In the context, then, of contemporary developments in new institutionalist schol- arship, the analytical and ontological assumptions of constructivist institutionalism are highly distinctive. They represent a considerable advance on their rationalist and normative/sociological predecessors, at least in terms of their capacity to inform an endogenous account of complex institutional evolution, adaptation, and innovation.8
Actors are strategic, seeking to realize certain complex, contingent, and con- stantly changing goals. They do so in a context which favors certain strategies over others and must rely upon perceptions of that context which are at best incomplete and which may very often prove to have been inaccurate after the event. Moreover, ideas in the form of perceptions ‘‘matter’’ in a second sense— for actors are oriented normatively towards their environment. Their desires, preferences, and motivations are not a contextually given fact—a reXection of material or even social circumstance—but are irredeemably ideational, reXecting a normative (indeed moral, ethical, and political) orientation towards the context
in which they will have to be realized. As this suggests, for constructivists, politics is rather less about the blind pursuit of transparent material interest and rather more about both the fashioning, identiWcation, and rendering actionable of such conceptions, and the balancing of (presumed) instrumentality and rather more aVective motivations (see also Wendt 1999, 113–35).9 Consequently, actors are not analytically substitutable (as in rational choice or normative/sociological institu- tionalism), just as their preference sets or logics of conduct cannot be derived from the (institutional) setting in which they are located. Interests are social constructions and cannot serve as proxies for material factors; as a consequence they are far more diYcult to operationalize empirically than is conventionally assumed (at least, in a non-tautological way: see also Abdelal, Blyth, and Parsons 2005; Blyth 2003).
In common with rationalist variants of institutionalism, the context is viewed in largely institutional terms. Yet institutions are understood less as functional means of reducing uncertainty, so much as structures whose functionality or dysfunction- ality is an open—empirical and historical—question. Indeed, constructivist insti- tutionalists place considerable emphasis on the potentially ineVective and ineYcient nature of social institutions; on institutions as the subject and focus of political struggle; and on the contingent nature of such struggles whose outcomes can in no sense be derived from the extant institutional context itself (see, especially, Blyth 2002).
These are the basic analytical ingredients of constructivist institutionalism’s approach to institutional innovation, evolution, and transformation. Within this perspective, change is seen to reside in the relationship between actors and the context in which they Wnd themselves, between institutional ‘‘architects,’’ institu- tionalized subjects, and institutional environments. More speciWcally, institutional change is understood in terms of the interaction between strategic conduct and the strategic context within which it is conceived, and in the later unfolding of its consequences, both intended and unintended. As in historical institutionalism, such a formulation is path dependent: the order in which things happen aVects how they happen; the trajectory of change up to a certain point itself constrains the trajectory after that point; and the strategic choices made at a particular moment
eliminate whole ranges of possibilities from later choices while serving as the very condition of existence of others (see also Tilly 1994). Yet, pointing to path depend- ence does not preclude the identiWcation of moments of path-shaping institutional change, in which the institutional architecture is signiWcantly reconWgured. Moreover, and at odds with most existing new institutionalist scholarship, such path-shaping institutional change is not merely seen as a more-or-less functional response to exogenous shocks.
Further diVerentiating it from new institutionalist orthodoxy, constructivist institutionalists emphasize not only institutional path dependence, but also ideational path dependence. In other words, it is not just institutions, but the very ideas on which they are predicated and which inform their design and development, that exert constraints on political autonomy. Institutions are built on ideational foundations which exert an independent path dependent eVect on their subsequent development.
Constructivist institutionalism thus seeks to identify, detail, and interrogate the extent to which—through processes of normalization and institutional- embedding—established ideas become codiWed, serving as cognitive Wlters through which actors come to interpret environmental signals. Yet, crucially, they are also concerned with the conditions under which such established cognitive Wlters and paradigms are contested, challenged, and replaced. Moreover, they see paradigmatic shifts as heralding signiWcant institutional change.
Such a formulation implies a dynamic understanding of the relationship between institutions on the one hand, and the individuals and groups who comprise them (and on whose experience they impinge) on the other. It empha- sizes institutional innovation, dynamism, and transformation, as well as the need for a consideration of processes of change over a signiWcant period of time. In so doing it oVers the potential to overturn new institutionalism’s characteristic emphasis upon institutional inertia. At the same time, however, such a schema recognizes that institutional change does indeed occur in a context which is structured (not least by institutions and ideas about institutions) in complex and constantly changing ways which facilitate certain forms of intervention whilst militating against others. Moreover, access to strategic resources, and indeed to knowledge of the institutional environment, is unevenly distributed. This in turn aVects the ability of actors to transform the contexts (institutional and otherwise) in which they Wnd themselves.
Finally, it is important to emphasize the crucial space granted to ideas within this formulation. Actors appropriate strategically a world replete with institutions and ideas about institutions. Their perceptions about what is feasible, legitimate, possible, and desirable are shaped both by the institutional environment in which they Wnd themselves and by existing policy paradigms and world-views. It is through such cognitive Wlters that strategic conduct is conceptualized and ultimately assessed.
