Abstract
Institutionalism 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.
Highlights
Historical institutionalism sets the temporal unfolding of the stability, creation, and change in institutions center stage
Developed in response to group theories of politics and structural-functionalism prominent in the 1960s and 1970s, historical institutionalism adopted from the former that conflict among rival groups for scarce resources lies at the heart of politics, while it took from the latter the notion that the institutional organization of the polity is the principal factor structuring collective behavior and
Based on recent contributions following the coalitional turn in historical institutionalism and by drawing on recent scholarship in sociological institutionalism, it has argued that a focus on the micro-foundations of coalition building offers a productive way to generate portable propositions about agency
Summary
Historical institutionalism sets the temporal unfolding of the stability, creation, and change in institutions center stage. Consistent with their ontological assumptions about groups, conflict, and power, historical institutionalist scholars have increasingly converged on the key role of social coalitions in stabilizing institutions (Hall and Thelen 2009) This focus on social coalitions supporting institutions parallels recent developments in sociology, which increasingly emphasize the role of agency in institutional work (Lawrence and Suddaby 2006). While the coalitional perspective allows for permanent contestation and adopts a considerably more dynamic and political view of institutional stability, creation, and change, it emphasizes stability over change because the creation of sufficiently strong challenger coalitions is difficult The reason for this is that new coalitions must first disrupt existing cognitive frameworks and overcome collective action problems. Capoccia (2016) shows how institutional incumbents can use agenda setting power to undermine challengers’ efforts to induce institutional change.
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