Government is analysed as the product of exchange among individuals who differ in their bargaining power. This approach shows why individuals agree to political institutions that give their governments extensive power, and why even the most powerful government benefits from constitutional rules constraining the government's power. This foundation is used to examine a wide range of government activities, including its protection of rights, its military activities, and democratic political institutions.

Exchange of goods and ideas among nations, cross-border pollution, global warming, and international crime pose formidable questions for international law. Two respected scholars provide an intellectual framework for assessing these problems from a rational choice perspective and describe conditions under which international law succeeds or fails.

This volume aims to understand why some economies succeed and some fail, and why some communities prosper while others stagnate, so economics must be seen as embedded in politics and society. It is a study of this embeddedness.

A theoretical and empirical examination of why political institutions and organizations matter in economic growth.

Originally published in 1922, this volume is composed of four lectures which the author gave at Amherst College in 1916 on the Clark Foundation. The founders of this lectureship desired to help carry forward the eternal quest of mankind for ways and means with which to control its social destiny for noble ends. This book includes chapters on the doctrines of the philosophers, economic groups and the strucutre of the state, and the doctrine of political equality.