Path Dependencies Essay ⋆ Political Science Essay Examples ⋆ EssayEmpire

Path dependency is a concept of social analysis that tries to capture why history and context matter in politics. A path dependent analysis shows how early incidents and factors play an important role in shaping later, even seemingly unrelated events. These incidents and factors help condition political actors, their decisions, and the contexts that affect events later in history. Path dependent accounts closely link to historical institutionalism in political science and stand in contrast to much neoclassical political economic theory, which seeks to explain political behavior based on the rational calculations of individuals acting for their own benefit.

Classic Examples

Path dependent analyses have been employed in economics, biology, and political science. The classic example of path dependency is the choice of which side of the road to drive on—from a rational point of view, the choice is arbitrary, but either driving on the left or right becomes cemented in a state’s institutions. Another famous example to demonstrate path dependency with an “irrational” outcome is the story of the QWERTY keyboard, as told by Paul David. The current, standard keyboard on computers and typewriters is not a function of efficiency. Rather, according to David, this style of keyboard and letter arrangement came about because early typewriters jammed if the keys were struck too fast. The QWERTY keyboard slowed typing by placing commonly used letters further apart, thus preventing keyboard jamming. QWERTY became the industry standard, as more and more firms bought QWERTY machines. While this style was made for people who used early typewriters, it persists in the modern era.

The QWERTY keyboard, according to David, remains in use because the decision to use alternative keyboards would require individual decisions against a status quo. The QWERTY keyboard became the de facto standard, and remains so because the decision to change the industry standard is decentralized. Individuals have little incentive to learn another style of keyboard if they or their firm alone use it.

The QWERTY keyboard illustrates technological changes that are path dependent. The QWERTY keyboard came about through earlier technological changes, and gained popularity within the industry. Rational individuals chose the QWERTY style keyboard because it offered superior performance. However, firms and individuals continued to use it even after its original advantage became irrelevant with later technology. Even though there is no threat that computer keyboards will jam, people continue to use the QWERTY keyboard because the costs of coordinating a new arrangement are perceived as too great compared to the potential benefits. This is referred to as lock-in phenomenon.

Reinforcing Trajectory

A path dependent analysis traces a particular process and identifies important moments and evolutionary steps in the process’ development. Prior events help structure how later events unfold, and typically, earlier events are more important in an outcome than later ones. Also, the initial events create a self-enforcing set of conditions that increase the likelihood of later events or factors occurring, and therefore more deeply entrench a particular historical trajectory or institution.

Proponents of path dependency argue that outcomes may not be determined a priori, but that the likelihood of an event increases with successive choices along a path of decisions. Small and seemingly trivial events or factors that occur early on may prove to be important in later development. These events or factors may accumulate through time and then later alter an existing institution or help create institutions of their own.

Many authors relate path dependence to the idea of increasing returns. The idea of increasing returns is comparable to “like attracting like”: a minor event early on in a process may reoccur and draw similar factors until it is system wide and it has reached an equilibrium point. Increasing returns help perpetuate a process, creating a self-reinforcing effect. However, the sequence, timing, and context of the event are all critical in determining what factors become important and influential and which ones do not. Not every event or historical actor proves to be important, and not every process is equally susceptible to how factors or events might change its historical trajectory.

Critical Junctures

The instance where important events shape development trajectories is called a critical juncture. A critical juncture occurs when the circumstances that place an institution’s development along a given path take shape, as well as when the mechanism that creates increasing returns forms or becomes important. These increasing returns allow the institution to exist even after the initial conditions that created it deteriorate or disappear. The path is, in part, structured by earlier events and factors, but solidifies during the critical juncture. Path dependent and critical juncture analyses provide a broad diagnostic lens to apply to different social questions; therefore, they do not point to particular actors or mechanisms. Rather, they provide a framework with which to qualitatively evaluate events and consequences.

A path dependent analysis allows similar investigations for other inquires and in other disciplines. Further, by employing a path dependent analysis and developing counterfactual examples, an analyst may ask if a process is the most efficient possible. Analysts can examine the historical record to find alternatives and possibly increase its performance. Indeed, in path dependent solutions, the most efficient and most desired outcome does not necessarily persist. Institutions may persist because costs of altering the process are inhibitive, because the sequencing or timing of different factors have obstructed another development path, or for a variety of other reasons. Path dependent analysis investigates causal paths and conditioning factors that contribute to the history of a process.

Criticisms

Path dependency has critics in each of the disciplines that use it. In political science, critics of path dependency argue that it is overly deterministic. These critics take issue with a seeming lack of efficacy to individual actors to make individually rational choices, independent of history and contingent outcomes. Also, critics of path dependency argue that it is too broad to be a formal theory, and that attempts to formalize it have not succeeded. As a full theory, path dependency lacks a specific unit of analyses and also fails to select particular mechanisms through which networks of path development are to operate.

A last potential problem with path dependent analyses is that they lack the ability to be falsified. Political scientists must be able to somehow show that the causal arrangement outlined in path dependent analyses is true. However, history has only one empirical output, and it is impossible to alter past events to understand what causal mechanism or set of events lead to a particular outcome. In an effort to better understand the importance of processes and events, scholars who employ path dependency rely on counterfactual arguments to confirm an instance is a critical juncture or that certain early permutations of events were important.

Bibliography:

Arthur,W. Brian. “Competing Technologies, Increasing Returns and Lock-in by Historical Events.” Economic Journal 99, no. 394 (1999): 116–131.
David, Paul. “Clio and the Economics of QWERTY.” The American Economic Review 75, no. 2 (1985): 332–337.
Liebowitz, S. J., and Stephen Margolis. “The Fable of the Keys.” Journal of Law and Economics 33, no. 1 (1990): 1–25.
Mahoney, James. “Path Dependence in Historical Sociology.” Theory and Society 29, no. 4 (2000): 507–548.
“Path Dependent Explanations of Regime Change: Central America in Comparative Perspective.” Studies in Comparative International Development 36, no. 1 (2001): 111–141.
Pierson, Paul. “Increasing Returns, Path Dependence, and the Study of Politics.” The American Political Science Review 94, no. 2 (2001): 251–267.
Politics in Time: History, Institutions and Social Analysis. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2003.

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