It depends a bit on what you are searching for. Many interesting topics are covered in Persson/Tabellini’s Political Economics (they also have a book on constitutions, I cannot say much about that) and Drazen’s Political Economy in Macroeconomics. Or maybe you start by having a look at Acemoglu’s lecture notes. And there’s “Principled Agents?” by Besley, basically applying simple principle-agent models to governments. Which of these models are convincing is a different matter. Having spent a lot of time with Grossman & Helpman’s Lobby models, I think they don’t tell us as extremely much about lobbyism or politics.
So here’s something that is not fomal theory, but may interest you: The Economist, March 27th, has a review of a new book on the history of constitutions called “The Gun, the Ship and the Pen” by Linda Colley.
It depends a bit on what you are searching for. Many interesting topics are covered in Persson/Tabellini’s Political Economics (they also have a book on constitutions, I cannot say much about that) and Drazen’s Political Economy in Macroeconomics. Or maybe you start by having a look at Acemoglu’s lecture notes. And there’s “Principled Agents?” by Besley, basically applying simple principle-agent models to governments. Which of these models are convincing is a different matter. Having spent a lot of time with Grossman & Helpman’s Lobby models, I think they don’t tell us as extremely much about lobbyism or politics.
The book on constitutions looks very close to what I was looking for, thanks!
Great, then maybe Daron Acemoglu’s review of the book is the right place to start.
So here’s something that is not fomal theory, but may interest you: The Economist, March 27th, has a review of a new book on the history of constitutions called “The Gun, the Ship and the Pen” by Linda Colley.