Parchment, Equilibria, and Institutions

Abstract

Institutions are rules that constrain political behavior. Although there is consensus that being written down is neither necessary nor sufficient for an institution to be effective, much research on comparative institutions focuses on formal, parchment, institutions. This article argues that parchment can contribute to the generation of shared mutual expectations among political actors, which are essential to the effectiveness of institutions. Next, the article distinguishes between research that emphasizes the role of institutions in aggregating preferences into political decisions and research that relies on coordination models to identify conditions favoring certain equilibrium outcomes when multiple equilibria are possible. The article notes the increasing prominence of such coordination models in research on comparative institutions and concludes with some reflections about the prospects for this trend to foster connections between institutional analysis and the field of comparative politics more broadly.