Historical institutionalism

Historical institutionalism is arguably the institutionalism most influenced by the old institutionalism as well as by political systems approaches, both structural-functional and Marxian approaches.

From the old institutionalists came the continuing interest in the state and the formal institutions of government; from the structural-functionalists, the emphasis on structures (but not functions); and from the Marxists, the focus on power, with the state seen ‘no longer as a neutral broker among competing interests but as a complex of institutions capable of structuring the character and outcomes of group conflict’ (Hall and Taylor 1996: 938). Thus, historical institutionalism, unlike rational choice institutionalism, focuses most explicitly on the state and its institutional development - with the state just as problematic as the action within it. Historical institutionalists have explored not just state structures but all the structures through which governing occurs: in political economy not just state actors but also labour organizations, business associations, and financial institutions; in public policy not just state legislators but also organized interests, the electorate and the judiciary (Hall and Taylor 1996; see also Steinmo etal. 1992).

Historical institutionalism began in the late 1970s with the works of comparativists like Theda Skocpol (1979) and Peter Katzenstein (1978), international relations scholars like Stephen Krasner (1980), and Americanists like Stephen Skowronek (1982), all of whom were intent on ‘bringing the state back in’ (Evans etal. 1985). These scholars argued that political action could not be reduced to individual behaviour alone or even to group activity because of the importance of how the state structured action and of how state capacity and policy legacies structured outcomes. Their work formed the basis for the subsequent, more self-consciously historical institutionalist body of literature.

Among these, Peter Hall (1986) explained the different trajectories of British and French political economic development as the result of the structural constraints implicit in their socio-economic organization; Peter Katzenstein (1985) demonstrated that the economic openness of small states combined with strong welfare states could be explained by historically-developed, corporatist institutional structures; while Paul Pierson (1994) showed how past welfare state policies set the conditions for future policies in a comparison of the US and Britain.

Historical institutionalism works best at delineating the origins and development of institutional structures and processes over time. It tends to focus on sequences in development, timing of events, and phases of political change. It emphasizes not just the asymmetries of power related to the operation and development of institutions but also the path-dependencies and unintended consequences that result from such historical development (Hall and Taylor 1996: 938; Steinmo etal. 1992; Thelen 1999). Pathdependency ensures that rationality in the strict rational choice sense is present only insofar as institutions are the intended consequences of actors’ choices. But this is often not the case, given the unintended consequences of intentional action and the unpredictability of intervening events.

Interests, moreover, rather than being universally defined, are contextual (Thelen l999; Zysman l994). Compared to rational choice institutionalism, historical institutionalism tends to be less universalistic in its generalizations and more ‘mid-range’ in its theory-building, by focusing on changes in a limited number of countries unified in space and/or time or on a specific kind of phenomenon that occurs in or affects a range of countries at one time or across time (Thelen l999). But although more particular in its generalizations, the ‘new’ historical institutionalism rarely stays at the level of the ‘mere story-telling’ of which it is sometimes accused by rational choice institutionalists.

Noticeably absent is the focus on ‘great men’ or ‘great moments’ characteristic of more traditional historical approaches in the old institutionalism. In fact, the macro-historical approach prevalent in most accounts tends to emphasize structures and processes much more than the events out of which they are constructed, let alone the individuals whose actions and interests spurred those events. Here too, then, there are no individual actors as such. What is more, any ‘micro-foundational logic,’ as rationalists put it, is generally missing from this macro-historical work. Instead, it follows the logic of path-dependency. Rather than appearing economically deterministic, therefore, historical institutionalism can appear historically deterministic or even mechanistic where it focuses exclusively on continuities and path-dependencies. The ‘critical junctures’ literature that looks at ‘configurative’ moments (e.g., Collier and Collier 1991; Gourevitch 1986) or ‘punctuated equilibrium’ (Krasner 1988) is something of a corrective to this problem; but it still has difficulty explaining what brings about the crisis that spurs change. Moreover, it assumes that change comes only in bursts, with stasis in between, and cannot account for incremental change. Instead, as Kathleen Thelen (2003; 2004) argues, institutional evolution can be explained by way of certain mechanisms of change such as the layering of new elements onto otherwise stable institutional frameworks and the conversion of institutions through the adoption of new goals or the incorporation of new groups. But even here, how change is instigated - either through layering or conversion - remains unclear without adding elements from other analytic approaches.

The main problem for the historical institutionalists, given their emphasis on structures, is how to explain human agency. For this, historical institutionalists mostly turn to analyses that add what Peter Hall and Rosemary Taylor (1996: 940-1) term either a ‘calculus’ approach-which puts the historical institutionalists closer to the rational choice institutionalists, albeit still with a primacy to historical structures that shape actors’ interests - or a ‘culture’ approach - which puts them closer to the sociological institutionalists, although here historical structures add to norms to give meaning to actors’ interests and worldview.

There is, however, an alternative ontology to both culture and calculus, as Colin Hay and Dan Wincott argue (1998), which situates agency within the historical institutionalist approach itself. But this will be considered below, because it flows into the discussion below of ideas and discourse. Examples abound on the combination of historical institutionalism with rational calculus. Ellen Immergut’s (1992) comparative study of healthcare reform explains cross-national differences in physicians’ calculations of their interests in terms of the way in which governing structures - as veto-points - affect their expectations of future success in limiting (or not) reform efforts. Thelen’s (2004) study of institutional change in skills regimes in Britain, Germany, Japan and the United States turns to rationalist accounts of ongoing political negotiation focusing on political coalitions and political conflicts to explain change through layering and conversion. Peter Hall in a collaborative project with David Soskice (2001) embedded a rationalist analysis of firm-centred co-ordination in a historical institutionalist analysis of the binary division of capitalism into liberal market economies (e.g., Britain) and co-ordinated market economies (e.g. Germany), in seeking microfoundations for historical institutionalism. Building on a combination of historical institutionalism and rationalist calculus but bringing the state back into a comparison of the evolving political economies of Britain, France, and Germany, I argue that there are at least three varieties of market economy, with France representing the third, state-enhanced variety (Schmidt 2002, Part II). Paul Pierson (2004), finally, in his study of the dimension of time in political analysis has tipped to the other side in an attempt to provide a temporal dimension to rational choice institutionalism (2004).

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Source: Hay Colin, Lister Michael, Marsh David (eds.). The State: Theories and Issues. Palgrave,2005. — 336 p.. 2005

Historical institutionalism

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