The Strategic Constitution

Rating:
Summary: Very useful synopsis of key themes
Review: If economic analysis of law had developed in continental Europe it would probably have begun with Constitutional law, rather than torts (Cf. Calabresi, the Cost of Accidents). As it was, the body of economic analysis of constitutional law is just starting to come together from a variety of sources, including public choice theory. Cooter came up with the idea for this book by way of discussions with European constitutional law experts. The book has all the merits of Cooter & Ulen's "Law and Economics". It is very easy to follow because it has been clearly written. It is not as deep, but neither is it as verbose as Posner, nor as insightful, or as superficial, as Sunstein. As a law and economics professor I have found it a Godsend. Its many examples and exercises make it a perfect undegraduate textbook, and it is high time it were translated into other languages (particularly Spanish, where there is no equivalent contemporary text). One would hope that Cooter would follow it up with a casebook with American and European cases. This is still a white space, and there's no one better qualified than Cooter to fill it up.

One caveat is that The Stratetic Constitution still shows the joints between some of the chapters and the greater whole, and there seem to be other subjects which could have been dealt with in greater detail, such as the impact of positive constitutional rights, which is significant in many countries whose systems are based on statutory law.

Rating:
Summary: Very useful synopsis of key themes
Review: If economic analysis of law had developed in continental Europe it would probably have begun with Constitutional law, rather than torts (Cf. Calabresi, the Cost of Accidents). As it was, the body of economic analysis of constitutional law is just starting to come together from a variety of sources, including public choice theory. Cooter came up with the idea for this book by way of discussions with European constitutional law experts. The book has all the merits of Cooter & Ulen's "Law and Economics". It is very easy to follow because it has been clearly written. It is not as deep, but neither is it as verbose as Posner, nor as insightful, or as superficial, as Sunstein. As a law and economics professor I have found it a Godsend. Its many examples and exercises make it a perfect undegraduate textbook, and it is high time it were translated into other languages (particularly Spanish, where there is no equivalent contemporary text). One would hope that Cooter would follow it up with a casebook with American and European cases. This is still a white space, and there's no one better qualified than Cooter to fill it up.

One caveat is that The Stratetic Constitution still shows the joints between some of the chapters and the greater whole, and there seem to be other subjects which could have been dealt with in greater detail, such as the impact of positive constitutional rights, which is significant in many countries whose systems are based on statutory law.

Rating:
Summary: Good undergraduate text, Mueller (1996) may be a better buy
Review: This is an excellent introduction to the study of constitutions and the organization of government. The author did a wonderful job at selecting topics that related to each other and provided a rather complete bird's eye view of how economics can be used to study government. When I first browsed at its table of contents, I thought this was THE book I needed for my research on public administration and political economy(at least in this respect, the topics here are more cohesive than the smosgarbord of Persson and Tabellini's Political Economics or Drazen's Political Economy and Macroeconomics). Despite its breadth, however, Cooter's book lacks in depth of analysis, and this makes it more suitable as an undergraduate text or an introduction to nonspecialists. I agree with the first reviewer that the book is not very good at justifying assumptions and that the analysis provided can be simplistic at times. For instance, one major weakness stems from the author's obsessive adherence to the original methods of the field of Law and Economics; namely, the emphasis on basic price theory and microeconomic theory, which makes the book read more like an undergraduate text in (applied) economics. What is lacking, and this is what makes Persson and Tabellini's and Drazen's books superior, is a more systematic and rigorous use of contemporary tools such as game theory. Because it lacks rigor, this book is not suitable for research or reference purposes. It is also dated in the sense that it clings to a Law and Economics paradigm that is decades behind the latest work in positive or formal political theory.

If you are serious about studying economic models of politics for research purposes, I would suggest buying the following books:

1) Persson and Tabellini, Political Economics, MIT Press, 2000.

Written by economists, this book focuses TOO MUCH on economic policy, but the first part on foundations and analytical tools is one of the best I have seen. In their favor, the authors also do a good job at describing the frontier of research and the limitations of their book.

2) Drazen, Political Economy in Macroeconomics, Princeton 2000.

This book is also written by an economist, and, unsurprisingly, it is biased towards economic policy. Like the previous book, it has chapters that teach you the underlying models. In addition, the author does have a unifying theme throughout the whole book, so despite the various topics, you can make sense of the analytical power you gain by explicitly adding political elements to mainstream (macro)economic models.

3) For an overview of applications, you could either buy Cooter's book, or, in my view, a better book (in terms of depth, although less cohesive in substance) on public choice:

Dennis Mueller (ed.), Perspectives on Public Choice: A Handbook, Cambridge 1996.

Rating:
Summary: Constitutional Law and Economics
Review: Well written, simple and complete. If I wasn't aware of the existing public choice literature I would have thought that this branch of economics (or law?) is mature and well developed, and that this book is a University textbook for a would-be course in Constitutional law and economics (if ever tought). However, this field is still fresh and unchartered, and this book gives a good idea of what to expect next.