Institutions
Presentation 6
Environment and Sustainable Development course
UNU-MERIT PhD programme
René Kemp
Institutionalism represents a distinctive
approach to the study of social, economic and
political phenomena; yet it is is often easier
to gain agreement about what it is not than
about what it is (DiMaggio and Powell)
For institutionalists, key to understanding the
processes of growth and change are the
institutions of the economy as well as
individual preferences (Parto)
Institutions as rule of the game (formal
and informal)
Institutions structure interrelations:
they enable individuals to understand
what other individuals are doing, what
they are likely to do, and what may and
may not be done
What is not an institution?
What is not an institution
A price for a tomato is not an institution but prizes
are; a widely held view or value is an institution,
individual values are not
Institutions are at once persistent, resistant to
change but capable of changing in evolutionary time,
and transmitted through various means to
consecutive generations thus providing a certain
degree of continuity, stability, predictability, and
security (Parto)
An institutional perspective sees the world as
institutionalised with institutions acting as
mechanisms for change, linking causes and effects
In economics we have
New institutional economics (North,
Williamson)
Old institutional economics (Veblen, Neale,
Scott, Hodgson)
In new institutional analysis
Transactions are the unit of analysis
It extends neoclassical theory by accounting
for a few institutional factors
Rejection of socialization theory
It is mostly concerned with external
constraints to action, not with internal ones
(value, purpose, orientation)
In old institutionalism
Institutions are acting at the substance
rather than merely the boundaries of
social life (Hodgson, 1988)
The old institutionalists are generally commended for
drawing attention to the complex and instituted
nature of change of the economy but criticized for
vagueness on how best to incorporate complexity in
the economic analysis
New institutionalists may be praised for bringing
institutions into economic analysis but criticized for
remaining largely within the limited bounds of the
neoclassical conceptual framework
Parto (2005)
3 pillars of Scott
Regulative: rule-setting, monitoring,
enforcement
Normative: values, beliefs
Cultural-cognitive: conceptions,
understanding
Institutions in the Dutch waste subsystem
Actor-centered institutionalism
The integration of rational choice (action
theoretic) and institutionalist / structuralist
paradigm
A framework that conceptualizes policy processes
driven by the interaction of individual and
corporate actors endowed with certain
capabilities and specific cognitive and normative
orientations, within a given institutional setting
and within a given external situation (Scharpf)
In game-theoretic terms, institutions not only
constrain feasible strategies, but they also
constitute the important players of the game and
shape their perceptions and valuations of
outcomes in the payoff matrix (Scharpf)
An institutional framework, provides a halfway
position between a theoretical system that, like
neoclassical economics, substitutes universal and
standardized assumptions for empirical
information on the one hand and purely
descriptive studies of individual cases on the
other (Scharpf)
It helps to go beyond functionalist explanations
Actor-rule system dynamics
Source: Burns and Flam (1987)
Reflexive strategies injecting feedback in actor-rule
system dynamics
System structuring
and restructuring
Governance System: Cultural
Frames, social institutions,
physical structures and tools
Actors
Actor structuring:
Group formation,
socialization
Strategy building
Transdisciplinary knowledge production
Participatory goal formulation
Interactive strategy development
Process
structuring
Anticipation of long-term systemic effects
Actions
Strategic experiments
Intended and unintended effects
in material, social, and cultural worlds
Source: Voss and Kemp (2005) based on Burns and Flam (1987)
Broader
Landscape:
Material
conditions,
external
agents, larger
socio-cultural
contexts
Three interrelated analytical
distinctions
Geels (2004)
Questions
What is the usefulness of an
institutional perspective?
Do you always need it; when do you
need it?