Institutions

Question 1

○ Three schools of institutionalism
§ Historical institutionalism
□ Centers path dependence and unintended consequences
□ Critical junctions as key moments of institutional change/development
□ How do institutions affect behavior?
§ Calculus approach: institutions provide actors with more or less certainty about behavior of other actors. Specifically: enforcement mechanisms, penalties for defection, etc.
§ Cultural approach: Institutions provide moral/cognitive templates for interpretation or action. Institutions provide filters for interpreting situations.
§ Rational choice institutionalism
□ Centers ways that institutions structure players’ choices and information
□ Politics as a series of collective action dilemmas. Institutional arrangements help guarantee complementary behavior by other actors.
□ Has a difficult time explaining institutional disfunction
§ Sociological institutionalism
□ Sort of analogous to culturalist approach to comparative politics generally
□ Institutional forms and procedures should be seen as culturally-specific practices akin to myths and ceremonies devised by past societies.
□ Institutions are adopted and passed on not due to rational means-ends efficiency but as a result of cultural transmission in a similar way to how other cultural practices are passed from generation to generation.
□ Organizations embrace specific institutional forms or practices because they’re valued within broader cultural environment - even if they’re dysfunctional with regard to achieving formal goals of organization.
Institutional rules as a form of social legitimacy

Answer 1

• Hall and Taylor, 1996

Question 2

○ Presents New Institutionalism, emphasizing relative autonomy of institutions, possibilities for inefficiency of history, and importance of symbolic action in politics.
○ ‘old’ institutionalism: institutions are aggregate sum of individual behavior; utilitarian; functionalist; instrumentalist; and contextual.
Highlights autonomy of institutions: Not simply aggregation of individual behavior, but rather become actors with preferences of their own.

Answer 2

March and Olsen (1984)

Question 3

SI article. Institutions as culture, identities, myths, and symbols. Modern orgs adhere to recognized institutional arrangements as means to gain legitimacy, resources, and stability.

Answer 3

Meyer & Rowan, 1991

Question 4

○ Introduces new institutional economics (NIE). Institutional evolution creates economic environment that induces increased productivity.
○ Institutions are human devised constraints structuring political, economic, and social interaction consisting of formal and informal rules.
○ Effective institutions increase productivity by raising benefits of cooperation and costs of defection.
§ This is in part because institutions can establish credible commitments
○ Institutions lower transaction costs by increasing mobility of capital, lowering costs of information, and spread risk.
○ Connects to North and Weingast (1989) on Glorious Revolution. New institutional constraints on monarchy increased economic productivity by increasing predictability of government decisions and allowed government to credibly commit to upholding property rights.
○ Institutions, per North: Humanly devised constraints, including formal and informal rules, that structure human interaction in economics, politics, and society.

Answer 4

North, 1991

Question 5

○ Hierarchical framework of institutions in NIE. Different levels of institutional hierarchies move at different speeds: Culture, religion, etc. are highest level and move most slowly, often over many generations. Lowest level is resource allocation/employment, which can change quickly.
○ Informal institutions - norms, culture - are the slowest to change.
Key distinction between Williamson and Helmke and Levisky: For Williamson, informal institutions are the prevailing culture and norms. For Helmke and Levisky, the only distinction between formal/informal is officialness of sanction/punishment.

Answer 5

Williamson, 2000

Question 6

○ New institutionalism argues that institutions make society collectively better off by providing ways around incentives created by collective action dilemmas (e.g. prisoner’s dilemma).
Individuals and collectives have different preferences. Institutions close gap between these preferences.

Answer 6

Bates 1998

Question 7

○ Calls on combining all three schools of institutionalism

Answer 7

DiMaggio, 1998

Question 8

○ RCI and HI share common ground, and insights of HI can improve HI.
○ RCI can explain operation of institutions, while HI contributes to explanations of institutional origins.
○ By broadening scope of inquiry to include previous institutions, then we can observe process of change with RCI through HI addition.
Institutions: Sets of regularized practices with rule-like quality structuring the behavior of political and economic actors.

Answer 8

Hall, 2010

Question 9

○ RCI is insufficient means to study of politics in Latin America, due to heavy emphasis on formal rules and institutions, failure to explain origins of political changes, incomplete analysis of institutional creation, not fully accounting for crisis politics, and arbitrary emphasis on micro-foundations.
○ In LatAm, politics are volatile in a way that doesn’t fit well with RCI.
§ In the US, where RCI was developed, institutions are quite stable, and thus it’s easy to model politicians’ goals. In LatAm countries, lots of change over time that makes it difficult to “ascertain inductively the specific career interests that politicians across the region pursue.”
Article highlights regional differences and difficulty in identifying nomothetic theories of politics (article could be referenced in question along these lines).

Answer 9

Weyland, 2002

Question 10

○ Informal institution explains variation in prosecutions of police violence in LatAm. When a victim is perceived as a violent criminal, police killings are seen as okay. In other cases (e.g. personal disputes), killings are characterized as problem and are punished.
○ Despite formal institution - i.e. written law - prohibiting all extrajudicial killing, informal institution allows it for some cases.
○ Diff between formal/informal institutions:
§ Formal institutions: Generally written standards for conduct produced according to specified procedures by authorities legally invested with power to do so.
§ Informal institutions: Those standards not expressly written or codified. Unlike formal institutions, no prescribed enforcement mechanisms or punishments for rule breakers.
So what distinguishes an informal institution from any pattern of behavior? It must occur in response to certain primary rules that are enforced by the relevant agents of social control, and these rules must be enforced even though they were not created using prescribed procedures.

Answer 10

Brinks, 2003

Question 11

○ Informal institutions: Socially shared rules, usually unwritten, that are created, communicated, and enforced outside of officially sanctioned channels.
§ Argue that if an institution isn’t enforced, then it isn’t an institution. A bit diff from Williamson conception of informal institutions, which is just about culture and norms.
○ Why do informal institutions emerge?
§ Formal institutions are incomplete - impossible to codify everything
§ Can’t create formal institutions due to structural barriers
§ Pursuit of goals is not considered publicly acceptable, e.g. Brinks case of extrajudicial killings
Much faster conception of informal institutional change than Williamson.

Answer 11

Helmke & Levitsky, 2004

Question 12

○ Adaptive informal institutions may motivate elites to reform original formal institutions to line up with existing practices.
○ Reinforces Przeworski (2004) argument about endogeneity: In this case, it’s impossible to ascribe causal value to the formal institution, because it was just lining up with what was already acceptable social practice.
Advances fast-changing conception of institutions, contrary to others like Williamson. Institutions can be flexible and adapting rapidly to suit their needs.

Answer 12

• Tsai, 2006

Question 13

○ Even in absence of effective formal bureaucratic institutions of accountability, officials often do more than the minimum required to maintain stability due to unofficial norms and rules that enforce competent work.
Village-level solidarity groups that hold officials accountable helps explain variation in bureaucratic performance.

Answer 13

Tsai, 2007

Question 14

○ HI emphasizes enduring impact of choices made during critical junctions. During these periods, choices close off alternative options and lead to establishment of institutions that generate self-reinforcing processes.
○ Critical juncture: moment when structures limiting political action are relaxed. More options available to actors than under regular circumstances, and there are greater consequences for those actions than normal.
Unclear how long a ‘critical juncture’ is. Can a 10 year period really be a ‘juncture’?

Answer 14

Capoccia and Keleman, 2007

Question 15

○ Examines path dependence, and why it occurs. Occurs when contingent event triggers subsequent sequence that follows deterministic pattern.
§ Two types of sequences:
□ Self-reinforcing: contingent period corresponds with initial adoption of institutional arrangement; deterministic pattern corresponds with stable reproduction of institution over time.
® institutional structures repeat due to ‘increasing returns,’ in which a pattern delivers increasing benefits with its continued adoption, and therefore it becomes more difficult to transform the pattern.
Reactive: contingent period corresponds with key breakpoint in history; deterministic pattern corresponds with series of reactions following logically from breakpoint.

Answer 15

Mahoney, 2000

Question 16

○ At the micro-level, institutions are sticky. But at the macro level, we see changes that can shift the institutions overall.
At the macro level, institutions can be thought of as constituting a composite standard, with a whole series of simple standards as its component parts. Changes in the mix of constituent parts that generate increasing returns might explain institutional change.

Answer 16

• Boas, 2007

Question 17

○ Path dependence restricted to distinct phenomena: endogenous institutional change with increasing returns. Increasing returns stem from high fixed or sunk costs, learning effects, and coordination effects.
§ Defining path dependence differently is conceptual stretching.

Answer 17

Rixen and Viola, 2015

Question 18

○ Examines how incumbents can thwart endogenous institutional change that is unfavorable to their position. Two variables allow incumbents to undermine or delay change:
§ (1) institutionalization of cultural categories, which can sanction defection and reinterpretation of formal rules;
□ Institutions categorize and thereby influence their social constituency, framing the terms of acceptable behavior
□ See, for example, early women’s rights policies on maternal leave: They institutionalized a different conception of women’s social and economic rights.
□ Consistent use of cultural categories generates incentives for courts and bureaucracies to interpret rules in line with such categories, thereby limiting bottom-up change.
§ (2) incumbent control of the timing of institutional reform agenda, which can help incumbents resist pressure for change until the salience diminishes.
Contributes to literature of how institutions have causal effects independently of broader political/social environment

Answer 18

Capoccia, 2016

Question 19

○ Asks: How do institutions change, how do they persist, and how do its processes lead to its own demise? Explains these through quasi-parameters and institutional reinforcement. Shifts in the quasi-parameters can render an institution self-reinforcing (or no longer self-reinforcing) in a given environment.
○ Institutions are reinforcing when the behaviors that they entail increase the range of parameter values (situations) in which the institution is self-reinforcing.
§ As an example think of Marxist theory: The proletariat, which is created by capitalism, becomes the tool of capitalism’s demise.
Another example: Welfare makes people live longer, which increases costs of the welfare state, which in turn makes it less sustainable in the long-term.

Answer 19

Greif and Laitin, 2004

Question 20

○ Gradual evolution of institutions is just as important as theories that explain sudden change. Incremental shifts add up to fundamental transformations - See transformation of House of Lords.
○ Provides theory of gradual change: Institutional changes occur when problems of rule interpretation and enforcement open up space for actors to implement existing rules in new ways.
○ Key mechanisms of change
§ (1) the fact that institutions are by definition distributional instruments that distribute power unequally. If institutions disadvantage certain groups, they organize and identify with one another, thereby increasing power and capacity to break institutional arrangements.
§ (2) ambiguity in rules that can be exploited by actors seeking to change status quo.
○ Types of institutional change: Displacement (replacement of existing rules); layering (adding new rules); drift (changed impact in existing rules); conversion (changed enactment of existing rules).
○ Type of change depends on two factors: Veto possibilities and discretion in rule interpretation/enforcement.
§ High level of discretion + Strong veto possibilities = Drift
§ High + weak = conversion
§ low + strong = layering
§ low + weak = displacement
○ Types of agents of change: Insurrectionaries (low+weak), symbionts (strong+high), subversives (strong+few), opportunists (high+weak).
Overall, article promotes view of institutional change as being a slow process.

Answer 20

Mahoney and Thelen, 2010

Question 21

○ Cognitive research on shifts in actors’ propensity for risk can explain why periods of institutional statis can be followed by dramatic breakthroughs.
○ Builds new microfoundation for institutional change through cognitive psychological literature.
○ Addresses both demand and supply sides of institutional change:
§ Demand: People are bounded rational actors. They’re risk averse if they think the institution benefits them. If the institution isn’t working for them, they become more risk acceptant.
□ When problems become harder to ignore, actors engage in bold actions because they try to avoid costs.
□ Thus, gradual change isn’t likely: People either make big jumps or no changes.
§ Supply: In absence of full information about how to change institutions, people use heuristics, including a very limited number of success stories from other countries. So when there’s a single success, there’s a boom of diffusion because actors become enthusiastic about the single success and attempt to import innovations.
Worth citing as contra to state-centric theories of politics: It’s not the state that matters, but rather the people that make it up.

Answer 21

Weyland, 2008

Question 22

○ Institutional weakness/strength is a function of the extent to which an institution actually matters to social, economic, or political outcomes.
§ To what extent is the institution making changes vis-a-vis the pre-institutional environment?
○ Three forms of institutional weakness:
§ Insignificance: Actors comply with rules, but they don’t affect how they behave
§ Noncompliance: State chooses not to enforce rules or fails to gain societal cooperation with them
§ Instability: Rules are changed at unusually high rate
Could be cited in question about institutions mattering. In trying to elucidate extent to which institutions are doing anything independently, we have to control for actors’ ambition and look to the actual change that the institution makes to the pre-institutional environment.

Answer 22

Brinks, Levitsky & Murillo, 2019

Question 23

• Definition: A political institution is a set of contextual features in a collective choice setting that defines constraints on, and opportunities for, individual behavior in the setting. The key idea of our interpretation is that there is no intrinsic difference between robust behavioral regularities and institutions, since the adoption and maintenance of institutions themselves are based on collective choice processes.
Institutions are best interpreted as theoretical constructs.

Answer 23

Diermeier and Krehbiel, 2003

Question 24

• Highlights power and time as hidden dimensions in institutional analyses.
People who get into power try to institutionalize their authority so that future power balance reflected in politics is mirror of that dynamic in power relations.

Answer 24

Pierson, 2016

Question 25

Examines possibility to combine HI with experimental research.

Answer 25

Steinmo, 2016

Question 26

○ Institutions are the rules of games in a society. Asks: What is the nature of institutions, how do they persist and change, and how do they shape economic performance?
○ Institutions determine how costly it is to make an exchange in society.
§ Costs consist of:
□ Necessary resources to measure valuable attributes
□ Costs of policing and enforcing agreements
□ Uncertainty of imperfection in measurement and enforcement.
○ Institutions provide structure for exchange from three dimensions: informal constraints, formal rules, and enforcement.
○ Why do institutions promote cooperation?
§ lower uncertainty about future interactions.
§ Stability: institutions are usually changed incrementally rather than in discontinuous fashion (contrary to Weyland).
○ Even inefficient institutions change incrementally because of path dependency
○ Argues that his approach to institutions can explain central question of why some countries (North America) are wealthier than others (Latin America).
§ In the history of long-distance trade, institutions and path-dependent evolution determined the cost of information, enforcement of agreements, and transformation of uncertainty to risk.
Classic work of NIE

Answer 26

North, 1990

Question 27

○ Power is key to understanding political institutional outcomes.
§ Politics is winner-take-all. Institutions provide power to actors who change their behavior accordingly
○ Placing politics in time - i.e. constructing ‘moving pictures’ rather than snapshots - can enrich our understanding of social dynamics.
○ Examining the histories of institutional arrangements and their adoption is key to understanding dynamics of contemporary politics.
Good piece to talk about power asymmetries as crucial to understanding institutions

Answer 27

Pierson, 2004

Question 28

○ Asks how individuals can organize and govern themselves to obtain continuing joint benefits when all face temptations to free-ride, shirk, or otherwise act opportunistically.
○ Institutional arrangements can help solve the problems inherent in governing the commons.
○ Seven design principles make institutional arrangements beneficial to mutual wellbeing:
§ Clearly defined boundaries
§ Congruence of rules to appropriators
§ Collective choice arrangements
§ Monitoring
§ Sanctions
§ Resolution of conflicts
§ Rights to organize
○ Key book to cite if answering a question about institutions mattering: It tells a good story of how individuals in the pre-institutional environment face a collective problem that institutions help resolve, even if the institution is itself a product of the pre-institutional environment.
§ When actors create institutions with the design principles described above, post-institutional environment solves a collective action problem.
§ Also, the book is great evidence for institutions mattering because its case studies show that institutional design quality can explain variation in people’s capacity to effectively govern the commons. It’s not that the choice of certain rules over others reflects some underlying greater degree of ambition or whatever.
Synthesis of HI and RCI

Answer 28

Ostrom, 1990

Question 29

○ Examines relationship between institutions and economic growth, drawing on China’s experience of rapid development in decades after reform.
○ Theory of coevolution between institutions/good governance and economic growth
Harness weak institutions to build markets –> emerging markets stimulate strong institutions –> strong institutions preserve markets for long-term development

Answer 29

Ang, 2016

Question 30

○ Adoption of executive constraints explains differences in authoritarian regime survival. quasi-democratic institutions provide explicit constraints on executive power by granting state access to other elites, thereby empowering them with their own independent influence.
Key point: ”Institutions matter, not because they establish de jure rules, but when they affect de facto political power.”

Answer 30

Meng 2020

Question 31

Nondemocratic rulers govern with democratic institutions (legislatures, parties) to thwart outside opposition. Potential opposition is brought into the fold and gains a stake in regime survival.

Answer 31

Gandhi 2008

Question 32

○ Timing of events (in this case, incorporation of labor movements into mainstream politics/parties) matters for long-term political outcomes.
Good work to cite for path dependency-related question

Answer 32

Collier and Collier 1991

Question 33

○ Policies are not just outputs of system but become input: They go on to shape social, political, economic conditions.
○ Shows how the outcomes of institutions themselves become institutions.
Linked to the Greif and Laitin (2004) piece on endogenous change.

Answer 33

Pierson 2004 (When Effects Becomes Causes: Policy Feedback and Political Change)

Question 34

○ Exploits staggered implementation of electoral reform to show impact of institutional change on legislator behavior
Could be cited as example of study showing recent efforts to find sources of exogenous variation in institutions

Answer 34

Motolinia 2021

Question 35

○ You cannot see institutions as exogenous variables because the origin of institutions matter.
“authoritarian institutions are epiphenomenal on more fundamental political, social and/or economic relations.”

Answer 35

Pepinsky, Thomas. 2013. “The Institutional Turn in Comparative Authoritarianism.” British Journal of Political Science 44(3): 631-653.

Question 36

Voting rules and committees help legislators make exchanges in congress

Answer 36

Shepsle and Weingast (1994)

Question 37

Various institutional arrangements based in Islamic law, like Islamic inheritance, were adopted by polities long after they outlived their usefulness and began holding back MENA development.

Answer 37

Kuran (2004)

Question 38

Both RCI and HI see preferences and choices as contextual, i.e. shaped/constrained by institutions around them. Main difference between two is view on power (HI sees it as central, RCI sees cooperation as main function of institutions), and micro- vs macro-level analysis.

Answer 38

Katznelson, Weingast 2005