Stability, Change, and Political Agency
It is a paradox that the family of institutional theories has dominated in a dynamic era of globalization, individualization, and Internet revolution, while at the same time not being perceived as useful in understanding change (Peters 2011). However, the opposite challenge is equally important: to understand institutional stability in times of changing environments. Continuity and change are two sides of the same coin, and both need to be addressed in intelligent ways by institutional theory and policy change theories (March and Olsen 2006; Olsen 2010; Peters 2008, 2011; Sabatier and Weible 2007; Boin and Kuipers 2008; Lowndes and Roberts 2013). Change is often seen as the difficult challenge here, but as will be argued in this book, it is equally challenging to elaborate on the mechanisms behind continuity.
Institutions are structural features in societies and political systems which have a formal character, for instance, legislature and organization, and informal features such as norms and networks. The structural nature of institutions means that they have some stability over time and do not disappear or change dramatically when individuals are replaced or leave. Hence, institutions give some predictability to social and political life. A really essential feature of institutions is that they affect and constrain individual behavior through rules, norms, practices, and incentive structures (Peters 2011: 19â20; Lowndes and Roberts 2013: 3â10). These fundamental features of institutions are common to all versions of new institutionalism even though there are important variations in how these features are theorized.
âNewâ institutionalism was born in the 1980 debate between an increasingly influential group of scholars who stressed the importance of individual behavior (rational choice and behavioralism) and researchers who addressed âoldâ institutionalist ideas and arguments in new ways. James G. March and Johan P. Olsen were particularly important in this debate and contributed to a renaissance of institutional theorizing in political science. In their view, often called normative institutionalism (Peters 2011), institutional dynamics are understood in relation to organizational factors and institutional legacies rather than to individual characteristics or to forces in the broader social context. In normative institutionalism change is perceived as an ordinary part of politics and administration and is argued to take place in terms of endogenous processes, conceptualized as institutional development, institutionalization, and deinstitutionalization. Institutions have dynamics of their own, and change is understood as rule-bound, following standard processes of interpretation, learning, and adaptation. The logic of action is adaptive behavior or, in the words of March and Olsen, appropriate action (March and Olsen 1984, 1989, 1995, 1996, 2006; Olsen 2010).
Since the early 1980s a number of different versions of new institutionalism have developed, partly in parallel and partly in debate with one another. The four dominant versions are normative, sociological, rational choice, and historical institutionalism (Peters 2011). Normative and sociological institutionalisms differ in a fundamental sense from rational choice institutionalism. These approaches have quite different views on institutions and institutional change and the first two have their theoretical roots in sociology and social psychology, while rational choice institutionalism is based on ideas from economic theory. These contradictory theories represent a âculturalâ versus âcalculusâ view on institutional agency (Hall and Taylor 1996; Hay and Wincott 1998). Notwithstanding this basic difference, both have inspired historical institutionalism theorists, who have borrowed ideas from them in elaborating on path-dependent action (Mahoney 2000; Thelen 1999). Still, historical institutionalism is the most structural version of new institutionalism.
In addition to these dominant versions, a number of theorists claim more or less convincingly that other perspectives and approaches should also qualify as important versions of new institutionalism. We have, for instance, constructivist and discursive institutionalism (Hay 2006; Schmidt 2010), feminist institutionalism (Krook and Mackay 2011), and post-structural institutionalism (Panizza and Miorelli 2013; Bacchi and Rönnblom 2014). Besides that we have various applications of institutional theory, like international and empirical institutionalism (Peters 2011: ch. 5 and 9).
In contrast to the idea of adaptive, endogenous change of normative institutionalism, it is commonplace to argue that major changes in rules, norms, and practices occur occasionally and can be seen as an exception to institutional stability. In explaining why and how change takes place after long periods of stability and path-dependent action, there has been a strong focus on exogenous forces conceptualized as external shocks, punctuated equilibrium, critical junctures, and windows of opportunities (Kingdon 1984; Krasner 1984; Sabatier and Jenkins-Smith 1993; Baumgartner and Jones 1993; Peters 2011; Thoenig 2012). This view has been particularly strong in historical institutionalism and has been the object of much debate and elaboration (Peters 2011: ch. 4; Pierre 2009; Mahoney 2000; Thelen 1999). Also rational choice institutionalists have an idea of exogenously induced change; preferences or attitudes among rational agents are determined outside the âgameâ and not in the interaction between the âplayersâ (Shepsle 1989; Peters 2011: ch. 3).
A particularly important debate among institutionalists is how they perceive of the interaction between institutions and individual actors. It is often argued that institutionalism is too structuralist and does not properly theorize on political agency and conflict (Peters 2011; Peters and Pierre 2005; Mahoney and Thelen 2010; Lowndes and Roberts 2013). In normative institutionalism, single-action logics have mostly been in focus. Leading researchers have elaborated on the logic of appropriateness (March and Olsen 1989, 1995) but have theorized less on the importance of and the interactivity between different action logics or micro-mechanisms (March and Olsen 2006; Christensen and RĂžvik 1999; Brunsson 2006). Furthermore, in theorizing on the importance of agency in relation to change and continuity, there has been an overly strong focus on collective actors like organizations, advocacy coalitions, and networks (Pierre and Peters 2000; Sabatier and Weible 2007; Torfing et al. 2012), while the importance of individual key actors has got scant attention (Olsson and Hysing 2012; Mintrom and Norman 2009; Forester 1989; Lowndes and Roberts 2013).
The limited attention to individual key actors and micro-level theorizing is a bit odd if we consider important trends of today which tend to increase the degree of freedom for individual political agency and thus opportunities to influence institutional rules and norms. These trends are complex governance and multilevel governance (Pierre and Peters 2000; Stoker 1998; Bache and Flinders 2004; Olsson 2003; Torfing et al. 2012), increased civic engagement and alternative venues for social movement activism (della Porta and Diani 1999; Tarrow 1998; Olsson and Hysing 2012), increasing influence and legitimacy through knowledge and expertise in the policy process (Fischer 2009; Svara 2006), and, related to this, the increasing use of framework laws with multiple goals which tend to decentralize value priorities to public officials and professionals and their networks (Pollitt and Bouckaert 2011).
These trends not only increase the likelihood of influential action among individuals and groups within and outside public organizations, but also suggest that theoretical thinking on institutional change and stability has probably underestimated the importance of mutual interaction between endogenous and exogenous factors. In fact, Vivien Lowndes and Mark Roberts make a strong case when arguing that new institutionalism has now entered a third phase in which institutional chang...