Hostname: page-component-8448b6f56d-xtgtn Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-04-15T14:59:27.363Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Review Article: Good Governance, Institutions and Economic Development: Beyond the Conventional Wisdom

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  17 November 2009

Abstract

This article reviews comparative research on institutions and economic performance, identifying analytical gaps in the political economy of growth literature. It also examines core assumptions underpinning the good-governance approach to development. Contrasting experiences of conceptual and policy issues in East Asia and Latin America are discussed. The author suggests future scholarship in this field should distinguish between the rules and the play of the game; move beyond the property rights approach to development; stress the distributional, endogenous nature of institutions; investigate the role of informal constraints and human learning; and consider sources of credible commitment and self-enforcing growth. Focusing on some uncertainties in the accepted wisdom on good governance and development, this article furthers the consolidation of research on the political foundations of prosperity.

Type
Review Article
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2009

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

1 Kaufmann, Daniel, Kraay, Aart and Zoido-Lobaton, Pablo, ‘Governance Matters: From Measurement to Action’, Finance & Development, 37 (2000), 16, available at http://www.imf.org/external/pubs/ft/fandd/2000/06/kauf.htmGoogle Scholar.

2 See, e.g., Knack, Stephen and Keefer, Philip, ‘Institutions and Economic Performance: Cross Country Tests Using Alternative Institutional Measures’, Economics and Politics, 7 (1995), 207227CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Mauro, Paulo, ‘Corruption and Growth’, Quarterly Journal of Economics, 110 (1995), 681712CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Clague, Christopher, Institutions and Economic Development (Baltimore, Md.: John Hopkins University Press, 1997)Google Scholar; Alesina, Alberto, ‘The Political Economy of High and Low Growth’, in World Bank, Annual World Bank Conference on Development Economics 1997 (Washington, D.C.: IBRD, 1998), pp. 217237Google Scholar; Porta, Rafael La, Lopez-de-Silanes, Florencio, Shleifer, Andrei and Vishny, Robert W., ‘The Quality of Government’, Journal of Law, Economics and Organisation, 15 (1998), 222279CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Mesquita, Bruce Bueno de and Root, Hilton, eds, Governing for Prosperity (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 2000)Google Scholar; Knack, Stephen, Democracy, Governance, & Growth (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2003)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Feng, Yi, Democracy, Governance and Economic Performance (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 2003)Google Scholar.

3 Knack, , Democracy, Governance, & Growth, p. 1Google Scholar.

4 Weiss, Thomas G., ‘Governance, Good Governance and Global Governance: Conceptual and Actual Challenges’, Third World Quarterly, 21 (2000), 795814CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

5 Chong, Alberto and Calderon, Cesar, ‘On the Causality and Feedback between Institutional Measures and Economic Growth’, Economics and Politics, 12 (2000), 6981CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Glaeser, Edward, Porta, Rafael La, Lopez-de-Silanes, Florencio and Shleifer, Andrei, ‘Do Institutions Cause Growth?’ Journal of Economic Growth, 9 (2004), 271303CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Przeworski, Adam, ‘The Last Instance: Are Institutions the Primary Cause of Economic Development?’ European Journal of Sociology, 45 (2004), 165188CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

6 Bardhan, Pranab, Scarcity, Conflicts, and Cooperation: Essays in the Political and Institutional Economics of Development (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 2005)Google Scholar.

7 Glaeser, et al. , ‘Do Institutions Cause Growth?’Google Scholar Kurtz, Marcus J. and Schrank, Andrew, ‘Growth and Governance: Models, Measures, and Mechanisms’, Journal of Politics, 69 (2007), 538554CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

8 Durlauf, Steven N., Johnson, Paul A. and Temple, Jonathan R.W., ‘Growth Econometrics’, in Philippe Aghion and Steven Durlauf, eds, Handbook of Economic Growth: Volume 1A (New York: Elsevier North-Holland, 2005), pp. 555677CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

9 Helpman, Elhanan, The Mystery of Economic Growth (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2004)Google Scholar.

10 Kaufmann, Daniel, ‘Rethinking Governance: Empirical Lessons Challenge Orthodoxy’ (World Bank Discussion Paper, 2003), pp. 147, at p. 27, available at http://www.worldbank.org/wbi/governance/pdf/rethink_gov_stanford.pdfGoogle Scholar.

11 For an insightful analysis of what we know, and what we do not know, about the economic and political sources of economic growth, see Helpman, , The Mystery of Economic Growth.Google Scholar

12 For comprehensive reviews of this vast literature, see Barro, Robert J. and Sala-i-Martin, Xavier, Economic Growth (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1995)Google Scholar; Barro, Robert J., Determinants of Economic Growth (Cambridge, Mass.: The MIT Press, 1998)Google Scholar; Aghion, and Durlauf, , Handbook of Economic GrowthGoogle Scholar.

13 Helpman, , The Mystery of Economic GrowthGoogle Scholar.

14 For a thorough review of the new political economy of growth, see Drazen, Allan, Political Economy in Macroeconomics (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2000), pp. 457525Google Scholar.

15 Feng, , Democracy, Governance and Economic PerformanceGoogle Scholar.

16 Przeworski, Adam, Alvarez, Michael E., Cheibub, José Antonio and Limongi, Fernando, Democracy and Development: Political Institutions and Well-Being in the World, 1950–1990 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), p. 178CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

17 Feng, , Democracy, Governance and Economic Performance, pp. 320321Google Scholar (emphasis added). On these ambiguous results, see also Sirowy, L. and Inkeles, A., ‘The Effects of Democracy on Economic Growth and Inequality: A Review’, Studies in Comparative International Development, 25 (1990), 126157CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Przeworski, Adam and Limongi, Fernando, ‘Political Regimes and Economic Growth’, Journal of Economic Perspectives, 7 (1993), 5170CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Lane, Jan-Erik and Ersson, Svante, Democracy: A Comparative Approach (New York: Routledge, 2003)Google Scholar.

18 Another research stream has looked at the ‘indirect’ effect of democracy on growth. In particular, there is evidence that democracy contributes to growth through better income distribution and improvements in public health and education. See, e.g., Feng, , Democracy, Governance and Economic PerformanceGoogle Scholar; Baum, Matthew A. and Lake, David A., ‘The Political Economy of Growth: Democracy and Human Capital’, American Journal of Political Science, 47 (2003), 333347CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Brown, David S. and Hunter, Wendy, ‘Democracy and Human Capital Formation: Education Spending in Latin America’, Comparative Political Studies, 37 (2004), 842864CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

19 Earlier attempts to test the impact of property rights on growth in international regressions include: Kormendi, Roger C. and Meguire, Philip G., ‘Macroeconomic Determinants of Growth’, Journal of Monetary Economics, 16 (1985), 141163CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Grier, Kevin B. and Tullock, Gordon, ‘An Empirical Analysis of Cross-National Economic Growth, 1951–80’, Journal of Monetary Economics, 24 (1989), 259276CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Scully, Gerald W., ‘The Institutional Framework and Economic Development’, Journal of Political Economy, 96 (1988), 652662CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

20 Knack, and Keefer, , ‘Institutions and Economic Performance’Google Scholar.

21 Mauro, , ‘Corruption and Growth’Google Scholar.

22 Alesina, , ‘The Political Economy of High and Low Growth’Google Scholar.

23 See, e.g., La Porta, et al. , ‘The Quality of Government’Google Scholar; Hall, Robert E. and Jones, Charles I., ‘Why Do Some Countries Produce So Much More Output per Worker than Others?’ Quarterly Journal of Economics, 114 (1999), 83116CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Acemoglu, Daron, Johnson, Simon and Robinson, James A., ‘The Colonial Origins of Comparative Development’, American Economic Review, 91 (2001), 13691401CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Acemoglu, Daron, Johnson, Simon and Robinson, James A., ‘Reversal of Fortune: Geography and Institutions in the Making of the Modern World Income Distribution’, Quarterly Journal of Economics, 117 (2002), 12311294CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Easterly, William and Levine, Ross, ‘Tropics, Germs, and Crops: How Endowments Influence Economic Development’, Journal of Monetary Economics, 50 (2003), 339CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Rodrik, Dani, Subramanian, Arvind and Trebbi, Francesco, ‘Institutions Rule: The Primacy of Institutions over Geography and Integration in Economic Development’, Journal of Economic Growth, 9 (2004), 131165CrossRefGoogle Scholar. For a review of this literature, see Acemoglu, Daron, Johnson, Simon and Robinson, James A., ‘Institutions as the Fundamental Cause of Long-Run Growth’Google Scholar, in Aghion, and Durlauf, , Handbook of Economic Growth, pp. 385472Google Scholar.

24 Olson, Mancur, ‘Big Bills Left on the Sidewalk: Why Some Nations Are Rich and Others Poor’, Journal of Economic Perspectives, 10 (1996), 324CrossRefGoogle Scholar. See also Knack, , Democracy, Governance, & GrowthGoogle Scholar.

25 Kaufmann, Daniel and Kraay, Aart, ‘Growth without Governance’, Economia: The Journal of the Latin American and Caribbean Economic Association, 3 (2003), 169215, p. 169Google Scholar.

26 Problems may arise not only because causality runs from income to institutions, but also because the institutional variables are measured at the end (or too close to the end) of the growth period.

27 Chong, and Calderon, , ‘On the Causality and Feedback between Institutional Measures and Economic Growth’Google Scholar.

28 Kaufmann, and Kraay, , ‘Growth without Governance’Google Scholar.

29 Acemoglu, et al. , ‘The Colonial Origins of Comparative Development’Google Scholar.

30 Glaeser, et al. , ‘Do Institutions Cause Growth?’ p. 285Google Scholar.

31 A recent paper, using dynamic panel and linear feedback analysis, shows that there is double causality between institutions and inequality. See Chong, Alberto and Gradstein, Mark, ‘Inequality and Institutions’, Review of Economic and Statistics, 89 (2007), 454465CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

32 E.g., Sachs, Jeffrey D., ‘Tropical Underdevelopment’, NBER Working Paper No. 8119 (Cambridge, Mass.: National Bureau of Economic Research, 2001)Google Scholar.

33 E.g., Sokoloff, Kenneth L. and Engerman, Stanley L., ‘History Lessons: Institutions, Factor Endowments, Institutions, and Paths of Development in the New World’, Journal of Economic Perspectives, 14 (2000), 217232CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

34 E.g., Hall, and Jones, , ‘Why Do Some Countries Produce So Much More Output per Worker than Others?’Google Scholar North, Douglass C., Summerhill, William and Weingast, Barry R., ‘Order, Disorder, and Economic Change: Latin America versus North America’, in Bueno de Mesquita and Root, eds, Governing for Prosperity, pp. 1758Google Scholar.

35 E.g., La Porta, et al. , ‘The Quality of Government’Google Scholar; Djankov, Simeon, La Porta, Rafael, Lopez-de-Silanes, Florencio and Shleifer, Andrei, ‘Courts’, Quarterly Journal of Economics, 118 (2003), 453517CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

36 E.g., Easterly, William and Levine, Ross, ‘Africa’s Growth Tragedy: Policies and Ethnic Divisions’, Quarterly Journal of Economics, 111 (1997), 12031250CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Keefer, Philip and Knack, Stephen, ‘Polarization, Politics and Property Rights’, Public Choice, 111 (2002), 127154CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Alesina, Alberto, Devleeschauwer, Arnaud, Easterly, William and Wacziarg, Romain, ‘Fractionalization’, Journal of Economic Growth, 8 (2003), 155194CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

37 E.g., La Porta, et al. , ‘The Quality of Government’Google Scholar.

38 Bardhan, , Scarcity, Conflicts, and Cooperation, pp. 719Google Scholar; Bates, Robert H., ‘The Role of the State in Development’, in Barry R. Weingast and Donald Wittman, eds, The Oxford Handbook of Political Economy (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006), pp. 708722Google Scholar; Moore, Mick, ‘Revenues, State Formation, and the Quality of Governance in Developing Countries’, International Political Science Review, 25 (2004), 297319CrossRefGoogle Scholar. On the role of the state in East Asia, see also Amsden, Alice, Asia’s Next Giant: South Korea and Late Industrialization (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1989)Google Scholar; Wade, Robert, Governing the Market (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1990)Google Scholar; Evans, Peter, Embedded Autonomy: States and Industrial Transformation (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1995)Google Scholar. For large-N studies on the effects of state structures, see Evans, Peter and Rauch, James, ‘Bureaucracy and Growth: A Cross-National Analysis of the Effects of Weberian State Structures on Economic Growth’, American Economic Review, 64 (1999), 748765Google Scholar; Rauch, James and Evans, Peter, ‘Bureaucratic Structure and Economic Performance in Less Developed Countries’, Journal of Public Economics, 75 (2000), 4971CrossRefGoogle Scholar. For a recent effort to bring the state back into the discussion, see Lange, Matthew and Rueschemeyer, Dietrich, eds, States and Development (Basingstoke, Hants.: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

39 Helpman, , The Mystery of Economic Growth, pp. 136138Google Scholar.

40 Acemoglu, et al. , ‘The Colonial Origins of Comparative Development’. See also Easterly and Levine, ‘Tropics, Germs, and Crops’; Rodrik et al. ‘Institutions Rule’Google Scholar.

41 Acemoglu, et al. , ‘Institutions as the Fundamental Cause of Long-Run Growth’, p. 463Google Scholar.

42 Helpman, , The Mystery of Economic Growth, p. 125Google Scholar.

43 Przeworski, , ‘The Last Instance’, p. 166Google Scholar.

44 Sangmpam, S. N., ‘Politics Rules: The False Primacy of Institutions in Developing Countries’, Political Studies, 55 (2007), 205207CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Uncertainties remain even within the ‘institutions rule’ consensus. For example, in a review article Rodrik qualifies the strong institutionalist flavour of Rodrik et al.’s ‘Institutions Rule’, suggesting that that work should not be seen in the frontline of institutions fundamentalism (see Rodrik, Dani, ‘Goodbye Washington Consensus, Hello Washington Confusion?’ Journal of Economic Literature, 44 (2006), 973987CrossRefGoogle Scholar, p. 979). Similarly, Robinson, one of the co-authors of AJR, says that the Latin American equilibrium of poor institutions is deeply rooted in a given distribution of political power (see Robinson, James A., ‘El Equilibrio de America Latina’, in Francis Fukuyama, ed., La Brecha entre America Latina y Estados Unidos: Determinantes politicos e institucionales del desarrollo economico (Buenos Aires: Fondo de Cultura Economica, 2006), pp. 197230)Google Scholar.

45 Landman, Todd and Häusermann, Julia, ‘Map-Making and Analysis of the Main International Initiatives on Developing Indicators on Democracy and Good Governance’ (unpublished paper, Human Rights Centre, University of Essex, 2003)Google Scholar.

46 See, e.g., Inkeles, Alex, On Measuring Democracy: Its Consequences and Concomitants (Brunswick, N.J.: Transaction Publishers, 1991)Google Scholar; Foweraker, Joe and Krznaric, Roman, ‘Measuring Liberal Democratic Performance’, Political Studies, 47 (2000), 759787CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Munck, Gerardo L. and Verkuilen, Jay, ‘Conceptualizing and Measuring Democracy: Evaluating Alternative Indices’, Comparative Political Studies, 35 (2002), 534Google Scholar; Dahl, Robert A., Shapiro, Ian and Cheibub, José Antonio, eds, The Democracy Sourcebook (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 2003)Google Scholar; Bowman, Kirk, Lehouck, Fabrice and Mahoney, James, ‘Measuring Political Democracy: Case Expertise, Data Adequacy and Central America’, Comparative Political Studies, 38 (2005), 939970CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

47 For interesting developments in this area, see Weiss, , ‘Governance, Good Governance and Global Governance’Google Scholar; Landman, and Häusermann, , ‘Map-Making and Analysis of the Main International Initiatives on Developing Indicators on Democracy and Good Governance’Google Scholar; Knack, , Democracy, Governance, & GrowthGoogle Scholar; Woodruff, Christopher, ‘Measuring Institutions’, in Susan Rose-Ackerman and Henry Luce, eds, International Handbook on the Economics of Corruption (Northampton: Edward Elgar, 2006)Google Scholar; Arndt, Christiane and Oman, Charles, Uses and Abuses of Governance Indicators (Paris: OECD Development Centre Studies, 2006)Google Scholar; and the insightful exchange between Kurtz and Schrank, ‘Growth and Governance’, and Kaufmann, Daniel, Kraay, Aart and Mastruzzi, Massimo, ‘Growth and Governance: A Reply’, Journal of Politics, 69 (2007), 555562CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

48 Knack, and Keefer, , ‘Institutions and Economic Performance’; Mauro, ‘Corruption and Growth’Google Scholar. The first generation of empirical studies on institutions and growth measured countries’ institutional environment through Gastil indices (e.g., Kormendi and Meguire, ‘Macroeconomic Determinants of Growth’; Grier and Tullock, ‘An Empirical Analysis of Cross-National Economic Growth’; Scully, ‘The Institutional Framework and Economic Development’) or objective counts of political violence (e.g., Barro, Robert J., ‘Economic Growth in a Cross Section of Countries’, Quarterly Journal of Economics, 106 (1991), 407443CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Alesina, Alberto, Ozler, Sule, Roubini, Nouriel and Swagel, Phillip, ‘Political Instability and Economic Growth’, Journal of Economic Growth, 1 (1996), 189211CrossRefGoogle Scholar). However, those measures delivered questionable proxies of concepts such as the rule of law, contract enforceability and the security of property rights. See Knack, Stephen, ‘Governance and Growth: Measurement and Evidence’ (paper presented at the Forum on the Role of Institutions in Promoting Growth, IRIS Center and USAID, Washington, D.C., 2002)Google Scholar.

49 Glaeser, et al. , ‘Do Institutions Cause Growth?’ p. 271Google Scholar.

50 North, Douglass C., Institutions, Institutional Change and Economic Performance (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990), p. 3Google Scholar.

51 At the conceptual level, these authors claim that ‘human capital is a more basic source of growth than are the institutions’ and that ‘poor countries get out of poverty through good policies, often pursued by dictators’. See Glaeser, et al. , ‘Do Institutions Cause Growth?’ p. 271Google Scholar.

52 Kurtz, and Schrank, , ‘Growth and Governance’, p. 538Google Scholar. For a defence of the World Bank Governance Indicators, see Kaufmann, Daniel, Kraay, Aart and Mastruzzi, Massimo, ‘Measuring Governance Using Cross-Country Perceptions Data’, in Rose-Ackerman and Luce, eds, International Handbook on the Economics of CorruptionGoogle Scholar; Kaufmann, Daniel and Kraay, Aart, ‘Governance Indicators: Where Are We, Where Should We Be Going?’ World Bank Research Observer, 23 (2008), 130CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

53 Bardhan, , Scarcity, Conflicts, and CooperationGoogle Scholar.

54 Helpman, , The Mystery of Economic GrowthGoogle Scholar; North, Douglass C., Understanding the Process of Economic Change (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2005)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

55 Rothstein, Bo, ‘Political Institutions: An Overview’Google Scholar, in Goodin, Robert E. and Klingemann, Hans-Dieter, eds, A New Handbook of Political Science (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996), pp. 133166Google Scholar, at p. 152.

56 Tsebelis, George, Nested Games: Rational Choice in Comparative Politics (San Francisco: University of California Press, 1990)Google Scholar, p. 98.

57 Brennan, Geoffrey and Buchanan, James M., The Reason of Rules: Constitutional Political Economy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985)Google Scholar.

58 Olson, , ‘Big Bills Left on the Sidewalk’, p. 21Google Scholar.

59 See Rodrik, et al. , ‘Institutions Rule’Google Scholar.

60 della Paolera, Gerardo and Taylor, Alan M., eds, A New Economic History of Argentina (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003), p. 3Google Scholar.

61 Dellepiane-Avellaneda, Sebastian, ‘The Political Economy of Institutional Credible Commitments: The Case of Argentina’s Convertibility Law, 1991–2001’ (doctoral dissertation, University of Essex, 2005)Google Scholar.

62 Alesina, , ‘The Political Economy of High and Low Growth’Google Scholar.

63 Tella, Guido Di and Dornbusch, Rudiger, eds, The Political Economy of Argentina, 1946–83 (Basingstoke, Hants.: Macmillan, 1989), p. 7CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

64 Mallon, Richard and Sourrouille, Juan, Economic Policymaking in a Conflict Society: The Argentine Case (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1975), p. 154CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

65 Sangmpam, , ‘Politics Rules’Google Scholar.

66 Feng, Yi, ‘Political Institutions, Economic Growth, and Democratic Evolution: The Pacific Asian Scenario’, in Bueno de Mesquita and Root, eds, Governing for Prosperity, pp. 172208Google Scholar.

67 Feng, , Democracy, Governance and Economic PerformanceGoogle Scholar.

68 For example, Sangmpam, in ‘Politics Rules’Google Scholar proposes the breaking up of the political system into its three components: politics, institutions and the state itself.

69 North, , Institutions, Institutional Change and Economic PerformanceGoogle Scholar.

70 Shepsle, Kenneth A., ‘Studying Institutions’, Journal of Theoretical Politics, 1 (1989), 131147CrossRefGoogle Scholar, p. 138; Shepsle, Kenneth A., ‘Old Questions and New Answers about Institutions: The Riker Objection Revisited’, in Weingast and Wittman, eds, The Oxford Handbook of Political Economy, pp. 10311049Google Scholar.

71 Riker, William H., ‘Implications from the Disequilibrium of Majority Rule for the Study of Institutions’, American Political Science Review, 74 (1980), 432446CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

72 Hinich, Melvin J. and Munger, Michael C., Analytical Politics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

73 Formally, equilibrium is a ‘status quo position in the policy space that cannot be defeated by another feasible position’ ( Hinich, and Munger, , Analytical Politics, p. 52Google Scholar). In this article, equilibrium refers to a ‘stable policy outcome’. The latter is equilibrium provided that the main actors involved do not have incentives to change their behaviour given what others are likely to do in response.

74 North, , Institutions, Institutional Change and Economic PerformanceGoogle Scholar.

75 North, , Understanding the Process of Economic Change, p. 62Google Scholar. See also Denzau, Arthur and North, Douglass C., ‘Shared Mental Models: Ideologies and Institutions’, Kyklos, 47 (1994), 331CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Knight, Jack and North, Douglass C., ‘Explaining Economic Change: The Interplay between Cognition and Institutions’, Legal Theory, 3 (1997), 211226CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

76 North, Douglass C., ‘Economic Performance through Time’, American Economic Review, 84 (1994), 359368Google Scholar.

77 Knack, Stephen and Keefer, Philip, ‘Does Social Capital Have an Economic Payoff? A Cross-country Empirical Investigation’Google Scholar, in Knack, , Democracy, Governance, & Growth, pp. 252290Google Scholar.

78 Temple, Jonathan and Johnson, Paul A., ‘Social Capability and Economic Growth’, Quarterly Journal of Economics, 113 (1998), 965990CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

79 North, , Understanding the Process of Economic Change, p. 48 (emphasis added)Google Scholar.

80 North, Douglass C., ‘What Is Missing from Political Economy’Google Scholar, in Weingast, and Wittman, , The Oxford Handbook of Political Economy, pp. 10031009Google Scholar.

81 Pontusson, Jonas, ‘From Comparative Public Policy to Political Economy: Putting Political Institutions in Their Place and Taking Interests Seriously’, Comparative Political Studies, 28 (1995), 117147, p. 117CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

82 Moe, T. M., ‘Political Institutions: The Neglected Side of the Story’, Journal of Law, Economics, and Organizations, 6 (1990), 213253, p. 213CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

83 See North, , Institutions, Institutional Change and Economic Performance; Tsebelis, Nested GamesGoogle Scholar; Knight, Jack, Institutions and Social Conflict (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Thelen, Kathleen and Steinmo, Sven, ‘Historical Institutionalism in Comparative Politics’, in Sven Steinmo, Kathleen Thelen and Frank Longstreth, eds, Structuring Politics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992), pp. 132Google Scholar; Hall, Peter A., ‘The Role of Interests, Institutions, and Ideas in the Comparative Political Economy of Industrialized Nations’, in Mark Lichbach and Alan Zuckerman, eds, Comparative Politics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), pp. 174207Google Scholar; Pierson, Paul and Skocpol, Theda, ‘Historical Institutionalism in Contemporary Political Science’, in Ira Katznelson and Helen Milner, eds, Political Science: The State of the Discipline (New York: Norton, 2002), pp. 693721Google Scholar.

84 For a classical account of the distributive politics of development, see Bates, Robert H., ‘Macropolitical Economy in the Field of Development’, in James Alt and Kenneth Shepsle, eds, Perspectives on Positive Political Economy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990), pp. 3154CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

85 Bardhan, , Scarcity, Conflicts, and Cooperation, p. 27Google Scholar.

86 Bardhan, , Scarcity, Conflicts, and Cooperation, p. 30Google Scholar.

87 Bardhan, , Scarcity, Conflicts, and Cooperation, p. 2Google Scholar.

88 Hall, Peter A. and Soskice, David, Varieties of Capitalism: The Institutional Foundations of Comparative Advantage (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001)CrossRefGoogle Scholar. For an application in transition countries, see Feldmann, Magnus, ‘Emerging Varieties of Capitalism in Transition Countries: Industrial Relations and Wage Bargaining in Estonia and Slovenia’, Comparative Political Studies, 39 (2006), 829854CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

89 North, Douglass C., Understanding the Process of Economic Change (London: Institute of Economic Affairs, 1999), p. 23Google Scholar.

90 See, for example, Haber, Stephen, Razo, Armando and Maurer, Noel, The Politics of Property Rights: Political Instability, Credible Commitments, and Economic Growth in Mexico, 1876–1929 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

91 North, Douglass C., ‘Institutions and Credible Commitment’, Journal of Institutional and Theoretical Economics, 149 (1993), 1123, p. 11Google Scholar.

92 Weingast, Barry R., ‘The Economic Role of Political Institutions: Market-preserving Federalism and Economic Development’, Journal of Law, Economics, and Organization, 11 (1995), 131, p. 1Google Scholar.

93 See Williamson, Oliver E., The Economic Institutions of Capitalism (New York: Free Press, 1985)Google Scholar; Shepsle, Kenneth A., ‘Discretion, Institutions and the Problem of Government Commitment’, in Pierre Bourdieu and James Coleman, eds, Social Theory for a Changing Society (Boulder, Colo.: Western Press, 1991), pp. 245263Google Scholar; North, Douglass C. and Weingast, Barry R., ‘Constitutions and Commitments’, Journal of Economic History, 19 (1989), 803832CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Levy, Brian and Spiller, Pablo T., ‘The Institutional Foundations of Regulatory Commitment’, Journal of Law, Economics and Organisation, 10 (1996), 201246Google Scholar.

94 Mantzavinos, C., Individuals, Institutions, and Markets (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001), p. 245CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

95 Campos, J. E. and Root, Hilton L., The Key to the East Asian Miracle: Making Shared Growth Credible (Washington, D.C.: The Brookings Institution, 1996)Google Scholar.

96 Campos, and Root, , The Key to the East Asian Miracle, p. 7Google Scholar.

97 Boix, Carles, Democracy and Redistribution (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

98 Weingast, Barry R., ‘Rational-Choice Institutionalism’, in Katznelson and Milner, eds, Political Science, pp. 660692. fn 123 (19-41)Google Scholar.

99 Przeworski, , ‘The Last Instance’Google Scholar.

100 See Riker, , ‘Implications from the Disequilibrium of Majority Rule for the Study of Institutions’; Tsebelis, Nested GamesGoogle Scholar; Bates, Robert H., ‘Contra Contractarianism’, Politics and Society, 16 (1988), 387401CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Ordeshook, Peter C., ‘The Emerging Discipline of Political Economy’Google Scholar, in Alt, and Shepsle, , Perspectives on Positive Political Economy, pp. 930Google Scholar.

101 Shepsle, , ‘Studying Institutions’Google Scholar.

102 Tsebelis, , Nested Games.Google Scholar

103 Weingast, , ‘Rational-Choice Institutionalism’Google Scholar.

104 See, e.g. Knack, , Democracy, Governance, & Growth; Chong and Gradstein, ‘Inequality and Institutions’Google Scholar.

105 Weiss, , ‘Governance, Good Governance and Global Governance’, p. 796Google Scholar.

106 The 1997 World Development Report signalled a pivotal change in the development game by stating that ‘good government is not a luxury; it is a vital necessity for development’ (World Bank, The Role of the State in a Changing World (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997)). At almost the same time, the IMF declared that ‘a much broader range of institutional reforms is needed if countries are to establish and maintain private sector confidence and thereby lay the basis for sustained growth’ (International Monetary Fund, Good Governance: The IMF’s Role (Washington, D.C.: IMF, 1997)). Some critics argued that the good-governance discourse aimed at legitimizing the new politics of development. See Kothari, Uma and Minogue, Martin, Development Theory and Practice: Critical Perspectives (Basingstoke, Hants.: Palgrave, 2002)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

107 Kaufmann, , ‘Rethinking Governance’, p. 3 (emphasis added)Google Scholar.

108 Alesina, , ‘The Political Economy of High and Low Growth’, p. 217Google Scholar.

109 Alesina, , ‘The Political Economy of High and Low Growth’, p. 217 (emphasis added)Google Scholar.

110 For example, the analysis covers neither the critical 1990s nor the periods in which most of today’s rich countries became developed.

111 Another issue is the distributional implications of institutional conditionality. Which actors are going to bear the burden of the policy? What is the role and bargaining power of those actors in the game of institutional change?

112 Feng, , Democracy, Governance and Economic Performance, p. 37Google Scholar.

113 Przeworski, , ‘The Last Instance’, p. 168Google Scholar.

114 Feng, , Democracy, Governance and Economic Performance, p. 86Google Scholar.

115 Knack, , Democracy, Governance, & Growth, p. 294Google Scholar. With the aim of unbundling particular manifestations of misgovernance, the World Bank and other organizations have begun to develop surveys and in-depth in-country governance diagnostics.

116 Mauro, , ‘Corruption and Growth’, pp. 681712Google Scholar.

117 See, e.g., Ades, Alberto and Tella, Rafael Di, ‘The New Economics of Corruption: A Survey and Some New Results’, Political Studies, 45 (1997), 496515CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Tanzi, Vito, ‘Corruption around the World’, IMF Staff Papers, 45 (1998), 559594CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

118 Fortunately, the scholarship on the institutional foundations of corruption is thriving. See Persson, Torsten and Tabellini, Guido, The Economic Effects of Constitutions (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 2003)Google Scholar; Montinola, Gabriella R. and Jackman, Robert W., ‘Sources of Corruption: A Cross-Country Study’, British Journal of Political Science, 32 (2002), 147170CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Gerring, John and Thacker, Strom, ‘Political Institutions and Corruption: The Role of Unitarism and Parliamentarism’, British Journal of Political Science, 34 (2004), 295330CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Kunicova, Jana and Rose-Ackerman, Susan, ‘Electoral Rules and Constitutional Structures as Constraints on Corruption’, British Journal of Political Science, 35 (2005), 573606CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Chang, Eric C. and Golden, Miriam A., ‘Electoral Systems, District Magnitude and Corruption’, British Journal of Political Science, 37 (2007), 115137CrossRefGoogle Scholar. For a review of the political economy of corruption, see Rose-Ackerman, and Luce, , International Handbook on the Economics of Corruption.Google Scholar

119 Rodrik, Dani, In Search of Prosperity: Analytic Narratives on Economic Growth (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2003), p. 8CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

120 Kaufmann, , ‘Rethinking Governance’Google Scholar.

121 Knack, , Democracy, Governance, & Growth, p. 295 (emphasis added)Google Scholar.

122 Eggertsson, , Imperfect InstitutionsGoogle Scholar.

123 See especially North, Douglass C., ‘Five Propositions about Institutional Change’, in Jack Knight and Itai Sened, eds, Explaining Social Institutions (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1995), pp. 1526Google Scholar, at p. 20. As Levi explains: ‘[P]ath dependence has to mean, if it has to mean anything, that once a country or region has started down a track, the costs of reversal are very high. There will be other choice points, but the entrenchments of certain institutional arrangements obstruct any easy reversal of the initial choice’ (see Levi, Margaret, ‘A Model, a Method, and a Map’, in Lichbach and Zuckerman, eds, Comparative Politics, pp. 1941Google Scholar, at p. 28 (emphasis added)).

124 In his last book, North stresses that beliefs are at the core of the process of change. The complex structure of institutions affecting political economy performance is the result of beliefs and the way they are altered by feedback from changed perceived reality. See North, , Understanding the Process of Economic Change, p. 4Google Scholar.

125 See Knack, , Democracy, Governance, & Growth; Bardhan, Scarcity, Conflicts, and Cooperation.Google Scholar

126 For an innovative attempt to look at the cognitive constraints to development, see Reis, Elisa and Moore, Mick, eds, Elite Perceptions of Poverty and Inequality (London: Zed Books, 2005)Google Scholar.

127 North, , Understanding the Process of Economic Change, pp. 163164Google Scholar.

128 Rodrik, , In Search of Prosperity, p. 15Google Scholar.

129 Rodrik, , In Search of Prosperity, p. 12Google Scholar. See also Rodrik, Dani, ‘Growth Strategies’Google Scholar, in Aghion, and Durlauf, , Handbook of Economic Growth, pp. 9671014Google Scholar.

130 See, e.g., Bank, World, Economic Growth in the 1990s: Learning from a Decade of Reform (Washington, D.C.: IBRD, 2005)CrossRefGoogle Scholar. However, Rodrik shows that there are contending interpretations in the Washington community in relation to the role of institutions. See Rodrik, ‘Goodbye Washington Consensus, Hello Washington Confusion?’

131 Kaufmann, , ‘Rethinking Governance’Google Scholar.

132 Knack, , Democracy, Governance, & Growth, p. 7Google Scholar.

133 Even Chile, Latin America’s growth star, still has very high levels of inequality (though poverty has declined markedly). On the historical impossibility of reconciling growth and equity in Latin America, see Fajnzylber, Fernando, Unavoidable Industrial Restructuring in Latin America (Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 1990)Google Scholar.

134 But see, e.g., Jenkins, R., ‘The Political Economy of Industrialization: A Comparison of Latin American and East Asian NICs’, Development and Change, 22 (1991), 197231CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Kay, Cristobal, ‘Why East Asia Overtook Latin America’, Third World Quarterly, 23 (2002), 10731102CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Bank, World, The East Asian Miracle: Economic Growth and Public Policy (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993)Google Scholar; Birdsall, Nancy, Ross, David and Sabot, Richard, ‘Inequality and Growth Reconsidered: Lessons from East Asia’, World Bank Economic Review, 9 (1995), 477508CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Ranis, Gustav, ‘Another Look at the East Asian Miracle’, World Bank Economic Review, 9 (1995), 509534CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

135 See Alesina, , ‘The Political Economy of High and Low Growth’; Feng, Democracy, Governance and Economic Performance.Google Scholar

136 See Glaeser, et al. , ‘Do Institutions Cause Growth?’Google Scholar

137 Nowhere is this pattern clearer than in Argentina, where the collapse of the convertibility system in 2001 destroyed the reputation of self-finding structural reforms and led to the adoption of a discretionary approach to policy making.

138 See Alesina, , ‘The Political Economy of High and Low Growth’, and Feng, Democracy, Governance and Economic Performance.Google Scholar

139 On the link between political order and economic growth, see North, et al. , ‘Order, Disorder, and Economic Change’Google Scholar; Bates, Robert H., Prosperity & Violence (New York: Norton, 2001)Google Scholar. For an interesting debate on constitutional political economy, see Persson, Torsten and Tabellini, Guido, The Economic Effects of Constitutions (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 2003)Google Scholar; and Acemoglu, Daron, ‘Constitutions, Politics, and Economics: A Review Essay on Persson and Tabellini’s The Economic Effects of Constitutions, Journal of Economic Literature, 43 (2005), 10251048CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

140 Mantzavinos, , Individuals, Institutions, and Markets, p. 245Google Scholar.

141 North, , Understanding the Process of Economic ChangeGoogle Scholar.

142 See especially, Knack, Democracy, Governance, & Growth, pp. 124Google Scholar.

143 See, e.g., Keefer, and Knack, , ‘Polarization, Politics and Property Rights’Google Scholar; Easterly, William, Ritzen, Josef and Woolcock, Michael, ‘Social Cohesion, Institutions and Growth’, Economics and Politics, 18 (2006), 103120CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

144 Henisz, Witold J., ‘The Institutional Environment for Economic Growth’, Economics and Politics, 12 (2000), pp. 131CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

145 Tsebelis, George, Veto Players: How Political Institutions Work (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2002), p. 204CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

146 On this trade-off, see Philip, George, ‘The Dilemmas of Good Governance: A Latin American Perspective’, Government and Opposition, 34 (1999), 226242CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

147 Weingast, , ‘The Economic Role of Political Institutions’Google Scholar.

148 Bardhan, , Scarcity, Conflicts, and Cooperation, p. 62Google Scholar.

149 See, e.g., Weingast, Barry R., ‘The Political Foundations of Democracy and the Rule of Law’, American Political Science Review, 91 (1997), 245263CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Boix, , Democracy and RedistributionGoogle Scholar.

150 Greif, Avner, ‘Self-Enforcing Political Systems and Economic Growth’, in Robert Bates, Avner Greif, Margaret Levi, Jean-Laurent Rosenthal and Barry Weingast, eds, Analytic Narratives (Princeton N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1998), pp. 263Google Scholar, at p. 60. Similarly, Eggertsson shows that ‘favourable background factors’ conditioned Botswana’s economic miracle (see Eggertsson, , Imperfect Institutions, pp. 170173Google Scholar). Specific political conditions have also supported credible commitment and sustained growth in Chile in the last decades.

151 Drazen, , Political Economy in Macroeconomics, p. 459Google Scholar. See also Alesina, Alberto and Perotti, Roberto, ‘The Political Economy of Growth: A Critical Survey of the Recent Literature’, World Bank Economic Review, 8 (1994), 351371CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Barro, Robert J., ‘Inequality and Growth in a Panel of Countries’, Journal of Economic Growth, 5 (2001), 87120Google Scholar; Landa, Dimitri and Kapstein, Ethan B., ‘Review Article: Inequality, Growth and Democracy’, World Politics, 53 (2001), 264296CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

152 Chong, and Gradstein, , ‘Inequality and Institutions’Google Scholar.

153 Campos, and Root, , The Key to the East Asian Miracle, p. 2Google Scholar.

154 On the geopolitics of the East Asian miracle, see Stubbs, Richard, Rethinking Asia’s Economic Miracle: The Political Economy of War, Prosperity, and Crisis (Basingstoke, Hants.: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

155 Knack, , Democracy, Governance, & Growth, p. 7Google Scholar.

156 Riker, William H., Federalism (Boston, Mass.: Little Brown, 1964)Google Scholar; Boix, , Democracy and RedistributionGoogle Scholar.

157 See, e.g., Keohane, Robert O. and Milner, Helen V., Internationalization and Domestic Politics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Frieden, Jeffrey and Martin, Lisa, ‘International Political Economy’Google Scholar, in Katznelson, and Milner, , Political Science, pp. 118146Google Scholar; Grieco, Joseph M. and Ikenberry, G. John, State Power + World Markets: The International Political Economy (New York: Norton, 2003)Google Scholar; Kahler, Miles and Lake, David A., Governance in a Global Economy (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2003)Google Scholar; Lake, David A., ‘International Political Economy’Google Scholar, in Weingast, and Wittman, , eds, The Oxford Handbook of Political Economy, pp. 757777Google Scholar.

158 Li, Quan and Reuveny, Rafael, ‘Economic Globalization and Democracy: An Empirical Analysis’, British Journal of Political Science, 33 (2003), 2954CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

159 Sandholtz, Wayne and Gray, Mark M., ‘International Integration and National Corruption’, International Organization, 57 (2003), 761800CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

160 Rodrik, Dani, ‘Where Did All the Growth Go? External Shocks, Social Conflict, and Growth Collapses’, Journal of Economic Growth, 4 (1999), 385412CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

161 Easterly, William, ‘Can Foreign Aid Buy Growth?’ Journal of Economic Perspectives, 17 (2003), 2348CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Riddell, Roger C., Does Foreign Aid Really Work? (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007)Google Scholar.

162 Some scholars even suggest that it is worth revisiting the merits of dependency theory. See Foweraker, Joe and Landman, Todd, ‘Economic Development and Democracy Revisited: Why Dependency Theory is Not Yet Dead’, Democratization, 11 (2004), 120CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Lake, , ‘International Political Economy’Google Scholar.

163 Berger, Suzanne, ‘Globalization and Politics’, Annual Review of Political Science, 3 (2000), 4362CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

164 Wei, Shang-Jin, ‘Risks and Rewards of Embracing Globalization: The Governance Factor’ (paper prepared for the Plenary Session of the AERC Meeting, 2000)Google Scholar; Stein, Ernesto and Daude, Christian, ‘Institutions, Integrations and the Location of Foreign Direct Investment’ (Washington, D.C.: Inter-American Development Bank, Research Department, mimeographed document, 2001)Google Scholar.

165 Campos, and Root, , The Key to the East Asian Miracle, p. 78Google Scholar.

166 Campos, and Root, , The Key to the East Asian MiracleGoogle Scholar, p. 1. On the contrasting distributional paths of Latin America and East Asia, see also Root, Hilton L., Capital and Collusion (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2006)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

167 Rodrik, , ‘Where Did All the Growth Go?’Google Scholar

168 Hall, and Soskice, , Varieties of CapitalismGoogle Scholar.

169 North, , Understanding the Process of Economic Change, p. 157Google Scholar.

170 Gwartney, James, Lawson, Robert and Holcombe, Randall, ‘Economic Freedom and the Environment for Economic Growth’, Journal of Institutional and Theoretical Economics, 155 (1999), 643663Google Scholar; Wu, Wenbo and Davis, Otto A., ‘The Two Freedoms, Economic Growth and Development’, Public Choice, 100 (1999), 3964CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

171 Polanyi, Karl, The Great Transformation, 2nd edn (Boston, Mass.: Beacon Press, 2001), pp. 34, 79–80Google Scholar.

172 North, , Understanding the Process of Economic Change, p. 78Google Scholar.

173 Helpman, , The Mystery of Economic Growth, p. 140Google Scholar.

174 Thelen, Kathleen, ‘How Institutions Evolve’, in James Mahoney and Dietrich Rueschemeyer, eds, Comparative Historical Analysis in the Social Sciences (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003), pp. 208240, at p. 225CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

175 For an approach to economic development as a process, see Cypher, James M. and Dietz, James L., The Process of Economic Development (London: Routledge, 2004)Google Scholar.

176 On the importance of placing institutional politics in time, see Pierson, Paul, Politics in Time (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2004)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; North, , ‘What Is Missing from Political Economy’Google Scholar.

177 North, , Understanding the Process of Economic Change, p. 161Google Scholar.

178 For some frontier research on endogenous institutions, see Mantzavinos, , Individuals, Institutions, and MarketsGoogle Scholar; Weingast, ‘Rational-Choice Institutionalism’; Aghion, Philippe, Alesina, Alberto and Trebbi, Francesco, ‘Endogenous Political Institutions’, Quarterly Journal of Economics, 119 (2004), 565612CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Acemoglu, Daron and Robinson, James A., Economic Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006)Google Scholar; Greif, Avner, Institutions and the Path to the Modern Economy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

179 This crucial debate continues to divide the development community. See Rodrik, , ‘Goodbye Washington Consensus, Hello Washington Confusion?’Google Scholar

180 See Adcock, R. and Collier, D., ‘Measurement Validity: A Shared Standard for Qualitative and Quantitative Research’, American Political Science Review, 95 (2001), 529546CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Kurtz, Marcus J. and Schrank, Andrew, ‘Growth and Governance: A Defense’, Journal of Politics, 69 (2007), 563569CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

181 Helpman, , The Mystery of Economic Growth, p. 141Google Scholar.

182 Bardhan, , Scarcity, Conflicts, and Cooperation.Google Scholar

183 Context-specific analyses are also needed because processes of institutional formation might have ‘multiple equilibria’. On the analytical gains of consciously-designed case studies, see Rueschemeyer, Dietrich, ‘Can One or A Few Cases Yield Theoretical Gains?’Google Scholar in Mahoney, and Rueschemeyer, , Comparative Historical Analysis in the Social Sciences, pp. 305336Google Scholar; Alston, Lee J., ‘The Case for Case Studies in Political Economy’, Political Economist, 12 (2005), 121Google Scholar; George, Alexander L. and Bennett, Andrew, Case Studies and Theory Development in the Social Sciences (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 2005)Google Scholar; Bennett, Andrew and Elman, Colin, ‘Recent Developments in Case Study Methods’, Annual Review of Political Science, 9 (2006), 455476CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Gerring, John, Case Study Research (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007)Google Scholar. For insightful analytical cases studies on the politics of economic growth, see Rodrik, , In Search of ProsperityGoogle Scholar.

184 On the promises of cross-method approaches, see Levi, Margaret, ‘An Analytic Narrative Approach to Puzzles and Problems’, in Ian Shapiro, Rogers M. Smith and Tarek E. Masoud, eds, Problems and Methods in the Study of Politics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), pp. 201226CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Lieberman, E., ‘Nested Analysis as a Mixed Method Strategy for Comparative Research’, American Political Science Review, 99 (2005), 435452CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Bennett, Andrew and Elman, Colin, ‘Qualitative Research: The View from the Subfields’, Comparative Political Studies, 40 (2007), 111121CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Levy, Jack S., ‘Qualitative Methods and Cross-Method Dialogue in Political Science’, Comparative Political Studies, 40 (2007), 196214CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Sprinz, Detlef F. and Wolinsky-Nahmias, Yael, eds, Models, Numbers & Cases (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2004)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.