Abstract

“Institutions matter” has served as a mantra for the social sciences for almost thirty years. In political science, scholars in the subfield of comparative politics embraced this intellectual agenda by first “bringing the state back in” (Evans et al. 1985). Since then, comparative politics has focused much attention on institutions, and at this point, it seems appropriate to ask: What is our accumulated knowledge about political institutions in the comparative context, and how have we acquired it? Where have debates in the study of institutions emerged and how have scholars resolved them? What remains to be done in the comparative study of institutions? In this volume, we address these questions by having leading scholars in the field discuss their areas of substantive and methodological expertise.