Institutional Persistence Research Articles

Global Governance in Time: Institutional Sequences, International Regime Complexes, and the Politics of Global Governance

abstract: Will China's rise fundamentally change global governance? Answering this question requires grasping how sequences shape the development of institutions across time. The books that we review adapt the standard historical institutional (hi) conceptual toolkit—path dependence, reactive sequences, and gradual institutional change—to explain institutional persistence and change in global governance. We argue that international regime complexity (irc) scholarship is a necessary complement because the international institutional context differs from the domestic context in important ways. irc generates two sequencing mechanisms that the standard hi toolkit misses. Disjointed sequences occur when actors relocate their efforts to other parts of the regime complex, creating changes that reverberate across parallel international institutions. International nondecisions are stymied efforts to adapt global institutions to address pressing concerns, in which the nondecision pushes the construction of substitutes outside of global institutions. The standard hi toolkit, plus the two irc sequence types, compose a helpful framework for thinking about what China's rise portends for the politics of global governance.

Hierarchy and war

AbstractScholars have written extensively about hierarchical international order, on the one hand, and war on the other, but surprisingly little work systematically explores the connection between the two. This disconnect is all the more striking given that empirical studies have found a strong relationship between the two. We provide a generative computational network model that explains hierarchy and war as two elements of a larger recursive process: The threat of war drives the formation of hierarchy, which in turn shapes states' incentives for war. Grounded in canonical theories of hierarchy and war, the model explains an array of known regularities about hierarchical order and conflict. Surprisingly, we also find that many traditional results of the international relations literature—including institutional persistence, balancing behavior, and systemic self‐regulation—emerge from the interplay between hierarchy and war.

Traditional institutions in Africa: past and present

AbstractTo what degree and why are traditional institutions persistent? Following up the literature on the long-term effects of precolonial institutions in Africa, we investigate whether and where today's traditional institutions mirror their precolonial predecessors. We do so by linking data on contemporary traditional institutions of African ethnic groups with Murdock's historical Ethnographic Atlas. We find a robust association between past and present levels of institutional complexity, differentiating between institutions’ political centralization and functional differentiation. However, this persistence originates almost exclusively from former British colonies governed with more reliance on precolonial institutions than other colonies, in particular French ones. These findings contribute to research on the development and effects of traditional institutions, highlighting the need to account for varying persistence of traditional institutions.

Dynamic Persistence of Institutions: Modeling the Endurance of Public Housing After Red Vienna

Dynamic Persistence of Institutions: Modeling the Endurance of Public Housing After Red Vienna

Lessons from highway management reforms in a less developed province in China

This article describes how national imaginaries of market reforms designed to accommodate fast-growing Chinese regions, collide with embedded formal and informal governance practices in less developed provinces. Whilst much of the literature examines the implications of new infrastructure on regional economics, the management of existing networks dominates decision-making in these more stagnant economies. Using interviews with key stakeholders involved in highway management in Heilongjiang across the provincial and local levels, this paper explores institutional change and persistence using path dependence and junctures as an organising lens. We find that the manner and timing of institutional changes are shaped by the need for political elites in the territorial governing body to reinforce their authority over the vertical functional systems within the jurisdiction. Institutional persistence beneath the changes demonstrates path dependence, related to (a) the vested interests due to power trading and interpersonal relationships and (b) the defence of personnel-related benefits derived from long-standing public institutions. Political and administrative factors rather than economic and technical factors are paramount in influencing transport management and institutional processes in China's less developed provinces.

Generations of Empire: Youth from Ottoman to Italian Rule in the Mediterranean. By Andreas Guidi

Generations of Empire: Youth from Ottoman to Italian Rule in the Mediterranean aims to provide a post-Ottoman, colonial, and social history of Rhodes from the perspective of generations and youth. The book serves as both a microhistory of Rhodes and a global history of the Mediterranean in the twentieth century. Despite its apparently narrow focus on youth in a single locality, the book provides a compelling macro picture and delves deeper into the issues of post-Ottoman societies, Italian colonialism (and fascism), and the Mediterranean world. As one of the most significant achievements of the book, Generations of Empire offers “a change of framing toward thinking Italian colonialism as post-Ottoman history” (7). The persistence of Ottoman institutions, social structures, as well as forms of belonging during the island’s Italian colonial rule invites further contemplation of the chronological and geographical implications of “post-Ottoman” space and time. Furthermore, Guidi focuses on the Mediterranean as a divided whole, taking into account imperial continuities, colonial legacies, nationalist tensions, economic expropriation, and migration flows. On a more individual, familial, and rather communal level, the research informs the reader with extremely valuable detail on confessional communities, bonds of loyalty, and surveillance. The book treats communities as “intermediary institutions between government and families” (22) and gives voice to actors and institutions from all confessions in its narrative. The book’s engagement with “youth” and “generation” both as concepts and potential social actors is also quite novel. Guidi uses youth as a “situational” term, stressing that “a Young Turk newspaper, an Italian colonial governor, a group of Orthodox students, a rabbi, or a Muslim notable might all use the term youth with quite different aims.” (7). However, for the state(s), communities, and families alike, youth represented what Luisa Passerini has called “a metaphor of social change” and was a correlative term implying binomial references based on one’s standpoint.

Coordination as Naturalistic Social Ontology: Constraints and Explanation

In the paper, I propose a project of social coordination as naturalistic social ontology (CNSO) based on the rules-in-equilibria theory of social institutions (Guala and Hindriks 2015; Hindriks and Guala 2015). It takes coordination as the main ontological unit of the social, a mechanism homological across animals and humans, for both can handle coordination problems: in the forms of “animal conventions” and social institutions, respectively. On this account, institutions are correlated equilibria with normative force. However, if both humans and animals solve coordination problems in a similar way, and only humans have social institutions, how do the latter evolve? I suggest identifying possible causes of this evolution among cognitive capacities like mindreading and imitation by building dynamic models. Social ontology becomes constrained by the evolution of the forms of coordination and by the cognitive mechanisms involved in the emergence and persistence of social institutions. It means that it becomes bound to what might be derived from social institutions, i.e., social roles, structures and their derivatives. It shows how conceptual relations might emerge from causal. I conclude the paper with the discussion of the relationship between involved types of explanation, mechanistic and equilibrium ones.

The Origins and Persistence of Discriminatory Institutions and Ideologies

The Origins and Persistence of Discriminatory Institutions and Ideologies

Why do different cultures form and persist? Learning from the case of Makerere University

AbstractCulture is a central concept in the social sciences. It is also difficult to examine rigorously. I study the oldest university in East Africa and a cradle of political elites, Makerere University, where halls of residence developed distinct cultures in the 1970s such that some hall cultures are activist (e.g. Lumumba Hall) while others are respectful to authorities (e.g. Livingstone Hall) even though assignment to halls has been random since 1970. I leverage this unique setting to understand how culture forms and affects the values and behaviours of young adults. Participant observation, interviews and archives suggest that cultural differences arose from critical junctures that biased group (hall) composition and from intergroup (inter-hall) competition. Hall governments promote cultural and institutional persistence through the intergenerational transmission of norms and practices, thereby highlighting the role of political hierarchy in reproducing culture.

Crime and trust in institutions: evidence from India

ABSTRACT The article presents empirical evidence on the impact of crime on household’s trust in institutions in India. Employing fixed effect panel regressions, the study finds that crime victimization significantly undermines trust in major public bodies, including politicians, justice-related institutions and governments. The study also documents a negative spillover effect of local crimes on public perception of institutions. Such crime-led distrust can cause persistence of weak institutions through curtailing reporting of crimes as well as support for democracy. Combating crime is thus crucial to restore citizen’s trust in institutions and enhance the quality of governance in India.

A quantitative application of diffusion of innovations for modeling the spread of conservation behaviors

The study of community-based conservation is challenged by a large number of important variables and nonlinear dynamics. This complexity has made quantitative and comparative analyses notoriously difficult. Here, we argue that analyzing the emergence and persistence of community-based conservation institutions as an emergent phenomenon of individual decision-making can yield important quantitative insights. We first review diffusion of innovations theory (DOI) and the broader field of cultural evolution. We then simulate data on community adoption of a conservation institution, contingent on feedbacks between individual behavior and environmental processes. We demonstrate that fitting these data to differential models of disease transmission, on which DOI is founded, can produce reliable estimates of the rates of adoption, dropout, and long-term uptake of an institution. Overall, we explore a new quantitative approach for modeling the spread of conservation behaviors using probabilistic differential equations and argue for further incorporation of cultural evolutionary theory into the field.

The settlers’ fortunes: Comparing tax censuses in the Cape Colony and early American republic

AbstractEuropeans at the end of the eighteenth century had settled across the globe, from North and South America to Australia to the southern tip of Africa. While theories of institutional persistence explain the ‘reversal of fortunes’ between settled and unsettled regions, few studies consider the large differences in early living standards between settler societies. This paper uses newly transcribed household‐level tax censuses from the Dutch and British Cape Colony and the United States shortly after independence to show comparative levels of income and wealth over four decades both between the two regions and within them. Cape farmers were, on average, more affluent than their American counterparts. While crop output and livestock were more unequally distributed at the Cape, ownership of enslaved people in America was more unequal. There was little indication of an imminent reversal of fortunes.

Hooked on a Thread: The Craft of Institutional Persistence in the Context of Koniaków Lacemaking

Through an in-depth, qualitative study of Polish folk craft of Koniaków Lacemaking, we investigate its surprising, long-term, institutional persistence. While most places have historically developed rich, folk craft traditions, economic development and related societal changes have led to incremental vanishing of such practices. Yet, community of Koniaków remains faithful to its traditional craft that is still vividly practiced for almost 150 years. Our findings suggest that persistent institutions, such as Koniaków Lacemaking, require a collective of dedicated and caring actors that are personally invested in the institution and deeply committed to its persistence. Such collective is then capable to “flexibly control” the institution, which involves effectively protecting the essence of the institution while enabling for adaptive change. Based on our case analysis, we conceptualize the recurring relation between, what we call, “institutional caring” and “dynamic grounding” as an important precondition to long-term institutional persistence.

The Role of Organizational Myth in Institutional Persistence: The Case of Magnum Photos

Institutionalized organizations are pervaded by myths, that is, loosely factual historical narratives expressing organizational values. Yet, we scarcely understand how such organizations cohere around their myths over time, thus maintaining their distinctive characters and demonstrating institutional persistence. In this study, we explore how organizational myth fosters institutional persistence over a long period of time, even in the face of potentially disintegrating crises. We examine the case of Magnum Photos, a legendary photo agency founded in 1947. Our analysis of rich manually collected archival data covering more than half a century of Magnum’s existence allows us to unpack a mechanism that we term mastering the art of crisis. In mastering the art of crisis, any organizational crisis is transformed into an existential one and organizational myth is invoked for charting a course of action that would ensure the continuous organizational cohesion around the values expressed in the myth. As a new course of action is bounded by the logic of the myth, it does not disrupt the distinctive character and historic legacy of the organization. As organizational myth, by virtue of its symbolic nature, affords multiple frames of reference, it allows for reprioritization and reinterpretation of the values constituting it, thereby providing a room for successful adaptation to new circumstances. Our findings contribute to the historical turn and revival of old institutionalism in organization studies.

Entropy and institutional theory

PurposeOnce introduced and conceptualized as a factor that causes erosion and decay of social institutions and subsequent deinstitutionalization, the notion of entropy is at odds with predictions of institutional isomorphism and seems to directly contradict the tendency toward ever-increasing institutionalization. The purpose of this paper is to offer a resolution of this theoretical inconsistency by revisiting the meaning of entropy and reconceptualizing institutionalization from an information-theoretic point of view.Design/methodology/approachIt is a theoretical paper that offers an information perspective on institutionalization.FindingsA mistaken understanding of the nature and role of entropy in the institutional theory is caused by conceptualizing it as a force that counteracts institutional tendencies and acts in opposite direction. Once institutionalization and homogeneity are seen as a product of natural tendencies in the organizational field, the role of entropy becomes clear. Entropy manifests itself at the level of information processing and corresponds with increasing uncertainty and the decrease of the value of information. Institutionalization thus can be seen as a special case of an increase in entropy and a decrease of knowledge. Institutionalization is a state of maximum entropy.Originality/valueIt is explained why institutionalization and institutional persistence are what to be expected in the long run and why information entropy contributes to this tendency. Contrary to the tenets of the institutional work perspective, no intentional efforts of individuals and collective actors are needed to maintain institutions. In this respect, the paper contributes to the view of institutional theory as a theory of self-organization.

Institutional Obsolescence: Why Do Institutions Persist though Evolutionary Selection Pressure Changes Radically?

Suggesting socio-cultural values are selectors of institutions and institutional practices, and institutions in turn are selectors of (economic) behaviors, we investigate what explains the persistence of institutions that were aligned with past socio-cultural values when the values subscribed to in society have fundamentally changed. What, in other words, explains the persistence of obsolete institutions? We do so by investigating the labor market situation for academics in post-communist societies in Europe.

(Not) democratising through strength: core beliefs and the institutions of Singapore’s People’s Action Party

ABSTRACT How and under what conditions do autocratic parties democratise through strength'? Prior scholarship suggests that authoritarian parties embrace political liberalisation when there are warnings of their decline. However, Singapore's People's Action Party (PAP) has not ‘conceded-to-thrive’ despite seemingly waning dominance. This paper explains why autocratic parties resist democratisation. Drawing from historical and sociological institutionalism, we examine how established ideas, serving as cognitive filters through which governing elites interpret their environment, become codified in formal institutions. Specifically, we argue how governments respond to political challenges depend on the ‘stickiness’ of the normative foundations of authoritarianism and their manifestations in state institutions. We uncover the ideational and historical contexts of authoritarian institutions and show how they are translated into laws, policies and practices. Using the case of PAP, we consider the microlevel origins and institutional persistence of oneparty dominance and explain how these normative foundations and its subsequent institutionalisation impede political change.

Explaining the Persistence of Informal Institutions: The Role of Informal Networks

Explaining the Persistence of Informal Institutions: The Role of Informal Networks

An outstanding message of hope: the WHO World Mental Health Report 2022.

The new WHO World Health Report on Mental Health includes a comprehensive and updated assessment of the current mental health situation at the global level, a critical and well-documented reflexion on the progresses achieved and the failures registered in global mental health, and an indication of the paths and strategies that should be prioritised to ensure the transformations that are urgently needed. The report offers significant enrichments on different areas like social determinants, premature mortality of persons suffering from mental disability, the negative aspects of the persistence of inpatient institutions, the role of people with lived experience as important agents of change, the importance of child and adolescent mental health. The present Editorial stresses the importance of Deinstitutionalisation as a cross-cutting element of all health policy, plans, budgeting and service organisation and draws attention to the fact that the ubiquitous persistence of large psychiatric institutions is a clear indicator that reality is far from declarations despite the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disability.

Dynamic persistence of institutions: Modeling the endurance of public housing after Red Vienna, 1870–2009

Dynamic persistence of institutions: Modeling the endurance of public housing after Red Vienna, 1870–2009