| This dissertation consists of two essays on the political economy of institutions. The first essay analyzes whether institutional reform has enabled the European Union (EU) to deal efficiently with an expanding legislative agenda. It uses the time lag between a Commission proposal and a Council decision as the central indicator of EU decision making efficiency and develops four hypotheses about factors influencing the proposal-decision time lag. The paper tests these hypotheses by analyzing all proposals for binding EU legislation made between 1984 and 1994 using event history analysis. The results show that institutional reform had a substantial impact on EU decision making efficiency and suggest that the EU is capable of an effective institutional response to an expanding legislative agenda. However, decision making efficiency is not the only goal guiding EU institutional reform.; The second essay analyzes the institutional structure of the Hanseatic League (HL), an association of about 200 north German towns, which dominated long-distance trade in northern Europe in the long interval between the decline of the Holy Roman Empire and the rise of the nation state. The HL is characterized by a striking contrast between its economic and political power on the one hand, and its lack of formal organization on the other. Historians have noted this contrast, but they have not explained it. The paper develops a formal model of cooperation between the north German towns to explain the institutional structure of the HL. The basic argument of the paper is that analyzing the HL as an equilibrium of a game can explain both the strength of the institution and its lack of formal organization. The specific structural characteristics of the HL, the paper argues, can be interpreted as organizational responses to uncertainty. |
