Foreword James M. Buchanan; 1. Constitutional issues in modern democracies Ram Mudambi, Pietro Navarra and Giuseppe Sobbrio; 2. On writing a constitution Dennis C. Mueller; 3. Constitutional order and economic evolution: competitive and protectionist interests in democratic societies Viktor Vanberg; 4. The efficacy of arbitrary rules James M. Buchanan and Yong J. Yoon; 5. Constitutional political economy and civil society Charles K. Rowley; 6. The constitutional conflict between protecting expectations and moral evolution Nicolaus Tiseman; 7. Ideological competition and institutions: why cultural explanations of development patterns are not nonsense Michael J. Ensley and Michael C. Munger; 8. Electoral systems and the art of constitutional engineering: an inventory of the main findings Bernard N. Grofman and Andrew Reynolds; 9. Ordinary elections and constitutional arrangements Pierre Salmon; 10. The cost imposed on political coalitions by constituent parties: the case of Italian National Elections Ram Mudambi, Peitro Navarra and Giuseppe Sobbrio; 11. A model of two-party campaigns in pluralistic elections and evidence Chris W. Paul II and Allen W. Wilhite; 12. Ensuring a stable Federal State: economics or political institutional design Mikhail Filippov, Peter C. Ordeshokk and Olga V. Shevetsova; 13. A proposal for dynamic European Federalism: FOCJ Bruno S. Frey and Reiner Eichenberger; 14. The Maastricht 'excessive deficit' rules and creative accounting Francesco Forte; 15. Subsidiarity, federalism, and direct democracy as basic elements of a Federal European Constitution Friedrich Schneider and Alexander F. Wagner.