institutionalism/behaviouralism

Question 1

what is a institution for traditional institutionalists?

Answer 1

treated as the formal rules that shaped behaviour

Question 2

what is institutionalism?

Answer 2

describe formal rules that shaped behaviour eg political parties or the law

Question 3

what did institutionalists end up focusing on inadvertently?

Answer 3

stability rather than change

Question 4

what does Rhodes call institutionalism?

Answer 4

the ‘historic heart of the discipline’

Question 5

how do institutionalists feel about theory

Answer 5

they have an instinctive disdain for it

Question 6

what does institutionalism tend to be? (4)

Answer 6

normative, structuralist, holistic and historicist

Question 7

what does normative mean?

Answer 7

how to create a ‘good’ government/ should be / ought to be

Question 8

what does structuralist mean?

Answer 8

structures determine political behaviour

Question 9

what does holistic mean?

Answer 9

describing and comparing whole systems of government

Question 10

what does historicist mean?

Answer 10

central influence of history

Question 11

when did the shift occur away from institutionalism?

Answer 11

the behavioural revolution during the 50/60s

Question 12

what is behaviouralism?

Answer 12

explain individual actors political behaviour objectively

Question 13

what do behaviourists try to do?

Answer 13

focus on individuals, deal with the world how it is, not how it should/could be

Question 14

what do behaviourists focus on? (4)

Answer 14

1) Observable behaviour (individual or societal level)
2) Empirical testing

3) Replication
4) Objectivity

Question 15

what can behaviourism be linked to?

Answer 15

positivism

Question 16

why did behaviourism become popular? (quote from Dahl)

Answer 16

• ‘Many American scholars (very) unhappy that the institutionalists spectacularly failed to 
see fascism coming’

Question 17

how should evidence be used for behaviouralists?

Answer 17

systematically, assess ALL the evidence or at least a representative sample

Question 18

what is also key to behaviourist research?

Answer 18

need to be able to falsify hypothesised theories

Question 19

what did behaviourists think about institutions?

Answer 19

made up of individual actors

Question 20

when did new institutionalism emerge?

Answer 20

1980s

Question 21

what made it different from traditional institutionalism? (2)

Answer 21

widened the idea of an institutions to ‘collections of interrelated rules and routines that define appropriate actions in terms of relations between roles and situations’ (March and Olsen)
concerned with not just the impact of institutions on individuals, but also the interaction between them

Question 22

why did new institutionalism emerge?

Answer 22

Attempt to reassert that organisations of political life do make a difference

Question 23

what is normative institutionalism?

Answer 23

Institutions influence actor’s behaviour by shifting their values, norms, interests and beliefs

Question 24

what is rational choice institutionalism?

Answer 24

Institutions influence actors behaviour by affecting the structure of a situation so that the individual select strategies for the pursuit of their preferences

Question 25

what is historical institutionalism?

Answer 25

Institutional organisation works to privilege some interests while demobilising others, change occurs when power relations shift

Question 26

how did new institutionalists view institutions? (4)

Answer 26

as formal and informal
dynamic as well as stabilising
embodying values and power
contextually embedded

Question 27

What is Karl Popper’s idea? What does this mean?

Answer 27

‘All swans are white’… but then we find a black swan
- The statement is false
- Or does that mean if a swan is not white then it is not a swan at all?
- Can both of these be correct?

Question 28

How can behaviourists be criticised?

Answer 28

‘normative/ interpretivist political science’ seen as pointless

Question 29

how would behaviourists respond to being told ‘normative/ interpretivist political science’ is pointless?

Answer 29

these statements add a lot to our understanding of human nature

Question 30

What was Cederman, Gleditsch and Buhang’s study about?

Answer 30

to what extent is inequality responsible for generating the sort of grievances that lead to conflict and civil war?

Question 31

why had qualitative research failed to find a parallel between inequality and civil war?

Answer 31

focused too much on individual level data, which doesn’t take into account group inequalities and also country-level data which failed to measure the ethnonationalism among different groups within a country

Question 32

what 4 variables did Cederman, Gleditsch and Buhang’s study find which they were 99% certain had an effect?

Answer 32

group politically excluded
group politically downgraded
relative group size
number of previous conflicts

Question 33

what 2 variables did Cederman, Gleditsch and Buhang’s study find which they were 95% certain had an effect?

Answer 33

ongoing conflict

GDP/capita

Question 34

what 2 variables did Cederman, Gleditsch and Buhang’s study find which had no statistically significant effect?

Answer 34

population

level of democracy