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Debate about the sources of intelligence leading to bin Laden’s location has revived the question as to whether interrogational torture is effective. Answering this question is a necessary—if not sufficient—condition for any justification of interrogational torture. Given the impossibility of approaching the question empirically, I address it theoretically, asking whether the use of torture to extract information satisfies reasonable expectations about reliability of information as well as normative constraints on the frequency and intensity of torture. I find that although information from interrogational torture is unreliable, it is likely to be used frequently and harshly.

Rational choice analytic narratives claim to take seriously the way real actors form their beliefs. I argue that a commonly applied formal technique-perfect Bayesian equilibrium-inadequately accounts for realistic beliefs, unnecessarily impoverishing analytic narratives. I propose an equilibrium concept drawn from cognitive psychology-support theory equilibrium-that provides an accurate account of beliefs within a formal analytic narrative approach. I ground both the critique and the alternative in a discussion of ethnic mobilization in Yugoslavia. The result is a behaviorally informed analytic narrative that offers a more accurate account of the role of real-including bizarre-beliefs in strategic interaction.To understand the relation among emotion, cognition, and behavior in real-life situations, historical studies are indispensable.-Jon Elster, Alchemies of the Mind

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Institutions shape political outcomes, yet institutions themselves are endogenously shaped outcomes of political choices. Such choices are especially significant during transitions to democracy, when initial institutional designs fundamentally structure the path of democratic development. Most theories of institutional emergence, however, focus on stable contexts rather than on the conditions of acute uncertainty identified in the standard transitions literature. Our article attempts to bridge the two subfields by outlining and applying a model of institutional choice as the outcome of a struggle between fledgling opposition parties and the authoritarian regime wherein each side struggles to gain the greatest distributive payoff. We examine the creation of the Hungarian electoral system of 1989, linking the positions of the participants to the institutional alternatives which they expected to maximize their expected seat shares in the election to take place under those rules. The evidence shows that the individual parties generally preferred alternatives that maximized their expected seats, subject to the constraint of not derailing the negotiations as a whole. When a party had the possibility to reduce its uncertainty, it also tended to shift to a position reflecting its updated evaluation of an institutional alternative's effect on its expected seats. Far from being paralyzed by uncertainty and lack of information, actors in the choice of Hungary's 1989 electoral law were, with minor exceptions, able to effectively link institutional outcomes to electoral self-interest and to pursue these distributive gains through bargaining.