The status of institutionalism in political science has changed dramatically over the last Wfty years—from an invective to the claim that ‘‘we are all institutionalists now’’ (Pierson and Skocpol 2002, 706). The behavioral revolution represented an attack upon a tradition where government and politics were primarily understood in formal-legal institutional terms. The focus on formal government institutions, constitutional issues, and public law was seen as ‘‘unpalatably formalistic and old- fashioned’’ (Drewry 1996, 191), and a standard complaint was that this approach was ‘‘relatively insensitive to the nonpolitical determinants of political behavior and hence to the nonpolitical bases of governmental institutions’’ (Macridis 1963, 47). The aspiration was to penetrate the formal surface of governmental
institutions and describe and explain how politics ‘‘really works’’ (Eulau and March 1969, 16).
Theorizing political institutions, Polsby, for example, made a distinction between seeing a legislature as an ‘‘arena’’ and as ‘‘transformative.’’ The distinction reXected variation in the signiWcance of the legislature; its independence from outside inXuence and its capacity to mould and transform proposals from whatever source into decisions. In an arena-legislature, external forces were decisive; and one did not need to know anything about the internal characteristics of the legislature in order to account for processes and outcomes. In a transforma- tive-legislature, internal structural factors were decisive. Polsby also suggested factors that made it more or less likely that a legislature would end up as an arena, or as a transformative institution (Polsby 1975, 281, 291–2).
More generally, students of politics have observed a great diversity of organized settings, collectivities, and social relationships within which political actors have operated. In modern society the polity is a conWguration of many formally organized institutions that deWne the context within which politics and governance take place. Those conWgurations vary substantially; and although there are dissent- ers from the proposition, most political scientists probably would grant that the variation in institutions accounts for at least some of the observed variation in political processes and outcomes. For several centuries, the most important setting has been the territorial state; and political science has attended to concrete political institutions, such as the legislature, executive, bureaucracy, judiciary, and the electoral system.
Our 1984 article invited a reappraisal of how political institutions could be conceptualized, to what degree they have independent and endurable implications, the kinds of political phenomena they impact, and how institutions emerge, are maintained, and change:
First, we argued for the relative autonomy and independent eVects of political institutions and for the importance of their organizational properties. We argued against understanding politics solely as reXections of society (contextualism) or as the macro aggregate consequences of individual actors (reductionism).
Second, we claimed that politics was organized around the interpretation of life and the development of meaning, purpose, and direction, and not only around policy-making and the allocation of resources (instrumentalism).
Third, we took an interest in the ways in which institutionalized rules, norms, and standard operating procedures impacted political behavior, and argued against seeing political action solely as the result of calculation and self-interested behavior (utilitarianism).
Fourth, we held that history is ‘‘ineYcient’’ and criticized standard equilibrium models assuming that institutions reach a unique form conditional on current circumstances and thus independent of their historical path (functionalism).
In this view, a political order is created by a collection of institutions that Wt more or less into a coherent system. The size of the sector of institutionalized activity
changes over time and institutions are structured according to diVerent principles (Berger and Luckmann 1967; Eisenstadt 1965). The varying scopes and modes of institutionalization aVect what collectivities are motivated to do and what they are able to do. Political actors organize themselves and act in accordance with rules and practices which are socially constructed, publicly known, anticipated, and accepted. By virtue of these rules and practices, political institutions deWne basic rights and duties, shape or regulate how advantages, burdens, and life-chances are allocated in society, and create authority to settle issues and resolve conXicts.
Institutions give order to social relations, reduce Xexibility and variability in behavior, and restrict the possibilities of a one-sided pursuit of self-interest or drives (Weber 1978, 40–3). The basic logic of action is rule following—prescriptions based on a logic of appropriateness and a sense of rights and obligations derived from an identity and membership in a political community and the ethos, practices, and expectations of its institutions.3 Rules are followed because they are seen as natural, rightful, expected, and legitimate. Members of an institution are expected to obey, and be the guardians of, its constitutive principles and standards (March and Olsen 1989, 2006).
Institutions are not static; and institutionalization is not an inevitable process; nor is it unidirectional, monotonic, or irreversible (Weaver and Rockman 1993). In general, however, because institutions are defended by insiders and validated by outsiders, and because their histories are encoded into rules and routines, their internal structures and rules cannot be changed arbitrarily (March and Olsen 1989; OVe 2001). The changes that occur are more likely to reXect local adaptation to local experience and thus be both relatively myopic and meandering, rather than optimizing, as well as ‘‘ineYcient,’’ in the sense of not reaching a uniquely optimal arrangement (March 1981). Even when history is relatively ‘‘eYcient,’’ the rate of adaptation is likely to be inconsistent with the rate of change in the environment to which the institution is adapting.
