This talk will focus on a chapter of my book manuscript, Collective-Action, Inequality, and Development: a Political Economy Approach, that builds a theoretical framework for analyzing how organizational and policy innovations can, sometimes, relax political constraints that arise from asymmetric distributions of power and associated commitment problems. Policy and organizational innovations facilitate resolving collective-active problems associated with organizational coherence and reforming institutions. Institutional change follows a punctuated-equilibrium dynamic, but one in which accumulated incremental changes can move key variables across critical-mass tipping points—inducing punctuation. For example, changes in the distribution of resources may, over time, critically alter balances of power. At the meso-level of policy domains, the dynamics of information processing among boundedly rational agents shapes the formation of policy subsystems (meso-level institutional systems), within which coalitions vie for influence. Successful innovation requires adaptive within-coalition policy learning, as well as applications of power. Because different coalitions occupy distinct positions within or external to policy subsystems, various system configurations foster distinct types of learning—as they shape the prospects for adopting innovations. Successful innovations may then address certain collective-action problems that accompany unequal distributions of power.