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2021 | OriginalPaper | Chapter

2. Institutionalism in the 21st Century

Author : Simon P. Rinas

Published in: From Telecommunications Liberalization to Net Neutrality Rules

Publisher: Springer Fachmedien Wiesbaden

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Abstract

Do institutions matter? This question motivated the revival of institutionalist thinking in political science after almost four decades of behaviorist fashion in social sciences. Today, institutionalism maintains its role as one perspective aiming at understanding political life, providing an alternative to approaches on ‘rational actors’ and ‘cultural community’ (March/Olsen 2008: 4). Back in the mid-1950s, the behaviorist turn had dissolved contemporary institutionalist predominance in political science, which until then upheld the role of the nation state in politics, eventually encouraging institutionalists to reconsider basic assumptions of their theory (Lowndes/Roberts 2013: 29).

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This article was revised in 2004; cf. References.

The term sociological institutionalism sometimes appears under different frames, often as normative institutionalism. Initially, Hall and Tayler also elaborated bounded rationality institutionalism.

Hall and Taylor cut out this type when publishing their approach in 1996.

Peters additionally elaborates empirical institutionalism, sociological institutionalism (while he distinguishes between normative and sociological institutionalism), and international institutionalism.

This list is far from conclusive and only represents the most common and most established approaches to institutionalism in political science. For further elaboration on empirical institutionalism and international institutionalism see Peters (2005), for network institutionalism see Ansell (2008), and for feminist institutionalism see Krook and Mackay (2011), Kenny (2007), and Chappell (2006). Constructivist, discursive, or ideational institutionalism will be introduced later in this chapter.

‘According to economics of convention, it is necessary to reconsider the concept of institution and the issue of the stability and coherence of social practices’ (Jagd 2007: 78).

Berger and Luckmann exemplify their thoughts by a tribe that passes knowledge to succeeding generations while the creation of the initial knowledge blurs (1966: 59).

The ideas of the 1984 article had been enhanced in the 1989 book. Both issues have been extraordinarily influential in political science. Many scholars (i.a. Lowndes 2010: 63; Blondel 2008: 720) claim that sociological (or normative) institutionalism initially coined by March and Olsen ‘served as the foundation for the resurgence of institutional theory in political science’ (Peters 2011: 80).

March and Olsen argue that the design of political institutions, such as the appellate court, define interests and are the structures to standard operating procedures.

The empirical motivation that caused the refocus on institutions furthermore bases on the change in the governance of public services (Lowndes 1996: 181). The theoretical mean to analyze these new institutions hence advanced the interest in new institutionalisms (Lowndes 1996: 182).

March and Olsen (2008: 8) state: ‘The openness in interpretation means that while institutions structure politics and governance and create a certain “bias” (Schattschneider 1960), they ordinarily do not determine political behavior or outcomes in detail.’

DiMaggio and Powell state that sociological institutionalists ‘find institutions everywhere’ (DiMaggio/Powell 1991: 9).

c.f. Berger and Luckmann in a previous section.

As Meyer et.al. (1987: 12) argue ‘a central concern of our analysis is the way in which the institutional structure of society creates and legitimates the social entities that are seen as “actors”. That is, institutionalized cultural rules define the meaning and identity of the individuals and patterns of appropriate economic, political, and cultural activity engaged in by those individuals.’

March and Olsen (1984: 741–2): ‘The pleasures are often in the process. Potential participants seem to care as much for the right to participate as for the fact of participation; participants recall features of the process more easily and vividly than they do its outcomes; heated argument leads to decisions without concern about their implementation; information relevant to a decision is requested but not considered; authority is demanded but not exercised’.

They quote for symbolic order Meyer and Rowan (1977), Pondy (1978), March (1981), Pfeffer (1981a), March and Olsen (1983); for historical order Etheredge (1976), Olsen (1976a), Levinthal and March (1981); for normative order Kreiner (1976), Olsen (1976b), Rommetveit (1976) and Stava (1976); and for organizational order Egeberg (1987) and Olsen (1983).

‘Routines help avoid conflicts; they provide codes of meaning that facilitate interpretation of ambiguous worlds; they constrain bargaining within comprehensible terms and enforce agreements; they help mitigate the unpredictability created by open structures […]’ (March/Olsen 1989: 23).

Immergut argues that behavior is not the output of individuals’ real preferences. It is rather an alternative of the real preferences that fits the structural context (Immergut 1998: 6–7).

Scholars typically highlight the role of institutions for the resolution of the prisoner’s dilemma.

Premfors, R. (2004) ‘The Contingency of Democratization: Scandinavia in Comparative Perspective’, in papers to the Conference in Honour of Robert Dahl, Contingency In The Study Of Politics, Yale University, 3–4 December 2004.

‘A stable outcome is one in which none of the individual actors have an incentive to change their behaviour’ (Krasner 1988: 69).

Historical institutionalism bases on the concept of trans-national comparison. The initial question was why market structures or policy programs differ among countries while individual preferences were assumed similar. The answer to this question, for historical institutionalists, lay in the shape of the structural context. One started to re-discuss the role of the state in this structural context (c.f. Evans et.al. 1985).

In their 1992 book Structuring Politics, Thelen, Steinmo and Longstreth argue for an institutionalist approach that takes into account the role history plays for the constitution of institutions.

In general, Pierson's and Skocpol’s article tries to illustrate the advantages of historical institutionalism over rational choice theory. The main arguments as refers to the present interest are listed here.

For a brief introduction to discursive institutionalism see Schmidt (2008). HI means historical institutionalism, DI is discursive institutionalism, and RI is rational choice institutionalism.

Scharpf (1997: 48): ‘interaction-oriented policy research also has an evaluative dimension in identifying systematic deviation and their causes and a prescriptive dimension in contributing to the design of deviation-reducing institutional arrangements.’

‘In broad terms, an institutional logic is the constellation of beliefs and associated practices (the schemas and scripts) that a field’s participants hold in common. These packages of beliefs and practices are organizing principles and recipes for action. They have instrumental, normative, and cognitive implications’ (Owen-Smith/Powell 2008: 600).

Scharpf’s actor-centered institutionalism does not aim to categorize a certain theoretical pattern of rules, whereas it creates a shorthand term to describe the most important influences on actors’ actions: orientations and capabilities, constellations, and modes of interaction (Scharpf 1997: 39).

Also, March and Olsen (1989) considered the concept of standard operating procedures: ‘Political democracy depends not only on economic and social conditions but also on the design of political institutions. Bureaucratic agencies, legislative committees, and appellate courts are arenas for contending social forces, but they are also collections of standard operating procedures and structures that define and defend values, norms, interests, identities, and beliefs’ (March/Olsen 1989: 17–8).

Elinor Ostrom in her 1991 review criticizes the lack of a definition due to the abundance of what an institution can be: ‘When strategies, beliefs, paradigms, cultures, and knowledge are included in the concept of rules, nothing much is left for choice’ (Ostrom 1991: 96).

Crawford and Ostrom distinguish between three institutional understandings: Institutions as equilibrium, institutions as norms, and institutions as rules (Crawford/Ostrom 1995: 583).

Ostrom elaborates that the structure of a situation an individual faces is represented by the set of positions to be held by participants, the set of participants in each position, the set of actions that participants in positions can take at different nodes in a decision tree, the set of outcomes that participants jointly affect through their actions, a set of functions that map participant and random actions at decision nodes into intermediate or final outcomes, the amount of information available at a decision node, the benefits and costs to be assigned to actions and outcomes (Ostrom 1986: 17).

The structure-agent model, applied in most US policy analyses, assumes that the principal agent has the capacity ‘to design rules which coerce the rule taker into compliance’ (Lowndes/Roberts 2013: 91).

‘Downs and Rocke (1995: 77) complement this reasoning by suggesting that, instead of formal “exceptions” or “escapes” in a constitution, it is sometimes more effective simply to permit non-compliance, punish it, but to make these costs low enough that violations may occur from time to time in equilibrium. This may be simpler than struggling to craft exceptions in a more complete agreement’ (Shepsle 2008: 1049).

By define Krasner means ‘endowments in the form of property rights, utilities in the sense of preferences, capabilities in the form of material, symbolic and institutional resources, and self-identity in that the way in which individuals identify themselves is affected or determined by their place within an institutional structure’ (Krasner 1988: 74).

In order to assess whether there is a link between one institution and another, following Krasner, scholars have to ask if ‘a particular activity can be changed without altering anything else’ (Krasner 1988: 75).

A radical approach is elaborated by Grafstein (1992) who states that institutions may prevent change as they themselves provide the corridors to act. If changing an institution lies outside the individuals’ capacity, change through actors’ behavior is unlikely.

Blondel eventually argues that institutions do not need support in order to maintain: ‘It seems prima facie unrealistic to tie the very existence of political institutions to the support which they might have: […] The way an institutional arrangement is shaped does not seem to depend on the support for that arrangement’ (Blondel 2008: 728). Whereas this argument might be true considering sedimentation of meaning through history and the detachment of the institutional context’s dynamics from the single institution, it also neglects the fact that institutions are the product of reciprocal interaction within the institutional context.

Quack also argues that institutional change always is accompanied and affected by discourse (Quack 2003b: 347).

‘Contemporary welfare states appear to be in the process of redefining the appropriateness of different institutions, for instance the boundary between a sphere of solidarity based on universal citizens rights implemented through state bureaucracies, a sphere of self-interest and competition implemented through a price system, a sphere of organized interests and bargaining through a “corporatist” system, and a sphere of community values implemented through voluntary associations and citizens initiatives’ (March/Olsen 1989: 167).

Lowndes and Roberts call this phase divergence and division (Lowndes/Roberts 2013: 28–40).

March and Olsen distinguish integrative and aggregative institutions. While the former are products of individuals’ utility the latter provides a normative environment with which actors can identify (March/Olsen 1989: 119–29).

Title: Institutionalism in the 21st Century
Author: Simon P. Rinas
Publisher: Springer Fachmedien Wiesbaden
Book: From Telecommunications Liberalization to Net Neutrality Rules
Print ISBN: 978-3-658-33013-2

Electronic ISBN: 978-3-658-33014-9

Copyright Year: 2021
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-658-33014-9_2