Institutional Analysis

Institutional Analysis:
Going on with the readings and discussions, I realized that there were two kinds of institutionalism; old institutionalism and new institutionalism. These two were affected by significant changes that were presented during their time; most especially the behavioral revolution of the 1960’s where it criticized the game theory or the rational theory.
First of all, what is the old institutionalism? It, most importantly, focuses on the institution; the politics and power which had the arena in the government and the state. It is following a formal legal basis and structure of the state. That of which their philosophy somehow involves political science through common sense as the science of the law of state is in a way integral to the institutionalism’s belief. Its subject matter was in rules, procedures and formal obligations of the government; the government was seen as a structure instead of governance as a process. I take it that some of the subfields of political science are comparative politics, constitutional studies and the like.
It has five assumptions, the first being normative, that is, they concern themselves with “what ought to be” and that this one way or another is concerned with “good governance”. Second, is being structuralism saying that structures determine political behavior; the third is its nature of being historicist in the sense that history has a central role in influencing what would happen. Fourth is its being legalist by following the rule of law and fifth is its being holistic in that it is considered as a whole system.
The state was seen in its structure, the people then the territory, its sovereignty and the government that of which has two forms – presidential and parliament- the concept of power where it was three; unitary, federal and confederationalism, and then finally the branches where there were executive, legislative and judiciary.
Its critic was that of its being formal (Formalism), that it focuses on rules and procedures to the extent that it neglected behavior; it focuses too much on the state rather than the society. This was the time that Behavioralism attacked it with the coming of the “behavioral revolution” resulting to the concept of the state that it is value-free, empirical explanatory and predictive; the state is to be called a “Political System”.
This critic gave rise to a new concept of institutionalism (New Institutionalism) in the early 80’s as a conscious response to rational choice theory and behaviouralism. The former deals with rational choice; about choosing the best option that will maximize utility. It was rejected because political actions do not always behave in pursuit of material interest, it was because of the assumed regularity of human behavior. New institutionalism wants the discourse to return to institutional cycle and bring the state back in the center.
Thus, new institutionalism is then defined as an organized framework of rules that regulates individual and group behavior on the basis of the established rules and procedures. In this sense, it encompasses the old institutionalism while at the same time responding to the attack of the concept of behavioralism. There was an understanding of a recurrent pattern of behavior and that there are interactions governed upon by law. This thing gives emphasis that “institution matters” saying that political conduct is shaped profoundly by the institutional context in which it occurs and acquires significance; history also matters, in the sense that the legacy of the past bequeaths to the present is considerable.
The assumptions of new institutionalism are that being in organization to rules in that things are structured to how things are done, there are also formal to informal concepts of structures where there are unacknowledged conditions or unwritten conventions, to me, the best analogy is the Philippine’s concept of “tuli” it is not written in rules but then it is a behavior or condition that every Filipino adolescent should go. J
Prior to these, there are three kinds of institutionalism, the first one is the historical approach where the concept of power is found together with the realization of path dependency theory, the second is the rational choice approach where there are fixed sets of preferences that affects the utility maximization of the individual and the last is the sociological where how informal rules or symbols and behavior affects the outcome of decisions or the behavior itself of the individual.
There is also a static to dynamic conditions or concept in that there is a concept of institutional stability and change, there is also a submerged value to a value-critical stance, second to the last assumption is being holistic to a disaggregated conceptions of institutions like its components. And the last of the assumptions is independence to embeddedness; saying that there are political institutions embedded in a particular context.
There are also seven strains of new institutionalism, as what I could remember, the first one is being normative; how norms and values or culture shape an individual’s behavior, second is its being rational choice, where systems of rules and an individual’s effort to maximize his or her utilities. Third is a historic concept where decisions made are affecting the future decisions; this for me follows a theory of Path Dependency where the path that was first taken cannot be changed and that that path will lead to a path that is only affected or is a result of the path previously taken where reverting or changing the previous path would be impossible if not costly. As for example, a driver in his car going on a one way street in the opposite direction, he could not go back yet he risk being caught and he should not go because it is against the rule, however, the best thing to do is go further for the driver has already entered the situation; another one is if the couple (not yet married) after having some good time had unwanted pregnancy, they should not commit abortion for it is wrong in many ways and that they should go forth with what would happen, getting married unless, as is in the path dependency, external force affects it like miscarriage or the guy left the girl; nevertheless the path they took would lead them to another path that was a result of the previous path. The fourth of the seven strain is its being empirical where practitioners could classify institutional types and analyze practical impact on government performance, fifth is international where behavior of states is geared by structural constraints and the sixth is sociological where there are studies in ways which institutions creates meaning for individuals and the last is network where it shows how regularized but informal, patterns of interaction between individuals and groups shape political behavior.
Although institutionalism might act as insulators to politics and the economy, there are some setbacks like its inclusion of everything or conceptual stretching and the problem of defining and measuring where there are no recognized measures, like for instance the measurement of behavior of the person and lastly, institutionalism as being reductionist saying that concepts are reduced to institutional and structural logic.

References:

Campbell, J. L. and Pedersen O. K., eds. (2001) The Rise of Neoliberalism and Institutional Analysis. pp. 1-23

Carey, J. M. (2000) “Parchment Equilibria and Institutions.” Comparative Political Studies Vol. 33 No. 6/7, pp. 735-761.

Hall, P. A. and Taylor, R. C. R. (1996) “Political Science and the Three New Institutionalisms,” pp. 1-32

Lieberman, E. S. (2001) “Causal Inference in Historical Institutional Analysis: A specification of periodization strategies.” Comparative Political Studies. Vol. 34 No. 9, pp. 1011-1035.

McAnulla, Stuart. (2002) “Structure and Agency”. Theory and methods in Political Science. (2nd ed.) Ch.13. pp. 271-291

Scharpf, Fritz W. (2000) “Institutions in Comparative Political Research.” Comparative Political Studies. Vol. 33 No. 6/7, pp. 762-790.