New Institutionalism Essay ⋆ Political Science Essay Examples ⋆ EssayEmpire

The renewed interest in institutions in political science over the last twenty years has been associated with a school known as new institutionalism. Institutions were marginalized in American political science during the 1960s and 1970s because of their association with a formal-legal style of scholarship (“old” institutionalism) that was criticized for being descriptive, a-theoretical, and parochial. In the context of the behavior list movement, institutions seemed anathema to deductive logic, quantification, and grand theorizing or, in other words, to good and proper political science. New institutionalism emerged as a reaction against this orthodoxy and at the same time looked to take a broader and more dynamic view of institutions than the old institutionalism, which was focused on detailing their workings.

New institutionalism is not a coherent and unified theoretical school. Rather, it includes several branches that developed in relative isolation to each other: historical institutionalism and its idea of path dependency; rational choice institutionalism, which emerged as rational choice theorists increasingly stressed the importance of institutions in the strategic calculations of actors; and sociological institutionalism, which developed out of organization theory and stresses the cognitive dimension of institutions.

Defining Institution

One question that inevitably comes up with new institutionalism is how institutions are defined. The formal-legal scholarship understood institutions as material structures. They were constitutions, cabinets, parliaments, bureaucracies, courts, armies, federal or autonomy arrangements, and, in some instances, party systems.

This materialist definition is accepted by a great many new institutionalisms. In Structuring Politics (1992), Sven Steinmo, Kathleen Thelen, and Frank Longstreth spoke of electoral rules, party systems, the structure of relationships between branches of government, and trade unions. Rational choice institutionalists depart somewhat from this definition by focusing more squarely on the “rules of the political game,” which tend to be associated with material structures but in themselves represent less tangible parameters.

A more significant departure from the materialist definition consists of conceptualizing institutions in terms of norms and values. This was the avenue chosen by James March and Johan Olsen in their Rediscovering Institutions (1989), where they defined institutions as collections of interrelated rules and routines. Sociological institutionalists go the furthest in defining institutions in a nonmaterialist fashion, speaking of beliefs, values, and cognitive scripts. Historical institutionalists are generally closer to the view that institutions are formal structures, although some have brought ideas into their framework. Therefore, there is some disagreement within new institutionalism as to what degree of rigidity is required to have an institution.

Structure And Agency

Another issue raised by new institutionalism relates to the structure and agency dilemma. More specifically, new institutionalism brings up three types of questions relating to structure and agency. What are the mechanisms through which institutions shape action? What is the extent of the weight of institutions on agents? What is the depth of institutional influence on political processes—that is, is the weight of institutions felt only on strategies or also on preferences?

The issue of how institutions affect agency is viewed in two different ways. The first emphasizes path dependency. At the broadest level, path dependency refers to the importance of the early stages of a temporal sequence. It is the idea that once institutions are formed, they take a life of their own and drive political processes. From this particular perspective, most often associated with historical institutionalism, when an event occurs is as important as what this event is. The second new institutionalist view on the issue of how institutions affect agency says that institutions shape action, because they offer opportunities for action and impose constraints. This angle, stressed first and foremost by rational choice institutionalists, although not ignored by historical institutionalists, suggests that the weight of institutions is felt on outcomes insofar as it affects individual and collective decisions. In this context, the theoretical importance of institutions stems from their mediating effect on the calculations of actors.

The question of the extent of the weight of institutions on agency or, in other words, the level of structuralism involved in institutional analysis is also discussed in at least two different ways. On the one hand, new institutionalists who adopt a more rationalist perspective on the nature of the relationship between institutions and agents argue that political processes are really driven by actors. Institutions represent a context for action rather than an autonomous force per se. Path dependency, on the other hand, suggests a more overwhelming quality to institutions, as the autonomy of actors may be severely limited by the logic of institutional development and reproduction. Structuralism is even stronger when institutions are conceptualized in terms of ideas, culture, and norms, such as in the sociological institutionalism and some versions of historical institutionalism, since they become internalized by actors. March and Olsen have argued that behavior is driven by other elements than utility calculations—namely internalized principles and values, cultural features, identity, and habit. For the “logic of consequences,” in which actors behave in accordance with expected results, they substitute the “logic of appropriateness,” in which actors behave so as to conform to existing rules or values.

Institutional Influence

The issue of the depth of institutional influence ties into the first two questions. For the more rationalist-minded new institutionalists, the impact of institutions is felt strictly on strategies. The interests and preferences of actors are formed independently of the specific institutional environment; they follow a logic of power maximization. From a sociological institutionalist perspective, as well as from a historical institutionalist one, institutions affect not only strategies and interests but also patterns of relationships between actors, preferences, objectives, identities, and, indeed, the very existence of actors. In other words, histor ical and sociological institutionalists tend to problematize more aspects of agency than rational choice institutionalists.

How do new institutionalists theorize institutional change? One explanation focuses on exogenous shocks. It suggests that international events such as wars and global financial crises, in disturbing the unfolding of domestic processes, break the cycle of institutional reproduction, thereby opening up opportunities for, if not forcing, institutional transformations and political change. From this perspective, institutions are not created endogenously. Some new institutionalists, primarily those of the rational choice persuasion, have adopted a more utilitarian view on institutional change.They suggest that institutions are transformed when they become dysfunctional or yield suboptimal results. Sociological institutionalists have tended to view institutional change in terms of convergence. The key idea here is that of isomorphism, which suggests that coexisting institutions, more specifically institutions in a similar domain, will tend to look alike, whatever the differences in their immediate environment.

Conclusion

New institutionalism is a prominent approach to politics and related disciplines—Elinor Ostrom and Oliver Williamson, two scholars with strong new institutionalist leanings, were awarded the Nobel Prize for economics in 2009. New institutionalism is also fragmented. Nevertheless, scholars have argued that there is a theoretical core to new institutionalism, since all three different streams view institutions as the single most important variable in explaining politics.

Bibliography:

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