Problems of institutional design and redesign, structuring and restructuring, acquired particular poignancy through recent developments from eastern Europe to southern Africa. At the same time, scholars in each of several disciplines—political science, sociology, history and philosophy—have increasingly come to appreciate the important independent role that is, and should be, played by institutional factors in social life. In this volume, disparate theories of institutional design given by each of those several disciplines are synthesized and their peculiar power illustrated.