本书为比较政治经济学领域名著，作者对英法两国“国家”干预经济的经济政策与绩效方面的差异，进行了比较分析，指出：由于两国在国家、资本、劳工的组织结构方面存在差异，其经济政策模式亦存在明显差异，英国各种相对固定的组织结构限制了英国决策采用补救措施的有效性，从而无法阻止英国经济的衰落；法国政府则在战后建立起全面的经济计划体制，政府由此可以积极运用各种政策手段来推动产业发展。

This 2002 study examines the process by which the seemingly impossible in 1987 - the disintegration of the Soviet state - became the seemingly inevitable by 1991, providing an original interpretation not only of the Soviet collapse, but also of the phenomenon of nationalism more generally. Probing the role of nationalist action as both cause and effect, Beissinger utilizes data and case studies from across the USSR during its final years to elicit the shifting relationship between pre-existing structural conditions, institutional constraints, and event-generated influences in the nationalist explosions that brought about the collapse of the Soviet Union. As Beissinger demonstrates, the 'tidal' context of nationalism - i.e., the transnational influence of one nationalism upon another - is critical to an explanation of the success and failure of particular nationalisms, why some nationalisms turn violent, and how a crescendo of events can overwhelm states, periodically evoking large-scale structural change in the character of the state system.

Popkin develops a model of rational peasant behavior and shows how village procedures result from the self-interested interactions of peasants. This political economy view of peasant behavior stands in contrast to the model of a distinctive peasant moral economy in which the village community is primarily responsible for ensuring the welfare of its members.