Chapter 4: institutionalism

Question 1

history

Answer 1

Institutionalism dominant until the 1950s, uncriticized and seen as common sense
- Political institutions as political organizations
- Look at impact of institutions on individuals
- Institutionalism looks at description of constitutions, legal systems and government structures, and their comparison over time and across countries
1950s behaviouralism + rational choice + neo-Marxist
End 1980s re-emergence ‘new institutionalism’: other approaches had dismissed institutions
- Institution as stable, recurring pattern of behaviour
- Looked at informal conventions of political life + formal constitutions and organisational structures
- Look at interaction between institutions and individuals

Question 2

March and Olsen definition institutionalism

Answer 2

a ‘set of theoretical ideas and hypotheses concerning the relations between institutional characteristics and political agency, performance and change’

Question 3

traditional institutionalism

Answer 3

• flourished as a common sense + was unreflective of issues of theory and method + took facts and values for granted
• focus on formal rules and organisations
• focus on official structure of government

explicit concern with good government and implicit commitment to a particular set of values and model of government
+ functionalist tendency: assumption that particular institutions are the manifestations of the functions of political life or necessary for democracy (John)

mostly descriptive method (criticism: limitations in terms of scope and method)

Question 4

‘proto-theory’ of old institutionalism

Answer 4

Peters

• normative (good government)
• structuralist (structure determines political behaviour)
• historicist (central influence of history)
• legalist
• holisitic (describing and comparing whole systems of government)

Question 5

institutions in the eyes of behaviouralists + of rational choice theorists

Answer 5

• behaviouralism: aggregation of individual roles, statuses and learned responses
• rational choice: accumulation of individual choices based on utility-maximising preferences

Question 6

new institutionalism

Answer 6

1980s

commitment to investigation the way in which institutions shape political behaviour and outcomes, and can also be shaped by human action

main difference with traditional institutionalism: interest in theory: deductive approaches that start from theoretical propositions

institutions as: stable, recurring pattern of behaviour (Goodin)

interest in the interaction between institutions and individuals

Question 7

the three new institutionalisms

Answer 7

Hall and Taylor: identified the 3 new institutionalisms + are in favour of greater interchange between the positions (but after their article was posted the divides only grew larger)

• normative institutionalism
• rational choice institutionalism
• historical institutionalism

Question 8

normative institutionalism

Answer 8

political institutions influence actors’ behaviour by shaping their values, norms, interests, identities and beliefs

stress embededness of political institutions within temporal and cultural contexts

Question 9

rational choice institutionalism

Answer 9

political institutions influence behaviour by affecting the structure in which individuals select strategies for the pursuit of their preferences (institutions provide information about how others are probably going to act)

institutions as purposeful human constructions designed to solve collective action problems

Question 10

historical institutionalism

Answer 10

explore how the structures of state reflected, and reinforced, power relations between different social and economic groups

institutional change arises when power relations shift, new ideas come to force and the costs of maintaining an established institutional path become greater than the involved change

was influenced by the structural functionalist and group conflict of theories of the 1960s and 70s

Question 11

core features of new institutionalism

Answer 11

1. institutions as rules, not organisations
2. institutions as informal as well as formal
3. institutoins as dynamic as well as stabilising
4. institutions as embodying values and power
5. institutions as contextually embedded

Question 12

new institutionalism: institutions as rules not organisations

Answer 12

brass name-plate tradition = political institutions as political organisations

new institutionalism: institutions as set of rules that guide and constrain the behaviour of individual actors

these rules predict behaviour (normative) and/or provide the ‘rules of the game’ (rational choice)

Question 13

new institutionalism: institutions as informal as well as formal

Answer 13

focus on formal rules and informal conventions (hard to research, but important in shaping actors’ behaviour)

informal rules can:
- reinforce formal rules
- override formal rules (e.g. gender roles persist despite new laws or policies)

*historical new institutionalism e.g. identify important role institutions that are created, communicated and enforced outside officially sanctioned channels: show how informal institutions may complement, co-exist, compete with, or even substitute for, formal institutions of democracy (Helmke and Levitsky)

Question 14

new institutionalism: institutions as dynamic as well as stabilising

Answer 14

institutional stability is accomplished through human action

March and Olsen: institutions are best seen as ‘creating and sustaining islands of imperfect and temporary organisations in potentially inchoate political worlds’

• rational choice institutionalists: arrangements persists as long they serve the interests of utility-maximising rational actors, crucially as means of solving collective action problems
• normative institutionalists: institutions develop in response to changing contexts, as individuals seek ‘to encode the novelties they encounter into new routines’
• historical institutionalists: transformative change can emerge from gradual processes of institutional adaption

Question 15

new institutionalism: institutions as embodying values and power

Answer 15

• normative institutionalists: seemingly neutral procedures are seen as embodying particular values, interests and identities
• rational choice institutionalists: institutions don’t affect preferences, but they have to reflect some relatively common set of values if incentives are to function equally well for all participants
• historical institutionalists: unequal power relationships that are built into institutions can provide an important dynamic for change; different interests seek over time to shift the power balance through institutional change

value critical stance of new institutionalism (Pierre): structure of governance (inclusion and exclusion, selection of instruments) is not value neutral, but embedded in and sustains political values

political institutions distribute power

Question 16

new institutionalism: institutions as contextually embedded

Answer 16

political institutions aren’t independent, no institution stands alone, they are connected with other institutions that reinforce or undermine its effects

Vertical institutional rules: hierarchy of fundamental, authorative rules and regimes and practices and procedures
- Kiser and Ostrom: operational, collective and constitutional rules (scope of rules at each level is constrained by those above)

Horizontal institutional rules: embedded within wider institutional contexts
- historical institutionalists: e.g. capitalism is differently institutionalised in countries that have different social and political institutions

Question 17

What is an institution anyway?

Answer 17

new institutionalists; rules of the game, formal procedures and informal conventions

risk of conceptual stretching: meaning and impact of ‘‘institution’’ dilute as it comes to include everything that guides individual behaviour (where is the boundary between institutions and norms, habits and culture)

+ it’s hard to measure -> clearer conceptualisation and measurement necessary

Question 18

Peter Hall: SOPs

Answer 18

SOP = standard operating procedures

research aim should be to identify the specific rules of behaviour that are agreed upon and followed by agents

SOPs only apply to rational choice perspectives that define institutions by the creation of regularity

Question 19

rules-in-form and rules-in-use

Answer 19

Elinor Ostrom

• rules-in-use: mix of formal and informal elements (as we know from studying constitutions, legislatures, executives, legislatures and institutions of civil society)
• rules-in-form: distinctive ensemble of dos and don’ts that one learns on the ground

Question 20

Where do institutions come from, and how do they change?

Answer 20

institutionalism is bad at explaining the genesis and transformation of institutions

• rational choice: change based on changes in interests of actors
• normative institutionalism: institutions evolve as rules are always to be interpreted and rules are adapted by actors seeking to make sense of changing environments (so: individual influences the institution)

Goodin: 3 ways for institutions to emerge (intentional design, accident, evolution)

Institutional layering (Mahoney + Thelen): where costs of getting rid of old rules is too great, new rules can be built on top of old rules

Institutional conversion (Faletti): rules remain formally the same but are interpreted and enacted in new ways

Question 21

Are the normative and rational choice approaches compatible?

Answer 21

some critics argue that there is no common purpose or complementarity between diverse theoretical positions of new institutionalism

Question 22

constructivist or discursive institutionalism

Answer 22

conceptualisation of institution as ‘codified systems of ideas’:
institutions shape behaviour and ideas
actors use ideas to reconceptualize interests, values and institutions

Question 23

Lowndes and Roberts

Answer 23

institutions work through distinct interconnectd modes of constraints:
- rules
- practices
- narratives

where gaps open up between the modes of constraints -> institutions become less stable and more susceptible to change

(see graph in onenote)

Question 24

new institutionalism as organising perspective

Answer 24

it provides a map of the subject and signposts to its central questions

Question 25

strength of new institutionalism

Answer 25

multi-centric character allows for assessment of competing propositions drawn from different political theories