Institutional Stasis Research Articles

Academic Freedom and Institutional Violence

ABSTRACT Academic freedom is typically understood as a means of protecting faculty rights against the violence—physical or intellectual—of the state or of the institution’s administration. This article argues that academic freedom may be seen as a form of violence, insofar as it is potentially threatening to the methodological and institutional stasis of colleges and universities.

Decent work in care homes: lessons and implications of the pandemic experience from Scotland

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to identify lessons and implications on the theme of decent work in social care. This has long been highlighted as integral to improving social care for the elderly. The COVID-19 pandemic experience reveals lessons and implications about the systemic absence of decent work in one place, Scotland, in care homes. The main lesson and implication is a need for change beyond the focus on levels of pay and systemic advocacy of decent work as it is conventionally understood.Design/methodology/approachData was collected using qualitative, semi-structured interviews with 20 care workers in care homes.[AQ4] A range of care system institutional stakeholders was also interviewed. A range of care system institutional stakeholders was also interviewed.FindingsDecent work in social care may only be progressed to the extent that a culture change is achieved, transcending the institutional stasis about who owns and engages with progressing decent work.Research limitations/implicationsThis is a study in one place, Scotland, with a small sample of frontline care workers in care homes and representatives from a range of institutions.Practical implicationsEffective culture change for decent work in care homes needs to be a higher research priority. More explicit culture policies can be a mechanism by which overall decent work and system change may be catalysed and sustainably secured together. Explicit culture change is here set out with respect to operational, institutional and national domains.Social implicationsThere needs to be social policy and political support for situating decent work to be part of a broader culture change around care work with the elderly. A culture-oriented change plan as well as new resourcing and structures can together ensure that the nadir of the pandemic experience was a historical turning point towards transformation rather than being just another low point in a recurring cycle.Originality/valueThe situating of systemic decent work progress within a broader culture change, and modelling that culture change, are original contributions.

A Longevity Mechanism of Chinese Absolutism

A counterpart of what is known as “European exceptionalism”—political stability and institutional arrangement that enabled modern economic growth and political development—is a “Chinese anomaly.” This anomaly takes the form of a sharp contrast with premodern Europe: Chinese imperial rulers stayed in power longer than their European counterparts, but this political stability was accompanied by a high level of institutional stasis. In this article, we argue that a well-known Chinese institution, the civil service examination (CSE) system, contributed to China’s imperial longevity. We use detailed historical data on individual CSE performance to demonstrate the longevity-contributory mechanisms of CSE—constraining access to power by aristocrats and other wealth holders. We argue that a key to unpacking the so-called Chinese anomaly is to understand the role of bureaucracy in political development in China and potentially in other regions.

Institutional Change and Institutional Persistence

In this essay, we provide a simple conceptual framework to elucidate the forces that lead to institutional persistence and change. Our framework is based on a dynamic game between different groups, who care both about current policies and institutions and future policies, which are themselves determined by current institutional choices, and clarifies the forces that lead to the most extreme form of institutional persistence (“institutional stasis”) and the potential drivers of institutional change. We further study the strategic stability of institutions, which arises when institutions persist because of fear of subsequent, less beneficial changes that would follow initial reforms. More importantly, we emphasize that, despite the popularity of ideas based on institutional stasis in the economics and political science literatures, most institutions are in a constant state of flux, but their trajectory may still be shaped by past institutional choices, thus exhibiting “path-dependent change”, so that initial conditions determine both the subsequent trajectories of institutions and how they respond to shocks. We conclude the essay by discussing how institutions can be designed to bolster stability, the relationship between social mobility and institutions, and the interplay between culture and institutions.

A Longevity Mechanism of Chinese Absolutism

A counterpart of what is known as “European exceptionalism”—political stability and institutional arrangement that enabled modern economic growth and political development—is a “Chinese anomaly.” This anomaly takes the form of a sharp contrast with pre-modern Europe: Chinese imperial rulers stayed in power longer than their European counterparts but this political stability was accompanied by a high level of institutional stasis. In this paper, we argue that a well-known Chinese institution, the civil service examination (CSE) system, contributed to China’s imperial longevity. We utilize detailed historical data on individual CSE performance to demonstrate the longevity-contributory mechanisms of CSE—constraining access to power by aristocrats and other wealth-holders. We argue that a key to unpacking the so-called “Chinese anomaly” is to understand the role of bureaucracy in political development in China and potentially in other regions.

Feminist critical friends: dilemmas of feminist engagement with governance and gender reform agendas

This article advances the concept of ‘feminist critical friends’ as a descriptor for those studying the efforts of ‘insider’ gender justice advocates working to transform governance structures and advance gender reform agendas within political, social, economic and military institutions. In refining the concept of feminist critical friendship, we reject perspectives that overstate the failures and ‘co-option’ that comes with engagement, while also resisting voluntarist versions that cede too much influence to feminist insiders. We pay attention to, and take seriously, the small wins that are achieved against the gendered, institutional and political odds, and recognise that sometimes, though not always, these can align to produce significant shifts in the gendered status quo. The article seeks to unpack the who, what, why and how of feminist critical friendship in order to advance this as a productive standpoint for feminist researchers interested in analysing processes of institutional stasis and change.

Institutional Change and Institutional Persistence

In this essay, we provide a simple conceptual framework to elucidate the forces that lead to institutional persistence and change. Our framework is based on a dynamic game between different groups, who care both about current policies and institutions and future policies, which are themselves determined by current institutional choices, and clarifies the forces that lead to the most extreme form of institutional persistence (“institutional stasis†) and the potential drivers of institutional change. We further study the strategic stability of institutions, which arises when institutions persist because of fear of subsequent, less beneficial changes that would follow initial reforms. More importantly, we emphasize that, despite the popularity of ideas based on institutional stasis in the economics and political science literatures, most institutions are in a constant state of flux, but their trajectory may still be shaped by past institutional choices, thus exhibiting “path-dependent change†, so that initial conditions determine both the subsequent trajectories of institutions and how they respond to shocks. We conclude the essay by discussing how institutions can be designed to bolster stability, the relationship between social mobility and institutions, and the interplay between culture and institutions.

The crisis in economics – nature and ways to overcome it

Recent decades have witnessed an upsurge in multiple alternative approaches to unraveling major economic problems, together with the mainstream economic theory, which in this study has been considered an indicator of economic crisis. In this study, we attribute institutional stasis, as well as methodological heterogeneity of its two constituent sections, micro- and macroeconomics, to the primary drawbacks of neoclassical economic theory. Overcoming the crisis of economic science correlates with the creation of a general economic theory on the principles of “pure science,” with elucidated functions of various socioeconomic disciplines. If “pure economic theory” intends to form an intellectual layout of the economic system, then the “realistic sciences,” also including modern macroeconomics in this study, are tools for analyzing specific socioeconomic phenomena and processes. As people with consciousness and interests act in the society, this study postulates the existence of a certain zone of ambiguity, which cannot be entirely covered.

Oil and Institutional Stasis in the Persian Gulf

Oil has seriously impacted the institutional development of the state in the Arabian Peninsula. More specifically, the sudden and unprecedented acquisition of massive oil revenues resulted in the freezing of the state’s formal and informal institutions, at the point at which petrodollars were injected into the state’s coffers. From then on, state leaders were able to deploy the state’s wealth to dictate the pace and direction of institutional change. Over time, any institutional change has been directed towards enhancing regime security, and the pace of change has been calculated and deliberately slow. Any political opening has been dictated by the logic of state power maximization (in relation to society). At the same time, partly to ensure its popular legitimacy and partly through the vision of its leaders, the state has deployed its massive wealth both to foster rapid economic and infrastructural development, and to enhance the living standards of its citizens. In other words, whereas oil may have stunted institutional development –– i.e., an institution’s curse –– it has been an economic blessing.

From Cadbury to Kay: discourse, intertextuality and the evolution of UK corporate governance

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to answer two main research questions. First, the authors ask the degree to which the UK corporate governance code has changed in response to both systemic perturbations and the subsequent enquiries established to recommend solutions to perceived shortcomings. Second, the authors ask how the solutions proposed in these landmark governance texts might be explained.Design/methodology/approachThe authors take a critical discourse approach to develop and apply a discourse model of corporate governance reform. The authors draw together data on popular, corporate-political and technocratic discourses on corporate governance in the UK and analyse these data using content analysis and the historical discourse approach.FindingsThe UK corporate governance code has changed little despite periodic crises and the enquiries set up to investigate and make recommendation. Institutional stasis, the authors find, is the product of discourse capture and control by elite corporate actors aided by political allies who inhabit the same elite habitus. Review group members draw intertextually on prior technocratic discourse to create new canonical texts that bear the hallmarks of their predecessors. Light touch regulation by corporate insiders thus remains the UK approach.Originality/valueThis is one of the first applications of critical discourse analysis in the accounting literature and the first to have conducted a discursive analysis of corporate governance reports in the UK. The authors present an original model of discourse transitions to explain how systemic challenges are dissipated.

Historical Institutionalism and New Dimensions of Agency: Bankers, Institutions and the 2008 Financial Crisis

This article argues that historical institutionalism has bifurcated into two competing accounts: one focused on institutional stasis and the other on change. A more encompassing theory that accounts for both processes is constructed using a more detailed account of agency – one that utilises key inputs from cognitive and social psychology. This can better account for the conditions under which institutional constraint or change occurs and is used to explain the variable behaviour of bankers in the run-up to the 2008 financial crisis.

Taking Evolution Seriously, or Metaphorically? A Review of Interactions between Historical Institutionalism and Darwinian Evolutionary Theory

Since the mid-1980s, political scientists, in particular historical institutionalists, have employed evolutionary theory to study institutional stasis and change. More recently, there have been calls for ‘taking evolution seriously’. This article will frame the earlier uses of evolutionary theory by historical institutionalists, and the recent calls for ‘taking evolution seriously’ into a hierarchy of levels of interaction between natural and social sciences. Put in this perspective, the earlier efforts can be seen as limiting the use of evolutionary theory at the lowest, metaphorical level. On the other hand, the recent calls are striving to advance political science’s interaction with biological science to analogous and homologous levels, and even make it part of the larger project of generalizing Darwinism. These are noble scientific explorations. However, they should not lead to an impression that using evolutionary theory metaphorically is necessarily unserious.

Presidential Coequality: The Evolution of a Concept

The assertion that the presidency is coequal in power to the other branches in the American system of government is often heard, has been suggested by all recent presidents, and has even made its way into political science. But tracing the history of the concept demonstrates that this assertion is an invention of quite recent vintage. Those who wrote and favored the Constitution did not make such claims, nor did early presidents. Even Andrew Jackson's famous and, to his generation, shocking assertion of coequality coincident with his censure was not really a claim of equal power between branches. According to our systematic analysis of presidential rhetoric it was Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford who initiated and popularized the idea of interbranch coequality. They did so to defend themselves in two episodes of substantial presidential vulnerability: Watergate and the ensuing midterm elections. Subsequent presidents have elevated something that would have seemed wrong and absurd to any founder into a blithe truism. This belief harms governance by creating both artificially high expectations for the president and a presumption of institutional stasis. The “second constitution” based on popular beliefs about interbranch relations continues to evolve, as much a product of happenstance as of rational design.

An alternative approach to evaluating, measuring, and comparing domestic and international health institutions: Insights from social science theories

Objectives This article introduces the benefits of applying social science theories discussing institutional stasis and change to better measure, explain, and compare elite behavior within health administration and decentralization processes. A new comparative method based on these theories is introduced, as well as methods for collecting and analyzing data. Methods A literature review of health governance, health system governance, and path dependency and institutional change theory was conducted to reveal the limitations of health governance approaches explaining elite behavior. Next, path dependency and institutional change theory was applied to case studies in order to demonstrate their utility in explaining institutional stasis and change. Results Current approaches to analyzing and comparing elite behavior in the health governance frameworks are limited in their ability to accurately explain the willingness of elites to pursue more efficient institutional and policy designs. Current indicators measuring elite behavior are also too static, failing to account for periodic resistance to change and the conditions for it. Conclusions By applying path dependency and institutional change theory, the policy community can obtain greater insight into the willingness and thus capacity of institutions to pursue innovations while developing alternative analytic frameworks and databases that better measure and predict this process.

Toward a New Theory of Institutional Change

Going beyond historical and rational choice institutionalism, this article elaborates the core of a new theory that can account for the discontinuous, disproportionate, and frequently wave like-nature of institutional change. Cognitive-psychological findings on shifts in actors' propensity for assuming risk help explain why periods of institutional stasis can be followed by dramatic breakthroughs as actors eventually respond to a growing problem load with efforts at bold transformation. And insights on boundedly rational learning explain why solutions to these problems often occur as emulation of other countries' innovations and experiences. The new approach, which elucidates both the demand and the supply side of institutional change, is illustrated through an analysis of the transformation of developmental states, welfare states, and political regimes.

Overlapping effects: Path dependence and path generation in management and organization in Russia

An important contribution to our understanding of management transformation in post-socialist societies has been made by new institutionalism. The strength of this approach derives from its critique of normative models based on neo-classical economics, which has tended towards institutional and management voluntarism. It has been able to grasp complexity in societies undergoing structural change, stressing that path dependence in property, political and social structures helps to define business organization. The limitation of new institutionalism lies in its tendency to overstate institutional stasis, failing to treat (national) institutions as contradictory and transient (localized) expressions of global processes. Based on extensive qualitative data, our article extends the understanding of path-dependence. Rather than dispensing with key insights of new institutionalism, we bridge the notion of path dependence with the contradictory processes of institutional reshaping and adaptation. Using an adapted version of the `system, society and dominance' (SSD) model, we demonstrate that the nature of Russia's insertion into the global market has had a substantial impact on firm ownership and strategies, while simultaneously limiting reforms to management structures and work organization.

Devolution and the Politics of Business Representation in Britain: A Strategic — Relational Approach

In this paper we seek to exploit some of the insights of a strategic - relational approach in examining the response of business interests to the newly devolved and regionalised governance context in Britain. In the analysis, the focus is directed particularly at the changing context within which business politics operates in the British regions and, importantly, on the perceptions of business actors and interests of their position in these changing contexts. In this way, we seek to move beyond established structuralist and agency-oriented approaches to business interest representation, which have tended to underplay the influence and complexity of business perceptions in exploring the changing form of business representation. Subsequently, we present some further brief comments on the respective capacities of groups and organisations representing business, and the strategic processes that underlie business responses to the new governance arrangements, which will be important to the further development of analysis founded in the strategic - relational approach. In broad terms, we argue that business perceptions of the devolutionary context have underscored a limited restructuring of business interest representation in Britain, as business groups register the ongoing centralism that characterises the British polity. In addition, the organisation of business interest representation displays a strong path dependency, reflecting a degree of institutional stasis and the strength of perceived structures in this sphere. However, a series of relatively modest changes are underway as a variety of business interests adopt particular kinds of strategies given their specific aims and capacities.

‘Not Without Dust and Heat’: The Moral Bases of the ‘New’ Academic Professionalism

This paper challenges the view that academic professionalism resides in the professional ‘autonomy’ of the academic, the ‘self-regulation’ of academics as an occupational group, and the differential ‘status’ of academic workers. This still influential (though residual) notion of academic professionalism, it is argued, leads to institutional stasis. What is required is greater reflexivity by academics in respect of their underlying professional values. In particular the piece challenges the academic community (of which the author is a member) to re-think academic freedom – the bedrock of professional identity within that community – in terms of increased inclusivity: ‘freedom for all’ rather than ‘freedom for academics’ The paper touches on issues relating to practice and organisational structure, but focuses primarily on the need for academics to shift the moral bases of their claim to professionalism. In so doing, it also challenges the post-Dearing consensus that the debate on academic professionalism can be adequately conducted in terms of ‘standards’ and ‘outcomes’. A prime purpose of the paper is to promote debate and discussion by setting a different kind of agenda (a moral agenda) and by couching that agenda within a different kind of discourse (one that invites and admits moral speculation).

Popular Protest and Political Reform in Africa

By the late 1980s, Africans joined the international clamor for democracy already ringing through eastern Europe, Latin America, and parts of Asia. While popular unrest had long been an intermittent feature of African politics, the collapse of the Berlin wall-and along with it Leninist one-party rule and the bipolar world order--inspired mass protesters and challenged incumbent leaders as never before. In and around 1990, citizens took to the streets of capital cities in some sixteen sub-Saharan African countries to express discontent with economic hardship and political repression and to demand civic reforms. Governments in the region faced pressures for political change on a scale unprecedented since the dissolution of colonial rule thirty years earlier. In response, between November 1989 and May 1991, at least twenty-one governments adopted significant reform measures to permit greater pluralism and competition within the polity. Multiparty elections were actually held for the first time in a generation in five African countries. Richard Sklar's daring prediction that Africans would come to prefer the vicissitudes of democracy to the stifling abuse of developmental dictatorships began to be brilliantly vindicated.' The dynamic process of protest and reform is nascent in Africa, and the future course of regime transitions is highly uncertain. But the moment is opportune to attempt a preliminary identification of emergent landmarks. Why have cracks appeared in the edifice of authoritarian rule in so many countries of the region? By what processes of struggle and accommodation is power being divided in monopolistic political systems? What are the prospects for the emergence and consolidation of democratic forms of governance? In the present paper we undertake three tasks. First, we catalogue the characteristics of recent political protests in sub-Saharan Africa, focusing on the turbulent spring of 1990. Second, we analyze the nature of government responses, noting the range of political reform initiatives undertaken by African leaders and recording backlashes, crackdowns, and reversals where they occurred. Finally, and most important, we seek to explain why the political firmament is shifting in Africa after a prolonged period of institutional stasis.