Crouch, Colin (2007) - How To Do Post-Determinist Institutional Analysis
Crouch, Colin (2007) - How To Do Post-Determinist Institutional Analysis
Crouch, Colin (2007) - How To Do Post-Determinist Institutional Analysis
1093/ser/mwm001
Advance Access publication June 22, 2007
DISCUSSION FORUM
Correspondence: [email protected]
1
This term was first applied to human innovative behaviour, but only in primitive societies, by
Lévi-Strauss (1962). Its application in advanced societies was perceived by Mary Douglas (1987),
but like Lévi-Strauss she uses it explicitly to mean minor adjustments among existing resources
that fail to achieve ‘breakthroughs’. Campbell removes this limitation. In his approach, and that
taken here, we can never be certain that minor adjustments will not accumulate to the point where
a change that retrospectively seems to have been radical takes place.
# The Author 2007. Published by Oxford University Press and the Society for the Advancement of Socio-Economics.
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528 Discussion forum
amounts of academic research and social theorizing about relations between the
genders. Looking back across more than a century it becomes possible to declare
with considerable confidence that a major change has taken place in gender
relations within European and other industrialized societies. However, not only
is it difficult to say at what points a more than incremental change had occurred,
but also the points differ whether one looks at change in underlying phenomena,
in social appreciation of these changes or in social science’s conceptualization of
On the other hand, to refuse to perceive changes until social actors themselves
announce them is to abdicate social scientists’ own professional role, turning it
into the mere reporting of the not necessarily well-informed beliefs about them-
selves of social actors. This was the blind alley into which ethnomethodology took
much sociology in the 1970s. A different example again illustrates this point: it
would be foolish for political scientists to ignore the claims of all participants
and contemporary observers that a very significant change took place in the
At one level, this is what we should do when we appraise the complex inter-
play of actors and institutions around change: actors using institutions to
advance/retard change, institutions inhibiting/facilitating change. Describing
and analysing these processes, and measuring the many different components
of change, is a task in itself, and possibly more valid than answering the ques-
tion to which we are then tempted: Was this a system change, then? This is,
however, unrealistic, as we continue to need to use the adjectives if we are to
development may force change on reluctant actors. However, for the sake of
simplicity in presenting an initial argument, let us assume the ‘activist
actors versus refractory institutions’ stereotype. At one extreme in represen-
tations of that encounter, we have Carlylian history, presenting the history-
shaping individuals who bent institutions to their determined will. At the
other extreme are deterministic accounts which propose that, try as they
might, individuals or indeed whole groups of actors will never be able to
institutions with which they were surrounded would be emphasized and which
kept in by-ways.
Again, it would have been very helpful to my overall thesis of historical con-
tinuity had British unions, emerging from a pre-socialist, liberal tradition and
jealous of the autonomy of collective bargaining throughout the 20th century,
also maintained the autonomy of their own social insurance schemes until
government delegated to them the administration of a national public scheme.
Conclusion
Onwards then to the new stage of non-determinist, actor-sensitive institutional-
ism. For this enterprise, we require a willingness, and a methodological capacity,
to present:
(i) nuanced and analytical, and probably quantitative, rather than categorically
summary accounts of institutional change, especially when estimating its
References
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ity: Changing Educational Attainment in Thirteen Countries, Boulder, CO, Westview
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Campbell, J. L. (2004) Institutional Change and Globalization, Princeton, NJ, Princeton
University Press.
Crouch, C. (1993) Industrial Relations and European State Traditions, Oxford, Oxford
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Crouch, C. (2005) Capitalist Diversity and Change: Recombinant Governance and Insti-
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Institutional change and globalization 537
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Correspondence: [email protected]
Unlike what its title suggests, Campbell’s book (Campbell, 2004) is primarily on
institutional change and only marginally on ‘globalization’. Most of what the
book has to say on institutions—meaning most of what the book has to say—
I find entirely plausible, and some of it quite enlightening. The treatment
opens with a chapter on the famous ‘three institutionalisms’, ending with yet
another, probably futile attempt somehow to merge them into one (Ch. 1).
This is followed by a conceptual discussion of institutional change (Ch. 2),
where the message is that for empirical study, it is imperative that institutions
538 Discussion forum
1
I like to use the concept in quotation marks to register my preference for the more modest alternative,
internationalization. Not all of the social relations that may put pressure on national institutions are
truly global; it is enough for them to be international, i.e. to extend across national borders.
Institutional change and globalization 539
If one wanted to be nasty, and who does not sometimes, one might ask
whether with enemies as feeble as Campbell’s stylized ‘globalization theorists’
one really needs friends. Moreover, that national institutions ‘mediate’ between
external pressures and internal outcomes should not be all too difficult to
prove, especially as Campbell, true to his approach, decomposes the possible
impact of globalization on national institutions to look at only one policy area,
national tax regimes and taxation (Campbell, 2004, p. 132). We all occasionally
2
Protection of human society from unpredictable fluctuations of relative prices is the real theme of
Polanyi (1957 [1944]), not the contribution of social ‘embeddedness’ to an efficient operation of
the market. Polanyi’s concern is shared by much of the post-war literature on democratic
capitalism, economic planning, social citizenship, etc.
540 Discussion forum
3
To what extent this was actually self-imposed by national governments enlisting each other’s help in
dealing with increasingly ungovernable domestic political economies does not really matter here. One
may well be concerned about ‘globalization’ without believing it to be exogenous to politics.
Institutional change and globalization 541
between politics and the economy, and in particular for the extent to which states
can hope to govern, or at least to moderate, the impact of economic forces on
their citizens’ living and working conditions.
I know the numerous qualifications the literature on European integration
offers to any attempt at generalization. In forestry, it is indispensable for a con-
scientious inventory that one takes a careful look at every single tree; but does this
mean that one must lose sight of the forest? European economic governance
Europe at least since integration got serious around the early 1990s? Like Hayek,
one may welcome this direction of institutional change. Others may hope that
what one sees, and what Hayek saw coming, may simply be too bad to be true.
But why should this prevent us from agreeing that internationalization has
brought about tremendous, fundamental institutional change in the post-war
European nation-state, in the direction of economic liberalization?
2. Sometimes it seems as though Campbell’s book would want to be counted
4
As we are abundantly informed by Campbell as well (Campbell, 2004, p. 134).
Institutional change and globalization 543
economy of today? What concerns me is that questions like these do not seem to
worry Campbell a great deal. ‘Globalization’, we read, ‘also occurred at the begin-
ning of the twentieth century’ when it ‘was not associated with the same types of
institutional changes that it is said [by ‘globalization theory’, WS] to have caused
more recently. National institutions were being built and fortified, not incapacitated
and hollowed out’ (italics are mine, WS). This, Campbell continues, ‘raises serious
questions about the causal mechanism that lies at the heart of globalization
bottles being used to contain a new sort of wine. Indeed, if one digs a little
deeper, one finds an almost universal restructuring of national welfare states
in the direction of investment rather than consumption, re-commodification
instead of de-commodification, strengthening ‘employability’ instead of
raising workers’ reservation wage, ‘activation’ for the market instead of protec-
tion from it, etc. (Streeck, 2000). Together, this seems to amount to a pro-
found, if gradual, penetration into social policy of an ethos of production
during the 1970s and 1980s. That institutions change according to a specific insti-
tutional logic is one thing; that the relationship between institutions and markets
may become very different from what it was in the politically embedded capital-
ism of the post-war years is quite another. Policy plays its part, but it does so
under economic conditions that are, to paraphrase an almost forgotten founding
father of historical institutionalism, ‘not of its own making’. Are we to believe that
the relative autonomy of institutional-political responses to economic change will
5
Although in several places Campbell observes that even Sweden underwent ‘neoliberal reform’ in the
1980s, the supposedly generic resilience of national institutions to this sort thing obviously
notwithstanding (Campbell, 2004, pp. 122, 145). Can one not be impressed by the fact that such
‘reform’ was almost universal in the respective period?
Institutional change and globalization 547
be proud of themselves, and particularly so if their larger neighbors are doing less
well. Also, American progressives, of which I take Campbell to be one, need cred-
ible role models if they try to convince their fellow citizens that a European-style
welfare state would be worth having after all. But sometimes their insistence that
all can be well with the European welfare state provided it is managed well
sounds a bit like whistling in the dark, a pep talk to a team that has long for-
gotten what it feels like to win, or even like an attempt at faith healing. Com-
References
Campbell, J. (2004) Institutional Change and Globalization, Princeton, NJ Oxford,
Princeton University Press.
Hayek, F. A. (1980) [1939] ‘The Economic Conditions of Interstate Federalism’. In
Hayek, F. A. (ed) Individualism and Economic Order, Chicago, IL, Chicago University
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NY, Pantheon Books.
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Our Time, Boston, MA, Beacon Press.
Streeck, W. (2000) ‘Competitive Solidarity: Rethinking the “European Social Model”’. In
Hinrichs, K., Kitschelt, H. and Wiesenthal, H. (eds) Kontingenz und Krise:
Institutionenpolitik in kapitalistischen und postsozialistischen Gesellschaften, Frankfurt
am Main, Campus, pp. 245 –261.
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sis’. In Mahoney, J. and Rueschemeyer, D. (eds) Comparative Historical Analysis in the
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548 Discussion forum
Correspondence: [email protected]
However, that would call into question the tripartite division of institutionalist
analyses that underpins this book. Like others, Campbell distinguishes between
rational choice, organizational and historical varieties of institutionalism as
three distinct ‘paradigms’, or frameworks of analysis, that deal with his three sub-
problems in different ways. Aside from the misleading use of Thomas Kuhn’s
term in this context—perhaps not surprising in the light of Kuhn’s own ambigu-
ities about its meaning and use (Masterman, 1970; Martins, 1972)—this
the British and Japanese capital markets reveals, both the nature and effects of
these superficially similar state policies were quite different as a result of the
very different institutional contexts and dominant coalitions.
Third, insofar as some states have succeeded in creating relatively stable and
effective transnational institutions governing economic activities, such as the
WTO and various free trade agreements, as well as more political arrangements
such as the European Union, in the latter half of the 20th century, and these have
References
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556 Discussion forum
Kuhn, T. (1977) The Essential Tension, Chicago, IL, Chicago University Press.
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Hanson, A. H., Nossiter, T. J. and Rokkan, S. (eds) Imagination and Precision in Political
Correspondence: [email protected]
Overall, Colin Crouch, Wolfgang Streeck and Richard Whitley raise five basic
questions about my arguments in Institutional Change and Globalization. In
my view, these also point to more general challenges for institutional theory
Institutional change and globalization 557
and comparative political economy. Before I respond, let me review the book’s
key points in order to put my comments into proper context.
1
Whitley reports incorrectly that I discussed three mechanisms of change: path dependence, bricolage
and translation. There were only two. Bricolage and translation are processes that result in
path-dependent change.
2
For example, the collection of studies edited by Streeck and Thelen (2005) show several mechanisms
of institutional change. It appears that bricolage, or what they call layering, is among the most
frequently occurring mechanisms in their empirical cases.
Institutional change and globalization 559
That said, we still need to know more about how bricolage and translation
operate. How do entrepreneurs utilize their material resources and interpersonal
and interorganizational networks to advance new institutional options? In par-
ticular, how do they imagine and then promote new institutional ideas? My
concern with this is why I devoted a chapter to a discussion of ideas and how
actors strategically manipulate one type of idea, frames, in order to convince
other actors of the utility of pursuing another type of idea, programs, that
4
In fact, I anticipated this sort of criticism and so reminded readers that my goal was not to provide a
comprehensive analysis of all the effects of globalization, but, more modestly, to illustrate the utility of
my earlier arguments about institutional change by examining a single institution—national tax
regimes (pp. 132 –33).
5
I will not discuss here the potentially wide institutional variation across sectors within any national
political economy (e.g. Campbell et al., 1991).
Institutional change and globalization 563
political economy depends largely on how well different institutions fit together.
Two institutions fit well or are complementary when the presence of one
increases the efficiency of the other (Hall and Soskice, 2001, p. 17) or when
they compensate for each other’s deficiencies (Crouch, 2005; Campbell and
Pedersen, 2007).
But taking a functionalist approach to measuring institutional change is
fraught with difficulties. (a) Determining precisely what functions an institution
Some have argued that the nation-state has been hollowed out or otherwise
incapacitated by the forces of globalization and that the institutional tool kits
that states once used to contend with market forces are now largely useless. In
reality, states do not throw away their tool kits. They are more apt to set aside
some tools, add some new ones and continue to work with many of those inheri-
ted from the past. And if some tools are jettisoned initially, as the Swedes tried to
do when a conservative government implemented a big regressive tax cut in 1991,
Conclusion
In sum, institutional theory needs to pay more attention to the processes of
constrained innovation in order to avoid excessive determinism in its arguments.
It needs to adopt a more theoretically eclectic position, at least for now, in order
6
For this reason, if metaphors are necessary, then I would prefer not to talk about states being
‘embedded’ in markets, or vice versa, which implies one-way causality. Instead, perhaps we should
talk about the institutional ‘membrane’ that always connects the state and market with reciprocal
albeit historically variable and politically contested effects.
566 Discussion forum
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Institutional change and globalization 567