FORMAL THEORY AND THE INSTITUTIONS OF GOVERNANCE

Understanding governance in the would's democracies requires study of the political institutions - the chief executives, the bureaucracies, and the legislatures - most involved in national policymaking. There a re many approaches to the study of these institutions. This article ex amines the potential of an approach which is relatively unfamiliar to most students of governance: the development of formal mathematical th eories of political institutions. The costs and benefits of this appro ach are discussed, various types of formal theories are surveyed, and a variety of possible applications to some central problems of governa nce are described.