Title : Moving Beyond 'Institutions Matter': Some Reflections on how the 'Rules of the Game' Evolve and Change
Discussion Paper No : 4 (series 1)
Author(s) : Manoj Srivastava
Date : March 2004
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Abstract:
This paper is a modest attempt to
engage with the theories and debates on institutions,
(especially on institutional change) offered by the different
traditions working within the institutionalist perspective, to
assess how helpful they are in unravelling the complex set of
issues and questions raised above. I discuss four particularly
relevant dimensions of an institutionalist perspective, in order
to unbundle the concept of institutions and institutional
change, as expressed through the abstract ideas of the structure
and the dynamics of ‘rules of the game’. In the first section, I
briefly discuss the first three issues, which are: (a)
multiplicity and multi-layering of institutions; (b)
institutional arrangement; and (c) institutional
appropriateness. In the following section, the issue of
institutional change is examined in some detail. Three broad
traditions or strands of the institutionalist perspective,
namely, (i) Rational Choice Institutionalism, (ii) Historical
Institutionalism, and (c) Sociological Institutionalism, are
explored here, to understand how strategic actions, conflicts
around asymmetrical power structure in polity and society, and
engagements with the cultural systems of meaning that pervade
all aspects of life and society – respectively the key themes or
the conceptual constructs of these traditions – help us to
understand better why ‘rules of the game’ evolve and change. The
reflections draw attention to the fact that, though offering a
few useful ideas on institutional development in their own ways,
none of them pays adequate attention to the role of ideas and
agency, and the multi-directional causal relationships between
them and institutions, which I argue are critical to enriching
the explanatory scope and depth of an institutionalist mode of
inquiry. In the concluding section, I offer brief comments to
further highlight this problem and offer a few thoughts on some
possible alternative conceptual constructs that may help to
resolve the dilemmas in which these traditions are engulfed, and
highlight the need of developing and testing them through
empirical research into cases of institutional change.