinary approach that takes into account law, politics, culture, psychology, and organizational dynamics in shaping how rules are made, enforced, contested, and transformed.This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press’s mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1985.

In Political Survival, Barry Ames shows how public policy, especially the public budget, is used by political leaders seeking to construct coalitions insuring their survival in office. Political theorists, comparative politics specialists, public policy experts, and scholars of Latin America will want to read this book.This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press's mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1987.In Political Survival, Barry Ames shows how public policy, especially the public budget, is used by political leaders seeking to construct coalitions insuring their survival in office. Political theorists, comparative politics specialists, public policy e

Reactive Risk and Rational Action: Managing Moral Hazard in Insurance Contracts offers a sophisticated anatomy of how insurers confront losses that change precisely because insurance exists. Rather than treating pricing as a purely actuarial exercise, the book shows why markets “thin” when incentives shift and why insurers embed hierarchy inside contracts to steady calculation. Beginning with a clear definition of reactive risk—loss probabilities that move in response to policyholder behavior—the author reframes moral hazard as a strategic interaction, not just a pricing nuisance. Core chapters track how institutions convert reactive risks into fixed ones: aligning incentives through deductibles, coinsurance, and experience rating; relocating key safeguards to third parties (building codes, inspection regimes, classification societies); and continuously re-valuing property to preserve indemnity and deter fraud. Through tightly argued case studies—urban fire insurance, risks at sea, and surety bonding—the book ties rating and underwriting practices to real-world constraints like distance from decision makers, information asymmetries, and organizational control.Bridging decision theory and the economics of institutions, the study demonstrates how insurance markets endure only when contracts create a “community of fate” between insurer and insured—making prevention, not just payout, the common objective. Methodological notes on how insurers model individuals and organizations complement analyses of warranties, sue-and-labor clauses, general average, salvage, and valuation rules, revealing why some hazards prove insurable and others do not. The concluding theory of reactive risk connects calculation to governance: when incentives and oversight are designed well, insurers can price rare events without inviting them; when they are not, markets unravel. The enduring takeaway is crisp and consequential: managing moral hazard is less about better odds and more about better institutions—insurance works when contracts strategically reshape behavior so that markets can function at all.This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press’s mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1985.

Post-Revolutionary Nicaragua: State, Class, and the Dilemmas of Agrarian Policy offers a penetrating analysis of the challenges faced by the Sandinista regime following the overthrow of the Somoza dynasty in 1979. Written in the context of a developing nation grappling with revolutionary transformation, this book examines how the Sandinista Front for National Liberation (FSLN) sought to address profound social and economic inequalities while contending with structural constraints, counterrevolutionary pressures, and international interference, particularly from the United States. The study focuses on the agrarian sector, which is pivotal for both foreign exchange and the livelihoods of the majority of Nicaraguans, analyzing the government’s policies toward various agricultural strata, from large cotton and coffee producers to small farmers and wage laborers.Through a detailed sector analysis and extensive fieldwork conducted between 1981 and 1984, the author unravels the complexities of policy implementation and its socio-political ramifications. The book highlights the inherent tensions in post-revolutionary governance, including the need to balance ideological commitments with economic pragmatism. It also explores the interplay between state initiatives and rural responses, shedding light on how market interventions shaped class dynamics and political alignments. With its rigorous empirical approach and theoretical insights, this work provides a nuanced perspective on the possibilities and limitations of revolutionary change in small, developing nations, offering valuable lessons for scholars of political economy, agrarian studies, and Latin American history.This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press’s mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1986.

William Brustein’s The Social Origins of Political Regionalism: France 1849–1981 tackles a central puzzle in modern French history: why regions with similar agrarian economies—like Argentré-du-Plessis in Brittany and Bonnieux in Provence—have persistently voted in opposite ideological blocs for more than a century. Brustein notes that while western France has consistently aligned with the Right, Mediterranean France has been just as reliably Left, a striking divergence visible in national legislative elections from 1849 through 1981. He situates this pattern within the broader phenomenon of political regionalism, whereby entire areas maintain distinctive political loyalties across generations, as seen in the American South, Canadian Saskatchewan, or Indian Kerala. Existing explanations, Brustein argues, falter because they fail to bridge history’s concern with local particularities and sociology’s search for generalizable models. His solution is a theoretical framework that fuses rational-choice assumptions about individual behavior with the Marxist concept of the mode of production.According to Brustein, discrete regional modes of production shaped distinct social structures in France, which in turn generated enduring constellations of cultivators’ interests and predictable patterns of political behavior. To test this mode-of-production theory, he turns to archival data from three pivotal legislative contests: 1849, when the divisions of Left and Right were first clearly marked; 1914, on the eve of World War I; and 1981, when François Mitterrand’s Socialist victory brought the Left to power. France provides an ideal case, he contends, not only because of its long-standing and sharply polarized regional voting blocs but also because both western and Mediterranean regions were largely agrarian and politically peripheral, making economic structural differences more salient. By combining comparative theory with close empirical analysis, Brustein demonstrates that regional political cultures were not simply accidents of geography or tradition but products of deeply rooted economic and social arrangements, offering a model with implications well beyond the French case.This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press’s mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1988.