Political settlements and the analysis of institutions

Abstract

African Affairs, 117/469, 636–655 Mushtaq Khan’s ‘Political settlements and the analysis of institutions’ (https://doi.org/10.1093/afraf/adx044) was converted from a virtual issue introduction to a full-length article. As such, the below text is no longer relevant and has been removed. This has been corrected online only. The articles contained in this virtual issue use the organizational power approach to political settlements. They identify how the distribution of power can explain the emergence of different types of policies and institutions that may otherwise be hard to explain. Some use the framework to analyze why the outcomes of particular institutions and policies have been particularly poor. Some have gone into the sources of organizational power and offer interesting insights into how holding power has been constructed in different contexts. This introduction to the virtual issue is intended to remind us of some of the complex analytical questions that underpin the framework and the exciting challenges of deepening the application of the framework in future work.