scholarly journals Agency in historical institutionalism coalitional work in the creation, maintenance, and change of institutions

Author(s):  
Patrick Emmenegger

AbstractInstitutionalism gives priority to structure over agency. Yet institutions have never developed and operated without the intervention of interested groups. This paper develops a conceptual framework for the role of agency in historical institutionalism. Based on recent contributions following the coalitional turn and drawing on insights from sociological institutionalism, it argues that agency plays a key role in the creation and maintenance of social coalitions that stabilize but also challenge institutions. Without such agency, no coalition can be created, maintained, or changed. Similarly, without a supporting coalition, no contested institution can survive. Yet, due to collective action problems, such coalitional work is challenging. This coalitional perspective offers a robust role for agency in historical institutionalism, but it also explains why institutions remain stable despite agency. In addition, this paper forwards several portable propositions that allow for the identification of who is likely to develop agency and what these actors do.

1997 ◽  
Vol 28 (3) ◽  
pp. 105-112 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nicoli Nattrass

This article examines some of the collective action problems which beset South African business in national and regional accords. The first part concludes that incomes policy type accords at national level are unlikely to be successful in South Africa. The main part of the article considers accords at subnational level where conflicts of interest are more easily (but not entirely) resolved. This is done by means of two case studies of business acting collectively to promote regional or local development. The first looks at the role of organized business in the Eastern Cape Socio-Economic Consultative Council (ECSECC). It is suggested that the geographical divide between the various business organizations undermines the potential for collective action. The second describes the more successful local housing accord which was negotiated in Port Elizabeth.


Author(s):  
Henry Farrell ◽  
Martha Finnemore

Historical institutionalism has not yet grappled with the deeper intellectual challenges of “going global.” Understanding international, particularly global, institutions, requires attention to and theorizing of a global social context, one that does not rely on a national government in the background, ready to enforce laws and rules. It also requires theories about the global organizations themselves. This chapter argues that a historical institutionalism that engages with the many varieties of sociological institutionalism would be a richer tradition that could more systematically examine the role of norms and ideas, thereby expanding its analytic range to institutional contexts beyond the state.


2015 ◽  
Vol 1 (2) ◽  
pp. 10-18
Author(s):  
Coral Michelin Basso ◽  
Carlos Franzato ◽  
Karine Freire ◽  
Gustavo Severo de Borba

 No contexto em que tudo que se ouve é crise, urgência e mudança, falar sobre as possibilidades de ação em prol de um futuro sustentável é uma necessidade. Estão surgindo, em diversos lugares no mundo, iniciativas com capacidade de propor uma visão de bem-estar renovada, calcada na sustentabilidade e no agir coletivo, conhecidas como organizações colabo­rativas. Tais empreendimentos promovem pequenas rupturas locais no modelo econômico vigente, ao mesmo tempo que criam casos promissores de inovação social. Ao observar as características das organizações colaborativas e as relações que estabelecem com o ecossistema onde estão inseridas, o presente estudo estabelece uma conexão comparativa entre essas organizações e os sistemas abertos, apresentando um conceito que amplia o entendimento acerca do funcionamento e das possibilidades de ação das organizações. O objetivo, com isso, é apontar as possibilidades do design – encarado aqui sob seu viés estratégico – em fomentar as atividades de inovação social das organizações colaborativas. Utilizando o framework conceitual do metadesign, são sugeridas duas contribuições para dar suporte à organização; para habilitar seus atores a serem co-criadores; e também para transformar o próprio designer, que se assume então o papel de articulador desse sistema com­plexo: o co-design e o seeding.ABSTRACT In a context where all you can hear is crisis, urgency and change, to speak about the possibilities of action towards a sustai­nable future is a necessity. Initiatives are emerging in several places around the world, that are able to propose a renewed vision of well being based on sustainability and collective action, known as collaborative organizations. Such projects promote small local ruptures on the current economic model, while creating promising cases of social innovation. By observing the characteristics of these collaborative organizations and the relations they establish with the ecosystem where they are inserted, the present study establishes a comparative connection between these organizations and open systems, presenting a concept that amplifies the understanding of the operation and possibilities of action of such organizations. With this, the goal is to point the possibilities of design – understood here under its strategic scope – to foster the actions of social innovation of these collaborative organizations. Using the conceptual framework of metadesign, two contributions are suggested to support the organization; to enable its actors to be co-creators; and to transform the designer himself, who then assumes the role of articulator of this complex system: co-design and seeding.


2014 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
pp. 8-17 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jane Mansbridge

This address advances three ideas. First, political science as a discipline has a mandate to help human beings govern themselves. Second, within this mandate we should be focusing, more than we do now, on creating legitimate coercion. In a world of increasing interdependence we now face an almost infinite number of collective action problems created when something we need or want involves a “free-access good.” We need coercion to solve these collective action problems. The best coercion is normatively legitimate coercion. Democratic theory, however, has focused more on preventing tyranny than on how to legitimate coercion. Finally, our discipline has neglected an important source of legitimate coercion: negotiation to agreement. Recognizing the central role of negotiation in politics would shed a different light on our relatively unexamined democratic commitments to transparency in process and contested elections. This analysis is overall both descriptive and aspirational, arguing that helping human beings to govern themselves has been in the DNA of our profession since its inception.


1993 ◽  
Vol 15 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael Taylor

AbstractIt has been said that norms can solve collective action problems. To endorse a norm is to hold a normative belief. This article insists that we try to isolate moral motivation - motivation by moral belief - as such, and that its existence cannot be taken for granted. Accepting the Humean view that belief alone cannot motivate, the article rejects the thesis that there is a necessary or conceptual connection between moral belief and motivation; it warns that in looking for motivational powers or effects of normative belief we must take care to rule out the possibility that the motivation is merely derived from existing desires; and it argues that deliberation and evaluation do not produce desires purely out of beliefs. These considerations are among the necessary preliminaries to getting clear about the role of ‘social capital’ in solving collective action problems.


1970 ◽  
pp. 100-114
Author(s):  
Susanne Krogh Jensen

Since 1958, legislation has regulated the Danish museum field, describing the role of museums, structuring the field and defining museum work. In this article, I analyse the Danish museum legislation and the related discussions since 1958 in order to track the development of the Danish museum field. Drawing on the tradition of historical institutionalism, I identify three phases of professionalization delimited by critical junctures in 1958, 1976 and 2001. Each phase is characterized by specific aims conveying a specific understanding of professionalism. Finally, I relate the current debate about the museum field to the historical context, asking whether a new critical juncture is imminent.


1992 ◽  
Vol 44 (3) ◽  
pp. 398-431 ◽  
Author(s):  
Richard F. Doner

Analyses of economic growth have drawn on the experiences of the East Asian newly industrializing countries to highlight the contribution of cohesive and autonomous states in the resolution of market failures. Within an explicit collective action and public goods framework, this article argues for an institutionalist approach to development that incorporates, but also goes beyond, statism. Through an examination of auto manufacturing in five countries in Southeast and Northeast Asia, the article identifies specific collective action problems central to the development process, and it explores limits to the capacities of even strong states to resolve such problems. The article stresses the role of private sectors and joint publicprivate sector institutions, identifies systematic differences within and among local entrepreneurs with regard to development issues, emphasizes the need for research on factors influencing the supply of institutions; and argues for an approach to development that emphasizes cooperation among domestic interests rather than domination.


Author(s):  
Sarah Paterson

This chapter explores the second of the changes in logic and practice in the field of finance with which the book is concerned: the shift from hold-to-maturity debt investment strategies to trading strategies. The argument is made that the concept of collective action problems in US corporate reorganization law ought to be replaced by different concepts when the reorganization is among sophisticated, strongly adjusting financial creditors and investors and when debt trades in secondary markets. The chapter further argues that the more recent development of modern corporate reorganization law in England and Wales has enabled terms and concepts to emerge which are better adapted to traded debt markets. Overall, however, the chapter emphasizes the relationship between reduced salience of the collective action concept and a secondary market for distressed debt. It does not suggest a new, universal conceptual framework for corporate reorganization law in which the collective action concept is permanently replaced.


2020 ◽  
pp. 37-57
Author(s):  
Ray Brescia

This chapter examines the role of trust in solving collective action problems and the ways in which translocal networks harness this trust to advance broad social change. Such trust is present in the social relationships one forms with others, what is often referred to as one's social capital. From the Sons of Liberty to the civil rights movement, different social movements have utilized different means of communications to form, identify individuals who shared common beliefs, bind people together, and animate collective action. They often did this in networks, and networks of a particular kind. As the name implies, the translocal network is one that may span a wide geographic area and can harness the power of a large group of committed individuals but is also made up of smaller cells where face-to-face communication between individual members can occur. The chapter then looks at examples of the social movements that have emerged in social innovation moments to show how they have generally tended to organize themselves into translocal networks, at least until a means of communication emerged that allowed organizers to form different types of organizations.


Author(s):  
Andrea Lorenzo Capussela

This chapter completes the theoretical framework of the book by juxtaposing institutional economics with the literature on the collective action problem, social norms, culture, and ideas. It discusses the foundations of the collective action problem and the role of institutions—formal (laws) and informal (social norms)—in overcoming it. It links these studies with those on social capital, civicness, and the origins of generalized inter-personal trust. It criticizes the view—frequent in analyses of Italy—that a society’s culture is an independent obstacle to its development, and argues conversely that institutions, civicness, trust, and culture are part of the extant social order, and co-evolve. It ends with a discussion of the role of ideas, which are freer from the grip of the extant equilibrium and can lead elites, distributional coalitions, and ordinary citizens and firms to revise their assessment of their own interests and support efficiency-enhancing reforms.


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