Introduction.- Institutions: Rules or Equilibria?.- War, Wealth, and the Formation of States.- Why Do Weak States Prefer Prohibition to Taxation?.- Self-enforcing, Public-order Institutions for Contract Enforcement: Litigation, Regulation, and Limited Government in Venice, 1050 - 1350.- Judicial Stability During Regime Change: Apex Courts in India 1937-1960.- Institutional Arrangements Matter for Both Efficiency and Distribution: Contributions and Challenges of the New Institutional Economics.- Institutional Foundations, Committee System and Amateur Legislators in the Governance of the Spanish Congress: An Institutional Comparative Perspective (USA, Argentina, Spain).- Coalition Governments and Electoral Behavior: Who Is Accountable?.- Democracy and Voting: Empirical and Formal Models of the United States Presidential Elections in 2000 and 2004.- Modelling Elections in Post-Communist Regimes: Voter Perceptions, Political Leaders and Activists.- Electoral Systems and Party Responsiveness.- Electoral Institutions and Political Corruption: Ballot Structure, Electoral Formula, and Graft.- A Model of Party Entry in Parliamentary Systems with Proportional Representation.- Moving in Time: Legislative Party Switching as Time-Contingent Choice.- On the Distribution of Particularistic Goods.- Vote Revelation: Empirical Content of Scoring Rules.