Since the early 1970s, small firms have received great attention from economists and politicians in the UK and the European Union, yet little from the political science community. This new book fills the gap.Charlie Dannreuther argues that this increased interest from political science in the institutional aspects of policymaking indicates a concern for the role of habitual and socially supported logics of action that may be a more appropriate way of explaining SME policy.Showing that the concept of legitimacy is central to recent political science writing on the New Institutionalism in Political Science, Dannreuther applies this theoretical framework to the following three arenas of political activity that are central to understanding policy-making in contemporary Europe: * the identification and formation of societal interest * the making of national decisions * the development of policy in the European Union. A well-written, incisive text, Dannreuther concludes that, in addition to explaining SME policy and providing a framework for future analysis, the evolutionary approach outlined in The Political Economy of the Small Firm has much broader potential uses in the understanding of policy-making in a global society.