Toward a new theory of institutional change

World Politics

Volumn 60, Issue 2, 2008, Pages 281-314

  Weyland, Kurt ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF TEXAS AT AUSTIN   (United States)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

INNOVATION; INSTITUTIONAL FRAMEWORK; INSTITUTIONAL REFORM; LEARNING; SOCIAL THEORY;

EID: 48749094613     PISSN: 00438871     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1353/wp.0.0013     Document Type: Article

References (207)

1. Even a very astute, perceptive institutionalist such as Samuel Huntington believed in 1984, immediately before the fall of communism, that "the likelihood of democratic development in Eastern Europe is virtually nil"; Huntington, "Will More Countries Become Democratic?" Political Science Quarterly 99 (Summer 1984), 217.
2. On the low success rate of expert predictions, see the thorough analysis by Philip Tetlock, Expert Political Judgment (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2005).
3. Peter Hall and Rosemary Taylor, "Political Science and the Three New Institutionalisms," Political Studies 44 (December 1996);
4. Ira Katznelson and Barry Weingast, eds., Preferences and Situations (New York: Russell Sage Foundation, 2005).
5. Paul Pierson, Politics in Time (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2004);
6. James Mahoney, "Path Dependence in Historical Sociology," Theory and Society 29 (August 2000);
7. see also Douglass North, Institutions, Institutional Change and Economic Performance (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990), chaps. 10-11.
8. Taylor Boas proposes a more flexible version of path dependence to account for gradual change and its cumulation over time, but his theory does not foresee or explain drastic, trajectory- inflecting change; Boas, "Conceptualizing Continuity and Change," Journal of Theoretical Politics 19 (January 2007).
9. Stephen Krasner, "Approaches to the State," Comparative Politics 16 (January 1984).
10. E.g., Robert Bates, Avner Greif, Margaret Levi, Jean-Laurent Rosenthal, and Barry Weingast, Analytic Narratives (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1998).
11. Robert Bates, Markets and States in Tropical Africa (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1981);
12. Barry Ames, Political Survival (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1987).
13. Merilee Grindle, "The New Political Economy," in Gerald Meier, ed., Politics and Policy Making in Developing Countries (San Francisco: Institute for Contemporary Studies Press, 1991);
14. James Malloy, "Democracy, Economic Crisis, and the Problem of Governance," Studies in Coniparative International Development 26 (Summer 1991);
15. Jeffrey Herbst, The Politics of Reform in Ghana, 1982-1991 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993);
16. Kurt Weyland, The Politics of Market Reform in Fragile Democracies (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2002).
17. Samuel Huntington, The Third Wave (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1991);
18. John Markoff, Waves of Democracy (Thousand Oaks, Calif: Pine Forge Press, 1996);
19. Charles Kurzman, "Waves of Democratization," Studies in Comparative International Development 33 (Spring 1998).
20. Thelen, "Historical Institutionalism in Comparative Politics," Annual Review of Political Science 2 (1999);
21. Thelen, How Institutions Evolve (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004);
22. and John Campbell, Institutional Change and Globalization (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2004).
23. Greif and Laitin, "A Theory of Endogenous Institutional Change," American Political Science Review 98 (November 2004).
24. On the differences between these cognitive-psychological findings and the older literature on bounded rationality spawned by Herbert Simon, see Jonathan Bendor, "Herbert A. Simon: Political Scientist," Annual Review of Political Science 6 (2003).
25. Jeffrey Berejikian, "Revolutionary Collective Action and the Agent-Structure Problem," American Political Science Review 86 (September 1992);
26. Maria Fanis, "Collective Action Meets Prospect Theory," Political Psychology 25 (June 2004);
27. Rose McDermott, Political Psychology in International Relations (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2004);
28. Barbara Vis, "Biting the Bullet or Steering Clear?" (Ph.D. diss., Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, 2007);
29. and especially Weyland (fn. 8);
30. and idem, Bounded Rationality and Policy Diffusion (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2007).
31. Bryan Jones and Frank Baumgartner have also applied bounded rationality to political decision making and rigorously documented the patterns of institutional change highlighted in this article. See Jones, Politics and the Architecture of Choice (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2001);
32. and Jones and Baumgartner, The Politics of Attention (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2005). I complement their work by proposing a more distinctive microfoundation and by stressing the supply side of institutional change, that is, the diffusion of models and ideas.
33. Chalmers Johnson, Revolutionary Change (Stanford, Calif: Stanford University Press, 1982).
34. Pierre van den Berghe, "Dialectic and Functionalism," American Sociological Review 28 (October 1963), 696-98;
35. David Easton, A Systems Analysis of Political Life (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1979), 68-69, 366-76;
36. see also Alexander Gerschenkron, Economic Backwardness in Historical Perspective (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1962), 5-30.
37. E.g., Bates (fn. 7).
38. Daniel McFadden, "Rationality for Economists?" Journal of Risk and Uncertainty 19, no. 1-3 (1999);
39. Richard Thaler, "From Homo Economicus to Homo Sapiens," Journal of Economic Perspectives 14 (Winter 2000);
40. contra George Tsebelis, Nested Games (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1990), 32-38.
41. Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky, eds., Choices, Values, and Frames (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000).
42. Jones (fn. 14);
43. Bendor (fn. 12)
44. Kahneman and Tvcrsky (fn. 19).
45. Ibid.
46. Paul Schoemaker, "Are Risk-Attitudes Related across Domains and Response Modes?" Management Science 36 (December 1990).
47. Fanis (fn. 13);
48. Vis (fn. 13).
49. Krasner (fn. 5).
50. Jones and Baumgartner (fn. 14), 111.
51. Although Dani Rodrik, who designs a prominent model along these lines, bases his argument on the postulates of comprehensive rationality, he implicitly invokes the asymmetry of losses versus gains that cognitive psychology has demonstrated; otherwise, aggregate gains could compensate for distributional losses; Rodrik, "The Rush to Free Trade in the Developing World," in Stephan Haggard nd Steven Webb, eds., Voting for Reform (New York: Oxford University Press, 1994).
52. Jones and Baumgartner (fn. 14).
53. Weyland (fn. 8).
54. Dieter Dowe, Heinz-Gerhard Haupt, Dieter Langewiesche, and Jonathan Sperber, eds., Europe in 1848 (New York: Berghahn, 2001);
55. Hugh Heclo, Modern Social Policies in Britain and Sweden (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1974).
56. Huntington (fn. 9);
57. Markoff (fn. 9);
58. Kurzman (fn. 9);
59. Richard Li and William Thompson, "The 'Coup Contagion' Hypothesis," Journal of Conflict Resolution 19 (March 1975).
60. Daniel Brinks and Michael Coppedge, "Diffusion Is No Illusion," Comparative Political Studies 39 (May 2006);
61. Kristian Gleditsch and Michael Ward, "Diffision and the International Context of Democratization," International Organization 60 (Fall 2006).
62. Daniel Kahneman, Paul Slovic, and Amos Tversky, eds., Judgment under Uncertainty (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982);
63. Thomas Gilovich, Dale Griffin, and Daniel Kahneman, eds., Heuristics and Biases (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002).
64. Karen Mossberger and Harold Wolman, "Policy Transfer as a Form of Prospective Evaluation," Public Administration Review 63 (July 2003), 431-32, 436;
65. Edward Page and J. Mark-Lawson, "Cross-National Policy Learning" (Manuscript, London School of Economics, 2007);
66. Jones and Baumgartner (fn. 14).
67. Rajeev Gowda and Jeffrey Fox, eds., Judgments, Decisions, and Public Policy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002);
68. McDermott (fn. 13);
69. Weyland (fn. 13).
70. Mossberger and Wolman (fin. 34);
71. see also Graeme Boushey, Diffusion Dynamics (Ph.D. diss., University of Washington, 2007), 28, 34, 36.
72. Craig Volden paints a more rational picture by stressing the role of policy success as a stimulus for diffusion but does not find a very strong effect; Volden, "States as Policy Laboratories," American Journal of Political Science 50 (April 2006), 302, 307.
73. Weyland (fn. 13), 49-50, 108-17.
74. Everett Rogers, Diffusion of Innovations, 4th ed. (New York: Free Press, 1995), 11, 22-23.
75. Jones and Baumgartner (fn. 14).
76. Carmelo Mesa-Lago and Ricardo Córdova, "Social Security Reform in El Salvador," in María Amparo Cruz-Saco and Carmelo Mesa-Lago, eds., Do Options Exist? (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1998), 121-27.
77. Giovanni Capoccia, Defending Democracy (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2005);
78. Leif Lewin, Democratic Accountability (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2007).
79. Mitchell Orenstein, Privatizing Pensions (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2008), chap. 1.
80. Geddes, "A Comparative Perspective on the Leninist Legacy in Eastern Europe," Comparative Political Studies 28 (July 1995).
81. Orenstein (fn. 42), chap. 1.
82. Adam Przeworski, Capitalism and Social Democracy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985), 32-38.
83. I thus follow the approach to case selection in Lewin (fn. 41), 6-8.
84. Robert Kaufman, "How Societies Change Development Models or Keep Them," in Gary Gereffi and Donald Wyman, eds., Manufacturing Miracles (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1990).
85. John Sheahan, Patterns of Development in Latin America (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1987), chaps. 4-5.
86. Mancur Olson, The Rise and Decline of Nations (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1982).
87. Bates (fn. 7);
88. Barbara Geddes, Politician's Dilemma (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1994);
89. criticism in Grindle (fn. 8).
90. Sebastian Edwards, Crisis and Reform in Latin America (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995).
91. John Williamson and Stephan Haggard, "The Political Conditions for Economic Reform," in John Williamson, ed., The Political Economy of Policy Reform (Washington, D.C.: Institute for International Economics, 1994), 562-64.
92. Robert Bates and Anne Krueger, "Generalizations Arising from the Country Studies," in Bates and Krueger, eds., Political and Economic Interactions in Economic Policy Reform (Oxford: Blackwell, 1993), 452-54.
93. Weyland (fn. 8), chap. 5.
94. Herbst (fn. 8), 29-31.
95. Author interview with Juan Cariaga, Bolivia's former finance minister (1985-87), La Paz, June 29, 2006.
96. Gaidar, Days of Defeat and Victory (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1999), 87, 116.
97. Edwards (fn. 51), 48-55.
98. Covadonga Meseguer, Learning about Policies (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008), chap. 5;
99. see also Beth Simmons and Zachary Elkins, "The Globalization of Liberalization," American Political Science Review 98 (February 2004);
100. David Levi-Faur, ed., The Global Diffusion of Regulatory Capitalism = Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 598 (March 2005).
101. Author interview with Miguel Rodríguez, Venezuela's former planning minister (1989-92), Caracas, June 6, 1996.
102. Mario Baizan, Conversaciones con Carlos Menem [Conversations with Carlos Menem] (Buenos Aires: Editorial Fraterna, 1993), 38.
103. Author interview with Juan Daboub, El Salvador's former finance minister (1999-2004), San Salvador, July 9, 2004;
104. see also Centro Internacional para el Desarrollo Económico, ed., Soluciones Descentralizadas/Privadas a Problemas Públicos [Decentralized/Private Solutions to Public Problems] (San Salvador: CINDE, 1994);
105. and for Peru, see Carlos Boloña, Cambio de Rumbo [Change of Direction] (Lima: IELM, 1993), 32-34.
106. Meseguer (fn. 59), chap. 5.
107. Bela Balassa, The Newly Industrializing Countries in the World Economy (New York: Pergamon, 1981), 30-33.
108. Robert Wade, Governing the Market (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1990);
109. Atul Kohli, State-Directed Development (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004).
110. José Palma, "Four Sources of 'De-Industrialization,'" in José Antonio Ocampo, ed., Beyond Reforms (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 2005).
111. Gøsta Esping-Andersen, The Three Worlds of Welfare Capitalism (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1990), chap. 3.
112. Pierson, Dismantling the Welfare State? (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994).
113. Raúl Madrid, Retiring the State (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 2003);
114. Katharina Müller, Privatising Old-Age Security (Cheltenham: Edward Elgar, 2003);
115. Sarah Brooks, "Interdependent and Domestic Foundations of Policy Change," International Studies Quarterly 49 (June 2005).
116. Orenstein (fn. 42), chap. 1.
117. Carmelo Mesa-Lago, Ascent to Bankruptcy (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh, 1989).
118. Gustavo Demarco, "The Argentine Pension System Reform and International Lessons," in Kurt Weyland, ed., Learning from Foreign Models in Latin American Policy Reform (Washington, D.C.: Woodrow Wilson Center Press, 2004), 82-84.
119. Müller (fn. 69), 82-87.
120. ViS (fn. 13), 102.
121. Madrid (fn. 69);
122. Brooks ffn. 69);
123. Müller (fh. 69);
124. Stephen Kay and Tapen Sinha, "Lessons from Pension Reform in the Americas," in Kay and Sinha, eds., Lessons from Pension Reform in the Americas (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008).
125. Reported in Madrid (fn. 69), 114-15.
126. Author interview with Helga Salinas, former leader of Bolivia's pension reform team (1990-93), La Paz, July 26, 2002;
127. similar for El Salvador, author interview with Victor Ramirez, leading reform team member, San Salvador, July 8, 2004.
128. Weyland (fn. 13), 107-8.
129. Orenstein (fa. 42), chap. 1.
130. Rogers (fn. 38), 11, 22-23;
131. see Brooks (fn. 69), 275.
132. Demarco (fn. 72), 86.
133. Peter Orszag and Joseph Stiglitz, "Rethinking Pension Reform" (Paper for conference on "New Ideas about Old Age Security," World Bank, Washington, D.C., September 14-15, 1999), 4;
134. see also Kay and Sinha (fn, 75), 6-7.
135. Carles Boix, Democracy and Redistribution (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003).
136. Huntington (fn. 10);
137. Markoff (fn. 10);
138. Kurzman (fn. 10).
139. Li and Thompson (fn. 31).
140. Sheri Berman, The Primacy of Politics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), chaps 5-6.
141. Thomas Sakmyster, "From Habsburg Admiral to Hungarian Regent," East European Quarterly 17 (Summer 1983);
142. Jerzy Kochanowski, "Horthy und Pitsudski," in Erwin Oberländer, ed., Autoritäre Regime in Ostmittel- und Südosteuropa [Authoritarian Regimes in East-Central and Southeastern Europe] (Paderborn: Schöningh, 2001), 37-44.
143. For Austria, see Emmerich Tálos, "Zum Herrschaftssystem des Austrofaschismus," in Oberländer (fn. 87), 149.
144. Karl Dietrich Bracher, Die Auflösung der Weimarer Republik [The Dissolution of the Weimar Republic] (Düsseldorf. Droste, 1978), 97-98.
145. Peter Smith, "The Breakdown of Democracy in Argentina, 1916-30," in Juan Linz and Alfred Stepan, eds., The Breakdown of Democratic Regimes: Latin America (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1978), 5.
146. Joseph Rothschild, "The Ideological, Political, and Economic Background of Pilsudski's Coup D'Etat of 1926," Political Science Quarterly 78 (June 1963), 224, 227.
147. Alejandro Quiroga, Making Spaniards (Houndmills: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007), 33.
148. Bracher (fin. 89), 600-624;
149. Henry Turner, Hitler's Thirty Days to Power (Reading, Mass.: Addison-Wesley, 1996), 12-17, 116-17, 140-48, 182.
150. Capoccia (fn. 41).
151. Ruth Collier, Paths to Democracy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999).
152. Berman (fn. 86) highlights the novelty and theoretical significance of this cluster of right-wing ideas, stressing their socioeconomic side, namely, politically guided state interventionism in the market.
153. Kurt Sontheimer, Antidemokratisches Denken in der Weimarer Republik [Anti-Democratic Thinking in the Weimar Republic] (Munich: Deutscher Taschenbuch Verlag, 1978);
154. Zeev Sternhell, The Birth of Fascist Ideology (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1994);
155. Berman (fa. 86); David Rock, Authoritarian Argentina (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995);
156. Alberto Spektorowski, The Origins of Argentina's Revolution of the Right (Notre Dame, Ind.: University of Notre Dame Press, 2003).
157. Hitler's takeover in 1933 stimulated a second wave of diffusion, especially in Eastern Europe and the Balkans; interestingly, authoritarian leaders sometimes established preemptive dictatorships to keep true fascists, who felt encouraged by the rise of national socialism, from capturing power; Nancy Bermeo, Ordinary People in Extraordinary Times (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2003), 44-46.
158. Alan Cassels, "Mussolini and German Nationalism, 1922-25," Journal of Modern History 35 (June 1963), 146-51.
159. Shlomo Ben-Ami, Fascism from Above (Oxford: Clarendon, 1983), 71; similar quote in James Rial, Revolution from Above (Fairfax, Va.: George Mason University Press, 1986), 122;
160. see also Quiroga (fn. 93), 146.
161. Raimundas Lopata, "Die Entstehung des autoritären Regimes in Litauen," in Oberländer (fn. 87), 111-13.
162. Evaristo de Moraes Filho, O Problema do Sindicato único no Brasil [The Problem of the Single Union in Brazil] (São Paulo: Alfa-Omega, 1952), 243-48, 250, 269;
163. Sérgio Amad Costa, Estado e Controle Sindical no Brasil [State and Union Control in Brazil] (São Paulo: T.A. Queiroz, 1986), 62-66, 77;
164. Rock (fn. 97), 89-93, 113;
165. Spektorowski (fn. 97), 67-91; Smith (fn. 90), 17; Ben-Ami (fn. 100), 191; Rial (fn. 101), 206-7;
166. Hugh Kay, Salazar and Modern Portugal (New York: Hawthorn, 1970), 67-69;
167. António Costa Pinto, Salazar's Dictatorship and European Fascism (Boulder, Colo.: Social Science Monographs, 1995), 207;
168. Juan Linz, "Fascism, Breakdown of Democracy, Authoritarian and Totalitarian Regimes" (Madrid: Instituto Juan March, Working Paper 2002/179), 35-36.
169. E.g., Costa Pinto (fn. 102), 135.
170. E.g., Nikolaj Poppetrov, "Flucht aus der Demokratie," in Oberländer (fn. 87), 393;
171. Hans-Christian Maner, "Voraussetzungen der autoritären Monarchie in Rumänien," in Oberländer (fn. 87), 439.
172. Tálos (fn. 89), 152, 157.
173. Gregory Luebbert, Liberalism, Fascism, or Social Democracy (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1991), 274-76;
174. Berman (fn. 86), 135-36;
175. Linz (fn, 102), 5;
176. Ben-Ami (fn. 100), 71, 156, 191;
177. Costa Pinto (fn. 102), 116, 207;
178. Kay (fn. 102), 67, 122;
179. Lopata (fn. 101), 112 n. 32;
180. Moraes (fn. 102), 243, 246;
181. Rial (fn. 100), 111, 122;
182. Rock (fn. 97), 71-73, 107-8;
183. Spektorowski (fn. 97), 20-21, 71-72.
184. In Argentina many workers were recent immigrants and therefore noncitizens and nonvoters. Costa Pinto (fn. 102), 145, 174-75;
185. Robert Levine, Father of the Poor? (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), 53-55;
186. Rock (fn. 97), 91-93, 108-9;
187. in general, Luebbert (fn. 106), 259-65;
188. Stanley Payne, A History of Fascism, 1914-1945 (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1995), 340-41.
189. Linz (fn. 102).
190. Pierson (fn. 68);
191. Peter Hall and David Soskice, eds., Varieties of Capitalism (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001);
192. Hall and Taylor (fn. 2).
193. Katznelson and Weingast (fn. 2).
194. Donald Green and Ian Shapiro, Pathologies of Rational Choice Theory (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1994).
195. Bates et al. (fn. 6).
196. Robert Bates, Rui de Figueiredo, and Barry Weingast, "The Politics of Interpretation," Politics and Society 26 (December 1998).
197. Katznelson and Weingast (fn, 2).
198. Jones (fn. 14);
199. Jones and Baumgartner (fn. 14);
200. Chrysostomos Mantzavinos, Individuals, Institutions, and Markets (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001);
201. Douglass North, Understanding the Process of Economic Change (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2005).
202. McFadden (fn. 18);
203. Thaler (fn. 19); Kahneman and Tversky (fn. 19); Colin Camerer, George Loewenstein, and Matthew Rabin, eds., Advances in Behavioral Economics (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2004).
204. Krasner (fn. 5);
205. see also Ruth Collier and David Collier, Shaping the Political Arena (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1991).
206. Exceptions are Peter Hall, ed., The Political Power of Economic Ideas (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1989);
207. and Heclo (fn. 30).