Editors’ Introduction to JTP issue 30.4

Abstract

This issue of Journal of Theoretical Politics contains five original articles focused on the design of political and economic institutions. In ''Rivalry among agents seeking large budgets,'' Kimiko Terai and Amihai Glazer consider delegation and resource provision in dynamic principal agent situations where a single principal has two agents about whose preferences the principal has incomplete information. Terai and Glazer's model illustrates a classic and important trade-off: the principal can sometimes achieve separation (i.e., screen the agents) by allocating large budgets to the agents initially, but this comes at a cost, as one or both of the agents might use their budget in ways that do not benefit the principal. However, holding too much of the budget as a reward in subsequent periods for the agent who reveals himself or herself as having preferences similar to the principal can obviously induce pooling, which benefits the principal in the first period, but leaves the principal uninformed in the second period. Terai and Glazer also consider the positive incentive effects (from the principal's standpoint) of maintaining uncertainty among the agents about principal's true preferences. Per F. Andersson and Johannes Lindvall consider the impact of power-sharing arrangements on crisis management. In ''Crises, investments, and political institutions,'' Andersson and Lindvall present a model of power-sharing and investment that illustrates the fundamental linkage between both crisis management and investment and the (in)ability of an incumbent government to credibly commit to