Over its long lifetime, "political economy" has had many different meanings: the science of managing the resources of a nation so as to provide wealth to its inhabitants for Adam Smith; the study of how the ownership of the means of production influenced historical processes for Marx; the study of the inter-relationship between economics and politics for some twentieth-century commentators; and for others, a methodology emphasizing individual rationality (the economic or "public choice" approach) or institutional adaptation (the sociological version). This Handbook views political economy as a grand (if imperfect) synthesis of these various strands, treating political economy as the methodology of economics applied to the analysis of political behavior and institutions. This Handbook surveys the field of political economy, with 58 chapters ranging from micro to macro, national to international, institutional to behavioral, methodological to substantive. Chapters on social choice, constitutional theory, and public economics are set alongside ones on voters, parties and pressure groups, macroeconomics and politics, capitalism and democracy, and international political economy and international conflict.

• Introduction: The Nature of Political Economy
• I. VOTERS, CANDIDATES, AND PRESSURE GROUPS
• 1: Stephen Ansolabehere: Overview: Voters, Candidates, and Parties
• 2: Andrea Prat: Rational Voters and Political Advertising
• 3: John Duggan: Candidate Objectives and Electoral Equilibrium
• 4: John Londregan: Political Income Redistribution
• 5: Bernard Grofman: The Impact of Electoral Laws on Political Parties
• II. LEGISLATIVE BODIES
• 6: Michael Laver: Overview: Legislatures and Parliaments in Comparative Context
• 7: Gary Cox: The Organization of Democratic Legislatures
• 8: Daniel Diermeier: Coalition Governments
• 9: Nolan McCarty and Michael Cutrone: Bicameralism
• III. INTERACTION OF THE LEGISLATURE, PRESIDENT, BUREAUCRACY AND THE COURTS
• 10: Rui De Figueiredo, Tonja Jacobi, and Barry R Weingast: Overview: Separation of Power
• 11: Keith Krebiel: Pivotal Politics
• 12: Charles Cameron: Presidential Agenda Control
• 13: John Huber and Charles Shipan: Politics, Delegation, and Bureaucracy
• 14: Mathew McCubbins: The Judiciary
• IV. CONSTITUTIONAL THEORY
• 15: Russell Hardin: Overview: Constitutionalism
• 16: Adam Przeworski: Self-Enforcing Democracy
• 17: Geoffrey Brennan and Alan Hamlin: Constitutins as Expressive Documents
• 18: Richard Epstein: The Protection of Liberty, Property, and Equality
• 19: Jonathan Rodden: Federalism
• V. SOCIAL CHOICE
• 20: Herve Moulin: Overview: Social Choice
• 21: Donald Saari: A Toolkit for Voting Theory
• 22: Charles Blackorby and Walter Bossert: Interpersonal Comparisons of Well-Being
• 23: Steven Brams: Fair Division
• VI. PUBLIC FINANCE AND PUBLIC ECONOMICS
• 24: Walter Hettich and Stanley Winer: Overview: Structure and Coherence in the Political Economy of Public Finance
• 25: Juergen von Hagen: Fiscal Institutions
• 26: John Ledyard: Voting and Efficient Public Good Mechanisms
• 27: David Wildasin: Fiscal Competition
• VII. POLITICS AND MACROECONOMICS
• 28: Susanne Lohmann: Overview:The Nonpolitics of Monetary Policy
• 29: Robert Franzese: Political Business Cycles
• 30: Douglas Hibbs: Voting and the Macroeconomy
• 31: Lawrence Broz and Jeffry Frieden: The Political Economy of Exchange Rates
• VIII. DEMOCRACY AND CAPITALISM
• 32: Torben Iverson: Overview: Democracy and Capitalism
• 33: Edward Glaeser: Inequality
• 34: Anne Wren: Comparative Perspectives on the Place of the State in the Economy
• 35: Anna Grzymala and Pauline Jones-Loung: Democratization
• IX. HISTORICAL AND COMPARATIVE DEVELOPMENT AND NON-DEMOCRATIC REGIMES
• 36: Daron Acemoglu and James Robinson: Overview
• 37: Stephen Haber: Authoritarian Regimes
• 38: Bob Bates: The Developmental State
• 39: Torsten Persson and Guido Tabellini: Constitutional Design and Economic Performance
• 40: Anthony Venables: Economic Geogrpahy
• X. INTERNATIONAL POLITICAL ECONOMY
• 41: David Lake: Overview: International Political Economy: A Maturing Discipline
• 42: Enrico Spolaore: National Borders and the Size of Nations
• 43: Barry Eichengreen: European Integration
• 44: Ronald Rogowski: Trade, Immigration, and Cross-Border Investment
• XI. INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS AND CONFLICT
• 45: Bueno de Mesquita: Overview: Central Issues in the Study of International Conflict
• 46: James Fearon: Ethnic Mobilization and Ethnic Conflict
• 47: Allan Stam and Dan Reiter: Democracy, Peace, and War
• 48: Stergios Skepardas: Anarchy
• XII. METHODOLOGICAL ISSUES
• 49: David Austen-Smith: Economic Methods in Positive Political Theory
• 50: Thomas Palfrey: Experiments in Political Economy
• 51: Richard Swedberg: The Toolkit of Economic Sociology
• 52: Samuel Bowles and Herb Gintis: The Evolutionary Basis of Collective Action
• XIII. OLD and NEW
• 53: Kenneth Arrow: Questions About a Paradox: Are There Answers?
• 54: James Buchanan: Politics and Social Inquiry: Retrospective on a Half Century
• 55: Melvin Hinich: The Future of Analytic Politics
• 56: John Roemer: Modeling Party Competition in General Elections
• 57: Kenneth Shepsle: Old Questions and New Answers about Institutions: The Riker Objection Revisited
• 58: Douglass C. North: What's Missing from Political Economy?