Explaining Institutional Change: Ambiguity, Agency, and Power

Cambridge University Press
Edition: Illustrated, 10/30/2009
EAN 9780521118835, ISBN10: 0521118832

Hardcover, 254 pages, 22.9 x 15.2 x 1.8 cm
Language: English
Originally published in English

This book contributes to emerging debates in political science and sociology on institutional change. Its introductory essay proposes a new framework for analyzing incremental change that is grounded in a power-distributional view of institutions and that emphasizes ongoing struggles within but also over prevailing institutional arrangements. Five empirical essays then bring the general theory to life by evaluating its causal propositions in the context of sustained analyses of specific instances of incremental change. These essays range widely across substantive topics and across times and places, including cases from the United States, Africa, Latin America, and Asia. The book closes with a chapter reflecting on the possibilities for productive exchange in the analysis of change among scholars associated with different theoretical approaches to institutions.

1. A theory of gradual institutional change James Mahoney and Kathleen Thelen
2. Infiltrating the state
the evolution of health care reforms in Brazil, 1964–88 Tulia G. Falleti
3. The contradictory potential of institutions
the rise and decline of land documentation in Kenya Ato Kwamena Onoma
4. Policymaking as political constraint
institutional development in the US social security program Alan M. Jacobs
5. Altering authoritarianism
institutional complexity and autocratic agency in Indonesia Dan Slater
6. Rethinking rules
creativity and constraint in the house of representatives Adam Sheingate
7. Historical institutionalism in rationalist and sociological perspective Peter A. Hall.