1. INSTITUTIONALISM

2. Scope of Presentation Introduction
The Traditional Institutional Approach
Features of Traditional Institutionalism
Criticisms of Traditional Institutionalism
New Institutionalism
Assumptions of New Institutionalism
Approaches to New Institutionalism
The Strengths of New Institutionalism
The shortcomings of New Institutionalism
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3. Introduction
Institutionalism has been a very important approach within Political Science for decades
Outside of Political Theory, the core activity within Political Science was the description of:
Constitutions
Legal systems
Government structures and their comparison over time and across countries.
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4. Introduction (cont’d)
The behavioural revolution in the 1960s and 1970s sought to understand how and why individuals acted as they did in real life.
Rational choice model also in the 1960s and 1070s explained politics in terms of the interplay of individual’s self interest
The major contention of rational choice theorists is that when faced with several courses of action, people usually do what they believe is likely to have the best overall effect.
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5. Introduction (cont’d)
Neo-Marxists focused on how systemic power largely derived from capital-labour relationship play in the structuring of government.
Most analysts before the 1980s believed that there was more to politics than the formal arrangements for representation, decision-making and policy implementation.
Others also continued to practice their art on the assumption that “you need to sit still, it all comes round again”.
By the 1980s institutionalism emerged with more potency and rigour.
Institutionalism is now used to examine systems ranging from micro interpersonal interactions to macro global frameworks.
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6. Traditional Institutional Approach
It deals with the deeper and more resilient aspect of social structure
It considers the processes by which structures, including schemas, rules and norms and routines become established as authoritative guidelines for social behaviour.
It inquires into how these elements are created, diffused, adopted and adapted over time and space, and how they fall into disuse and decline.
Institutions are regular, stable, recurring patterns of behaviour.
Institutionalism is an approach to the study of political institutions, a set of theoretical ideas and hypothesis concerning the relations between institutional characteristics and political agency, performance and change.
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7. Traditional Institutional Approach (cont’d)
Institutionalism is considered the “historic heart” of Political Science and part of the toolkit of every political scientist.
Institutionalism covers the rules, procedures, and formal organization of government.
Embedded in the definition of institutionalism is a formal structure whose existence has both symbolic and action-generating properties.
Formal structure include mission statements, structural arrangements, and top level members
Formal structures also signal the commitment of an organization to rational, efficient standards of organizing etc.
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8. Features of Traditional Institutional Approach
Features of Traditional Institutional Approach include the following:
Legalism-it deals with the dominant role of law in governance. law constitute both the framework of the public sector itself and major way by which the government can affect the behaviour of people.
Structuralism- the contention here is that structure not only mattered but also determined behaviour. It concentrated on the major institutional features of political systems and undertook comparative analysis of different political systems.
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9. Features of Traditional Institutional Approach
Holism- it was also concerned with constitutions and formal structures.
The analysis of political institutions was done within their
historical development
Socio-economic milieu
Normative – Political Science emerged from normative roots and so traditional institutionalists linked their descriptive analysis of politics with the concern for “good government”
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10. Criticisms of Traditional Institutionalism
The over reliance on structure by old institutionalists leave very little room for the impact of individuals, which is not good enough.
The concentration of old institutionalists on whole systems as basis of comparison made generalization and theory building too difficult.
The concentration of traditional institutionalists on normative analysis undermines the subject matter of political science. The institionalists concern with norms and values meant that this work could not be scientific
The focus on formal governmental institutions, constitutional issues and public law was unpalatably formalistic and old-fashion
It was insensitive to the non-political determinants of political behaviour and hence to the non-political bases of governmental institutions.
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11. New Institutionalism
The term ‘new institutionalism’ was coined by March and Olsen to emphasize the theoretical importance of institutions.
The new interest in institutionalism has been expressed in the slogan ‘bringing the state back in’ and ‘structuring politics’.
The new institutionalism is relatively new theoretical perspective that has been accepted by social scientists.
New institutionalists have made a case for giving institutions analytical primacy.
Institutions play a more autonomous role in shaping political outcomes because the organization of political life makes a difference.
Institutions are political actors in their own right.
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12. Assumptions of New Institutionalism
Institutions create order and predictability in the actions of governments and individuals
The translation of structures into political action and action into institutional continuity and change, are generated by comprehensive and routine process.
Political order is created by a collection of institutions that fit more or less into a coherent system.
Institutions give order to social relations, reduce flexibility and variability of behaviour, and restrict the possibility of a one-sided pursuit of self-interest drives.
Institutions are not static and institutionalization is not an inevitable process, nor is it unidirectional, monotonic or irreversible .
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13. Approaches to New Institutionalism
There are three main variants of new institutionalism. These are:
Normative institutionalism
Historical institutionalism
Rational choice institutionalism
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14. Normative Institutionalism
Normative institutionalism was advanced by March and Olsen.
They posit that the best way to understand political behaviour at both the individual and collective levels is to through the “logic of appropriateness” that individuals acquire through their membership of institutions.
People functioning within institutions behave as they do because of normative standards rather than because of their desire to maximize individual taste and preference.
Normative institutionalism reflects the important role assigned to norms and values within an organization in explaining behaviour of actors.
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15. Historical institutionalism
This approach is associated with the writings of Steinmo, Thelen and Longstreth.
The proponents of historical institutionalism built on the old tradition of political science that assigned importance to formal political institutions.
The argument of this approach is that the policy and structural choices made at the inception of the institution will have a persistent influence over its behaviour for the remainder of its existence.
 The basic explanatory principle of historical institutionalism is “path dependency”.
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16. Historical Institutionalism (cont’d)
It is concerned about the persistence of organization after they are formed.
It argues for the historical analysis of institutions by adapting the concept of path dependency.
Institutions are regarded as somewhat stable and rigid for reforms and environmental changes.
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17. Historical Institutionalism cont’d
They can range from;
the rules of a constitutional order or the standard operating procedures of a bureaucracy to;
the conventions governing trade union behavior.
This approach is well-suited to explaining the persistence of policies but less promising as a means of explaining change in policies or structures.
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18. Rational choice institutionalism
Rational choice institutionalism (RCI) emerged from the study on the Congress in the United States.
It sought to explain the unusual stability associated with congressional outcomes.
The basic tenet of rational choice institutionalism is that institutions are arrangements of rules and incentives,
and that the members of the institutions behave in response to those basic components of institutional structures.
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19. Rational choice institutionalism
The goal of rational choice institutionalism is to uncover the laws of political behavior and action.
Scholars in RCI generally believe that once these laws are discovered, models can be constructed that will help social scientists understand and predict political behavior.
RCI drew very useful analytical tools from the ‘new economics of organization’ which emphasizes the primacy of property rights, rent-seeking and transaction cost to the operation and development of institutions.
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20. Rational Choice Institutionalism
In recent years, RCIs have turned their attention to a variety
of other phenomena, including;
cross-national coalition behavior,
the development of political institutions,
the intensity of ethnic conflict.
Rational Choice Institutionalism is used to explain;
the rise or fall of international regimes,
the kind of responsibilities that states delegate to international organizations, and
the shape of such organizations.
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21. Internal Debates of RCI
Like other theories, rational choice institutionalism contains some internal debates.
It relies extensively on a set of behavioral assumptions. Individuals behave in highly instrumental manner.
Rational Choice Institutionalists tend to see politics as a series of collective action dilemma.
Examples include, ‘prisoner’s dilemma,
the ‘tragedy of commons’,
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22. Internal Debates of RCI (cont’d)
It emphasizes the role of strategic interaction in the determination of political outcomes.
It explains how institutions originate and persist over time.
The process of institutional creation therefore revolves around voluntary agreement by relevant actors.
In a situation where the institution is subject to competitive selection, it survives primarily because the benefits provided to the relevant actors are far more than alternative institutional forms.
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23. The Strengths of New Institutionalism
New institutionalism emphasizes that institutions are central makers in the process of preference formation.
It suggests that actors adapt their behavior to existing institutional frameworks thereby legitimizing institutions and favoring institutional continuity.
New institutionalism provides the analytical tools for determining institutional change.
Rational choice institutionalists have adopted the utilitarian view of institutional change-institutions are demanded because they enhance the welfare of rational actors, and are transformed when they become dysfunctional or yield suboptimal results.
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24. The Strengths of New Institutionalism (cont’d)
Even though the new institutionalists return to the institutional root of political science, they also stress the importance of individual actors in the political process.
Individual’s actions are affected by the values that are advanced by institutions.
New institutionalism helps us to really examine the nature of institutions in a political system.
Finally, new institutionalism demonstrates the primacy of institutions. The theory is very helpful in explaining how existing institutions continue to exist, since the persistence of an institution often depends on the benefits it can deliver.
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25. The weaknesses of new institutionalism
Guy Peters has argued that there is an apparent theoretical inconsistency within new institutionalism.
It is contended that institutions tend to be inherently static, while the world of politics it seeks to explain, is almost always changing.
There is the difficulty in falsifying the predictions coming from this body of theory, especially rational choice theory.
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