New Institutionalism

Definition of New
Institutionalism
 Interplay of the different institutions within
society, and how their dynamics, rules and
norms determine the behavior and actions of
individiduals

 Comes from (old) institutionalism, which is

focused on state/government and their various
laws and practices which are applied to
citizens
 Origins
Main points of the institutional approach can already be found
in the writings of Jean-Jacques Rousseau

His criticism of Hobbes, Locke, and others for assuming that the
behavior of possessive individuals in a particular historical and
social context expressed the natural preferences and traits of all
human beings is an institutionalist claim that behavior and
preferences are not a coincident

Rousseau viewed preferences, such as the desire to accumulate

property, not as universal postulates on which one could found a
scientific theory (cont.)
of politics but as products of society—its norms and its
institutions.

“Law and custom shaped men’s preferences and institutionalized

power and privilege, thus converting natural inequalities into
more pernicious social inequalities. To discover the true nature of
man, untainted by the social order, one would have to imagine
men in a presocial state, stripped of all effects of social
intercourse and even language. To restore the natural freedom of
man under modern conditions, Rousseau proposed the social
contract. Such a contract would allow men to “find a form of
association which will defend and protect with the whole
common force the person and goods of each associate, and in
which each, while uniting himself with all, may still obey
himself alone, and remain as free as before.”
 was launched by political scientists March and Olsen in 1984
as a reaction to behaviouralism and the growing influence of
rational choice theory.

 focuses on the way in which institutions embody values and

power relationships

 defines institutions themselves as an essential variable in

political outcomes.
 March and Olsen(1984): new institutionalism stresses the
relative autonomy of political institutions. Institutions are
neither a mirror of society (the behavioural critique), nor
merely the site for individual strategies (as in the rational actor
paradigm).

 Institutions give meaning to interactions and provide the

context within which interactions take place.
 Assumptions
 Three main approaches emerge from the
terminological morass:
 the ‘logic of appropriateness’
 a concern with the weight of past decisions
and processes of automatic government
 the attempt to marry methodological
individualism and institutional design
 Main approaches
 Sociological or normative institutionalism emphasizes the
cultural context within which organizations function and the
values with which actors are imbued.

 Historic institutionalism emphasizes the importance of initial

decisions and choices of venues and introduces notions such
as that of path dependency; traditions; response to structural-
functionalism

 Rational choice institutionalism purports that institutions are

only vested with powers by individuals. Rational choice
institutionalism involves more rational choice than
institutionalism, the research focus being upon how
individuals can use institutions to maximize their interest.
Institutions, appreciated in an instrumental way, can be
important insofar as they can be designed to limit the
consequences of individual behaviour
Normative/Sociological Institutionalism
 Normative or sociological institutionalism refers to the codes
of appropriate behaviour that imbue actors in organisations.
 Act upon their perceptions of what is the correct code of
behaviour; and they will resist changes from within or outside
challenge understandings of ‘appropriate behaviour’ especially
when this is linked to the exercise of a specific profession or
corps.
 Actors within organisations are bound by common values,
which explains not only their propensity to frustrate change,
but also the capacity for organisations to reproduce
themselves.
 Normative institutionalism thus frames institutions in terms of
the belief systems of actors, considered as members of a
profession/corps/grade, rather than as utility maximising
individuals.
 Its underlying assumption is that individuals within
organisations are conservative, fearful of change and resolute
in defence of their interests.
 Historical institutionalism
 Need to understand the importance of history in general, and
the history of specific policy sectors or public policies in
particular

 Another is to focus on the sectoral level, and retrace the

history of specific public policies.

 This sectoral analysis is that favoured by the historical

institutionalist school. Decisions set sectors on a given path,
from which a shift is extremely costly in terms past
investment. Change can usually only occur in the context of a
paradigm shift
 In the HI approach, the heritage is identified as the principal
independent variable (Rose, Collier notably). Rose (1991)
argues strongly that policy choices are limited by past choices.
Incumbent governments can not ignore past commitments that
are given substance by complex legal systems and pre-existing
institutions and actor configurations.
 The vast bulk of laws in operation at any one time are not
those implemented by the incumbent government.
 In a similar argument, Weaver speaks of automatic
government and doubts the capacity of governments to
implement change.
 Policy programmes pursue their autonomous development
irrespective of the activities of governments in power. The
field of social welfare is especially prone to this type of
analysis.
 Rational choice institutionalism
 RC institutionalism attempts to marry methodological
individualism and institutional design (Ostrom)
 Rational choice focuses on methodological individualism,
rather than collective, or middle level aggregates.
 For RC, to understand institutions we need first and foremost
to understand individual interactions, specifically the games
people play.
 Rational Choice institutionalism: a market doctrine? Political
economists refuse to recognize the State, assume individual is
an egotistical, self-interested actor
 Rational choice institutionalism involves more rational choice
than institutionalism
 The research focus: how to design institutions in an
instrumental way, so that they can be designed to limit the
consequences of utility maximizing individual behaviour
 Thinkers
• James March

Known for his research on organizations and organizational

decision making

• Johan Olsen

One of the developers of the systemic-anarchic perspective of

organizational decision making known as the Garbage Can
Model.He is a prominent thinker and writer on a wide variety
of topics, such as new institutionalism and Europeanization
• Elinor Ostrom

Associated with the new institutional economics and the

resurgence of political economy

• Richard Rose

He has conducted research on a wide range of topics,

including the Northern Ireland conflict, EU
enlargement, democratization, elections and voting
 Critiques

“New Institutionalism” is often contrasted with ʺOld

Institutionalism”.

-From the point of view of the older institutionalism, new

institutionalism tries to explain institutional change as merely
another instance of utility maximization. Old institutionalism,
on the contrary, seeks to articulate reasons for institutional
change in terms of social and political volition

-It is often said that new institutionalism is at its weakest when

trying to explain the genesis and transformation of institutions
 Sources
 William H. Riker, “Implications from the Disequilibrium of Majority Rule
for the Study of Institutions,” American Political Science Review 74, no. 2
(June 1980): 432-47.
 Herbert A. Simon, Administrative Behavior: A Study of Decision-Making
Processes in Administrative Organization, 2d ed. (New York: Macmillan,
1957 [1945])
 Lynne G. Zucker, “The Role of Institutionalism in Cultural Persistence,” in
Powell and DiMaggio, eds., The New Institutionalism in Organizational
Analysis, 83-107