Toward a theory of induced institutional innovation

In this paper we elaborate a theory of institutional innovation in which changes in the demand for institutional innovation are induced by changes in relative resource endowments and by technical change. We illustrate, from agricultural history, how changes in resource endowments and technical change have induced changes in private property rights and in the development of non‐market institutions. We also consider the impact of advances in social science knowledge and of cultural endowments on the supply of institutional change. In a final section we present the elements of a model of institutional innovation that maps the relationships among resource endowments, cultural endowments, technology, and institutions.     

Review Article: Richard rose and territorial politics

Understanding the United Kingdom: The Territorial Dimension in Government, Richard Rose, Longman, 1982, pp. 228, £4.95 (paperback).

The Territorial Dimension in United Kingdom Politics, Peter Madgwick and Richard Rose (eds), Macmillan, 1982, pp. viii + 256, £25.00.

United Kingdom Facts, Richard Rose and Ian McAllister, Macmillan, 1982, pp. x + 168, £30.00.     

Perceiving misperception

With Perry to Japan: A Memoir by William Heine, translated, with an introduction and annotations, by Frederic Trautmann. University of Hawaii Press, Honolulu, 1990. xv + 237 pp., illus. $32. ISBN 0-8248-1258-1.Images of Japanese Society: A Study in the Social Construction of Reality, by Ross Mouer and Yoshio Sugimoto. Kegan Paul International, London and New York, 1990. xxxii+552pp. £14.95 paperback. ISBN 0-7103-0379-3.Home, Sweet Tokyo: Life in a Weird and Wonderful City, By Rick Kennedy. Kodansha International, Tokyo and New York, 1989. 192 pp. £3.95 paperback. ISBN 0-87011-908-7.Asia in Western Fiction, edited by Robin W. Winks and James R. Rush, Manchester University Press, Manchester, 1990. x + 229 pp. £27.50. ISBN 0-7190-2906-6.     

Against Restitution

Recently, states and other institutions have undertaken to make restitution for past abuses. Distinctions need to be made between various kinds of restitutive practices that rest on quite different normative grounds. Moreover, the core idea of restitution, in attaching obligation to particular historically grounded relationships, is questionable, and what is being attempted is better explained and justified in terms of a number of standard principles of justice of a non-restitutive kind; for although there is, in principle, a clear case of restitutive justice, its elements rarely, if ever, exist in the real world in an unmixed state. Although there are significant objections to deriving local obligations from principles of universal justice, they have no force in this case. Policies termed 'restitutive' may well be justifiable, but they are misdescribed.