Historical institutionalism

Kathleen Thelen and Sven Steinmo contrast New Institutionalism with "Old Institutionalism", which was overwhelmingly focused on detailed narratives of institutions, with little focus on comparative analyses. Thus, the Old Institutionalism was unhelpful for comparative research and explanatory theory. This "Old Institutionalism" began to be undermined when scholars increasingly highlighted how the formal rules and administrative structures of institutions were not accurately describing the behavior of actors and policy outcomes.[16]

Works, such as Karl Polanyi's The Great Transformation, Theda Skocpol's States and Social Revolutions, Philippe Schmitter's Still a Century of Corporatism?, Barrington Moore's Social Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy, and Evans, Ruschemeyer and Skocpol's Bringing the State Back In have been characterized as precursors to Historical Institutionalism,[8][14][15] spawning a new research program.

Historical institutionalism is a predominant approach in research on the welfare state.[17][18] In the field of International Relations, John Ikenberry’s After Victory and Abraham Newman’s Protectors of Privacy are prominent works of historical institutionalist scholarship.[14]

Unlike most western scholars who preceded them, including classical liberals, classical Marxists, empiricists, dialectical thinkers and positivists, historical institutionalists do not accept that history necessarily develops in a straightforward, linear fashion. Instead, they examine the conditions under which a particular trajectory was followed and not others, a phenomenon that Gabriel Almond refers to as the "historical cure".[19] As a consequence, specifying why particular paths were not taken is as important as specifying the actual trajectory of history.

As opposed to the old institutionalists, they postulate that history will not necessarily lead to a "happy" outcome (i.e. "fascism or democracy as the end of history").

The most basic concept with which historical institutionalists work is the concept of path dependence.[20][21][22] For Paul Pierson, path dependence entails that “outcomes at a ‘critical juncture’ trigger feedback mechanisms [negative or positive] that reinforce the recurrence of a particular pattern into the future.” Thus, path dependence makes it harder to reverse once a certain path has been taken, because there are increased costs to switching from the path. These paths may lead to outcomes are inefficient, but nonetheless persist, because of the costs involved in making substantial overhauls. An example of this is the QWERTY keyboard layout, which was efficient for typewriters to prevent jams in the 19th century and was implemented in computer keyboards in the 20th century. However, the QWERTY keyboard is arguably not as efficient as a computer keyboard could be, but the keyboard layout has persisted over time due to the costs involved in overhauling computer keyboards.[4] Jacob Hacker and Paul Pierson argue that other approaches to institutions may fall guilty of treating politics as if it were the film Groundhog Day where each day the participants just start over; in reality, past politics and policy legacies shape the interests, incentivizes, power and organizational abilities of political actors.[23]

A related crux of historical institutionalism is that temporal sequences matter: outcomes depend upon the timing of exogenous factors (such as inter-state competition or economic crisis) in relation to particular institutional configurations (such as the level of bureaucratic professionalism or degree of state autonomy from class forces). For example, Theda Skocpol suggests that the democratic outcome of the English Civil War was a result of the fact that the comparatively weak English Crown lacked the military capacity to fight the landed upper-class. In contrast, the rise of rapid industrialization and fascism in Prussia when faced with international security threats was because the Prussian state was a “highly bureaucratic and centralized agrarian state” composed by “men closely ties to landed notables”.[24] Thomas Ertman, in his account of state building in medieval and early modern Europe, argues that variations in the type of regime built in Europe during this period can be traced to one macro-international factor and two historical institutional factors. At the macro-structural level, the “timing of the onset of sustained geopolitical competition” created an atmosphere of insecurity that appeared best addressed by consolidating state power. The timing of the onset of competition is critical for Ertman’s explanation. States that faced competitive pressures early had to consolidate through patrimonial structures, since the development of modern bureaucratic techniques had not yet arrived. States faced with competitive pressures later could on the other hand, could take advantage of advancements in training and knowledge to promote a more technical oriented civil service.[25][26]

An important element to historical institutionalism is that it may cement certain distributions of power or increase asymmetries of power through policy feedbacks, "lock in" effects and stickiness.[2] For example, France has a permanent seat on the UN Security Council because of its power and status at the end of World War II, yet it would likely not get a permanent seat if the UN Security Council were re-designed decades later.[2]

Historical institutionalist works tend to reject functionalist accounts of institutions.[7] Historical institutionalists tend to see origins behind the creation of institutions as the result of conflict and contestation, which then gets locked in and persists, even if the circumstances that resulted in the institution change.[7]

Historical institutionalism is not a unified intellectual enterprise (see also new institutionalism). Some scholars are oriented towards treating history as the outcome of rational and purposeful behavior based on the idea of equilibrium (see rational choice). They rely heavily on quantitative approaches. Others, more qualitative oriented scholars, reject the idea of rationality and instead emphasize the idea that randomness and accidents matter in political and social outcomes.[5] There are unsolvable epistemological differences between both approaches.[27] However given the historicity of both approaches, and given their focus on institutions, both can fall under "historical institutionalism".

• It could be said that path dependence claims causality because every juncture must be considered causal to further developments (i.e. Z couldn’t occur without W, X and Y). In that sense, it is more deterministic than statistical analysis because at the latter acknowledge only probabilistic relations among variables. “Correlation is not causation”.
• Path dependence, in the economic sense, is also subjective because it involves the judgment of the researcher in determining which historical conjunctures had an effect on the outcome why others don’t (selecting on the dependent variable). The subjectivity becomes accentuated because one can claim that the smallest historical event can shape the larger outcomes (e.g.: a man got drunk, the next morning he was involved in manufacturing 20 rifles that were sent to the same regiment and the rifles didn’t aim right and the battle was lost and then the war). Where should we trace the causal thread? How much history is needed?

Avner Greif and David Laitin have criticized the notion of increased returns.[28]

Sociological institutionalists and ideational scholars have criticized versions of Historical Institutionalism that adopt materialist and rationalist ontologies.[9] Scholars who use ideational approaches argue that institutional change occurs during episodes when institutions are perceived be failing (such as during economic crises) or during episodes of uncertainty, as this creates room for an exchange of ideas and a receptivity for institutional change.[9][29][30][31] Political scientists such as Henry Farrell, Martha Finnemore, Mark Blyth, Oddny Helgadóttir, and William Kring argue that Historical Institutionalism has over time tended to engage more rational choice institutionalism than with sociological instiutionalism.[15][9]

In Paradigms and Sand Castles, an influential book on research design in comparative politics, Barbara Geddes argues that there are methodological limits to the kind of path-dependent arguments that is often found in Historical Institutionalist research.[32] She argues that it is hard to rule out rival explanations for a proposed outcome and to precisely identify one purported critical juncture or another.[32]

• Perry Anderson, Lineages of the Absolutist State
• Kenneth A. Armstrong & Simon Bulmer, The governance of the Single European Market
• Reinhard Bendix, Nation Building and Citizenship: Studies of our Changing Social Order
• Suzanne Berger, Peasants Against Politics
• Thomas Ertman, Birth of the Leviathan
• Peter B Evans, Embedded Autonomy
• Alexander Gerschenkron, Economic Backwardness in Historical Perspective
• Peter A. Hall, Governing the Economy
• Samuel P. Huntington, Political Order in Changing Societies
• John Ikenberry, After Victory
• Chalmers Johnson, Peasant Nationalism and Communist Power
• Peter Katzenstein, Cultural Norms and National Security
• Robert Keohane, Power and Interdependence
• Atul Kohli, The State and Development in the Third World
• Stephen Krasner, Sovereignty: Organized Hypocrisy
• Margaret Levi, Consent, Dissent and Patriotism
• Gregory Luebbert, Liberalism Fascism and Social Democracy
• Ian Lustick, Unsettled States, Disputed Lands
• Joel Migdal, Strong Societies and Weak State
• Barrington Moore, Social Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy
• Douglass North, Institutions, Institutional Change and Economic Performance
• Paul Pierson, Politics in Time
• Karl Polanyi, The Great Transformation
• Dietrich Rueschemeyer, Capitalist Development and Democracy
• James C. Scott, Seeing like a State
• Theda Skocpol, States and Social Revolutions, Protecting Soldiers and Mothers[13]
• Philip Selznick, "Institutionalism 'Old' and 'New'". Administrative Science Quarterly 41 (2): 270–77
• Stephen Skowronek, The Politics Presidents Make
• Rogers Smith, Civic Ideals
• Sven Steinmo, Taxation and Democracy, The Evolution of Modern States
• Kathleen Thelen, How Institutions Evolve?
• Charles Tilly, Coercion, Capital, and European States, AD 990–1992
• Stephen Van Evera, Causes of War
• Thorstein Veblen, An Inquiry into the Nature of Peace and the Terms of Its Perpetuation
• Rorden Wilkinson, The WTO: Crisis and the Governance of Global Trade
• Daniel Ziblatt, Structuring the State
• John Zysman, Governments, Markets, and Growth: Financial Systems and Politics of Industrial Change.

• Daniel W. Drezner (2010) "Is historical institutionalism bunk?" Review of International Political Economy, 17:4, 791-804
• Peter A. Hall, “Historical Institutionalism in Rationalist and Sociological Perspective,” in James Mahoney and Kathleen Thelen, Explaining Institutional Change (Cambridge University Press 2010).
• Pierson, Paul. 2000. "Path Dependence, Increasing Returns, and the Study of Politics." American Political Science Review 33, 6/7:251-67.
• Fioretos, Orfeo (ed.). International Politics and Institutions in Time. Oxford University Press.
• Fioretos, O. (2011). "Historical Institutionalism in International Relations." International Organization, 65(2), 367-399.
• Fioretos, Orfeo, Tulia G. Falleti, and Adam Sheingate. 2016. The Oxford Handbook of Historical Institutionalism. Oxford University Press.
• Kathleen Thelen. 1999. "Historical Institutionalism in Comparative Politics." Annual Review of Political Science 2:1, 369-404.
• Steinmo, Sven. 2008. "Historical Institutionalism." in Approaches and Methodologies in the Social Sciences. Cambridge University Press.
• Thelen, Kathleen. 2002. "How Institutions Evolve: Insights from Comparative-Historical Analysis." in Mahoney, James and Dueschemeyer, Dietrich, eds. Comparative Historical Analysis in the Social Sciences. Cambridge University Press.
• Peter Hall and David Soskice. Varieties of Capitalism. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 2000.
• Kathleen Thelen. Varieties of Capitalism: Trajectories of Liberalization and the New Politics of Social Solidarity. Annual Review of Political Science. 2012; 15:137- 159.
• Henry Farrell and Abraham Newman. Domestic Institutions Beyond the Nation State: Charting the New Interdependence Approach. 2014. World Politics 66, 2:331- 363.
• Henry Farrell & Abraham L. Newman (2010) "Making global markets: Historical institutionalism in international political economy." Review of International Political Economy, 17:4, 609-638
• Rixen, Thomas, Lora Anne Viola, Michael Zürn (eds.). 2016. Historical Institutionalism and International Relations: Explaining Institutional Development in World Politics.[33] Oxford University Press.
• Waylen, G. (2009). What Can Historical Institutionalism Offer Feminist Institutionalists? Politics & Gender, 5(2), 245-253.

• Institutionalism (international relations)
• Institutional economics
• New institutional economics
• Rational Choice Institutionalism