PSC8489 – The Politics of Institutions
Professor Henry Farrell
Office Hours 11am-1pm, Wednesdays psc8489@henryfarrell.net
The major subfields in political science – American politics, comparative politics and international relations – all have major debates focused on the causes and effects of institutions. These subfields all borrow ideas from each other extensively – for example, much work in comparative builds on Americanist approaches to legislative institutions.
However, graduate student training often does not reflect this variety, nor indeed the relationship between political science and other social sciences (economics, sociology, to a lesser extent anthropology) that are concerned with institutions.
Debates on institutions have recently become more focused and less polemical. Major advocates of all three major approaches to institutions (rational choice, historical institutionalism and ideationalism) agree on what institutions are – they are rules or sets of rules. However, there is still substantial disagreement about where they come from, and how they work. This class will work through these disagreements, and their implications for politics and empirical research.
After the introductory session, which lays out the broad agenda for the class, we will start with debates in rational choice theory. The class will begin by looking at the origins of much recent rational choice debate in arguments about legislatures, and the extent to which institutions could serve to constrain choices. It will then move on to look at debates over institutional change (with an emphasis on theories that talk about power relations – something that some rational choice scholarship leaves out), and then institutional consequences (looking in particular at debates over trust and cooperation).
The next sessions will look at historical institutionalism, beginning with early debates in which historical institutionalism emerged in dialogue with macro-sociology, and then looking at efforts to give it a micro level grounding, through path dependence, and through other mechanisms. The final major body of theory – sociological and ideational institutionalism, will be examined as a source of insights into change in world politics, as a way of thinking about institutional change, and as a set of forces reshaping institutions in different countries. The final sessions will look at how different institutional theories deal with similar problems, and at an emerging body of work in institutional theory which seeks to tackle complexity and cognitive science.
Learning Outcomes
The aim of this course is to provide Ph.D. students with a synthetic understanding of the major debates in political science. After completing this course and its readings, students should be able to:

(1)
Understand and apply insights from the three main ‘families’ of institutional theory in political science – rational choice institutionalism, historical institutionalism and sociological/ideational institutionalism.
(2) Understand how these three families relate to each other and borrow concepts from each other (they are frequently less antagonistic than they are portrayed as being).
(3) Understand how their basic arguments are applied across the major subfields of political science.
(4) Have an introductory level understanding of how other related disciplines
(economics, sociology) think about institutions.
The course is designed for Ph.D. students. It is likely to be useful to most such students, given the pervasiveness of institutionalism in political science discussions, but will be especially useful for students who are interested in applying institutional theory in their dissertation. It is intended to complement the two other cross-sub-disciplinary courses (on organizations and on culture) that the department offers (there should be very little overlap with these courses, but substantial complementarities for those who take more than one).
Student Expectations
First – turn up prepared for class. This is a seminar course, with an emphasis on discussion. I will lead the class but try not to dominate it. You need to do the readings, which I have tried to keep at a reasonable level for a Ph.D. class, but which will require work (I have tried to assign articles and book extracts, not complete books).
Second – be prepared to take an active role in discussions. I will be looking for quality of argument rather than quantity, but obviously you need to participate in order for me to assess your contribution. Students should try not only to think through what is wrong with the different articles (criticism is the skill that comes most easily to all of us), but also how it could be done better, or how ideas discussed in class could be applied in interesting and novel directions.
Third – get the assignments done in a timely fashion. Students have a little bit of leeway in deciding which set of assignments to do. Students who are interested in using institutional theory for their dissertation, or for a paper that might become an article, are encouraged to choose the long paper. Note that for this to work, students really need to be actively engaged with me throughout the whole semester. Students who are more interested in simply mastering debates about institutional theory have the option of doing three shorter mini-papers instead.
Grading
The grading for the class will be as follows

(1) 25% of the grade is for in-class participation, and active and intelligent discussion of the topics for each week.
(2a) Students who wish to do the long paper will have 15% of their mark assessed on the basis of a proposal, to be completed by October 1. This proposal should be around 5 pages double-spaced, and should discuss the chosen topic, the way that institutional theory can be deployed to study the topic, an outline of the argument and so on. They will have 20% of their mark depend on a 15-20 page double spaced first draft of the paper, to be handed in by November 1. They will have 40% of their grade depend on the final paper, which should be between 25 and 35 pages long. I am willing to look at early drafts of any of these assignments, and provide indications (a) as to the likely grades, and (b) how the assignments can be improved.
(2b) Students who wish instead to do short papers should write 3 short papers, 8-12 pages long. One of these papers should be completed during the month of September, one during the month of October, and one during the month of November. Each paper counts for 25% of the total grade. I am willing to look at and grade more than 3 short papers should students wish to write them – I will then base the grade on the average of the best
3 papers.
Format
All written assignments should be in rich text format (RTF) – which any word processor will produce. Short essays should have the following filename format – studentlastname_studentfirstname_weekofclass.rtf
. For example, if I were to write a paper on the readings for the first week, the format would be Farrell_Henry_Week1.rtf.
For those writing the longer paper, the proposal should take the form studentlastname_studentfirstname_proposal.rtf
, the first draft studentlastname_studentfirstname_firstdraft.rtf
and the final paper studentlastname_studentfirstname_finalpaper.rtf
. If you are sending me a rough draft for comment rather than grading, obviously you should make this clear in the covering email, and at the beginning of the paper. All written assignments should be emailed to me as attachments at psc8489@henryfarrell.net
, as should all correspondence related to class. I get lots of email – this will allow me to tag course-related email and ensure it doesn’t get lost in the deluge. Papers which don’t conform to these rules will be returned to the student for re-sending. NB that I am not a stickler for students using any particular bibliographic package or style – as long as it (a) conveys the relevant information, and
(b) is consistent, I will be happy. Papers should be double-spaced.
Plagiarism
I used not to have a plagiarism notice on my Ph.D. syllabi. Then an unfortunate incident happened, and I had to change my practices. I take a strong view on plagiarism when it is conducted by Ph.D. students, and have a policy of forwarding all instances to the relevant authorities with a recommendation that a permanent black mark be placed on the student’s record. I do not at all object to students helping each other prepare for class discussion by e.g. forming reading groups to discuss articles. However, I am likely to be

very strict about any misbehavior that involves written assignments for class, or other forms of academic dishonesty.
Readings
There are two required books for the course.
(1) Jack Knight and Itai Sened, eds. Explaining Social Institutions . Ann Arbor: The
University of Michigan Press. 1995.
(2) James Mahoney and Kathleen Thelen, Explaining Institutional Change:
Ambiguity, Agency and Power . Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 2010.
Both should be available from Powells, Amazon and other online retailers. All other readings will be made available via Blackboard.
1 – Different Approaches to Institutions Sep 6.
Katznelson, Ira and Weingast, Barry R. Intersections Between Historical and Rational
Choice Institutionalism. in Katznelson, Ira and Weingast, Barry, eds. Preferences and Situations: Points of Intersection Between Historical and Rational Choice
Institutionalism.
New York: Russell Sage; 2005; pp. 1-26.
DiMaggio, Paul. The New Institutionalisms: Avenues of Collaboration. Journal of
Institutional and Theoretical Economics . 1998; 154(4):697-705.
Adcock, Robert, Bevir, Mark and Stimson, Shannon. Historicizing the New
Institutionalism(s). in Adcock, Robert and Bevir, Mark and Stimson, Shannon.
Modern Political Science: Anglo-American Exchanges since 1880 . Princeton NJ:
Princeton University Press. 2007.
Peter A. Hall, “Historical Institutionalism in Rationalist and Sociological Perspective,” in
James Mahoney and Kathleen Thelen, Explaining Institutional Change
(Cambridge University Press 2010).
2- Rational Choice Theories of Institutions I – Institutions, Cycling and Stability of
Choice (Organization of Congress) Sep 13.
Diermeier, Daniel and Krehbiel, Keith. Institutionalism as a Methodology. Journal of
Theoretical Politics 15,2:123-144. 2003.

Shepsle, Kenneth A. Institutional Arrangements and Equilibrium in Multidimensional
Voting Models. American Journal of Political Science . 1979; 23( 1):27-59.
Weingast, Barry R. and William J. Marshall. The Industrial Organization of Congress; or,
Why Legislatures, Like Firms, Are Not Organized as Markets. 1988. Journal of
Political Economy 96(1):132-163.
Riker, William H. Implications from the Disequilibrium of Majority Rule for the Study of
Institutions. American Political Science Review . 1980; 72( 2):432-446.
Moe, Terry. Political Institutions: The Neglected Side of the Story. Journal of Law,
Economics, and Organization 6: 213-254. 1990.
3 – Rational Choice Theories of Institutions II – Institutional Origins and Change
(Inequality and Political Economy) Sep 20.
Knight, Jack. Models, Interpretations and Theories: Constructing Explanations of
Institutional Emergence and Change. In Jack Knight and Itai Sened, eds.
Explaining Social Institutions . Ann Arbor: The University of Michigan Press.
1995.
North, Douglass C. Institutions, Institutional Change and Economic Performance.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press; 1990. pp.83-117.
Greif, Avner and David Laitin. “A Theory of Endogenous Institutional Change.”
American Political Science Review . 2004; 98:633-652.
Bowles, Samuel, Suresh Naidu and Sung-Ha Hwang. An Evolutionary Approach to
Institutional Persistence and Change (unpublished paper).
Acemoglu, Daron and Robinson, James A. Economic Origins of Dictatorship and
Democracy . Cambridge. Cambridge University Press. Chapter One.
4 – Rational Choice Theories of Institutions III – Institutional Consequences
(institutions and theories of trust and cooperation) Sep 27.

Greif, Avner, Milgrom, Paul and Weingast, Barry R. Coordination, Commitment and
Enforcement: The Case of the Merchant Guild. In Knight, Jack and Sened, Itai.
Explaining Social Institutions . Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press. 2004.
Miller, Gary J. Monitoring, Rules, and the Control Paradox: Can the Good Soldier Svejk be Trusted? in: Kramer, Roderick M. and Cook, Karen S., eds. Trust and Distrust in Organizations: Dilemmas and Approaches . New York: Russell Sage
Foundation; 2004.
Calvert, Randall L. Rational Actors, Equilibrium, and Social Institutions. in: Knight, Jack and Sened, Itai, eds. Explaining Social Institutions . Ann Arbor: University of
Michigan Press; 1995.
Levi, Margaret. A State of Trust. in: Braithwaite, Valerie and Levi, Margaret, eds. Trust and Governance . New York: Russell Sage Foundation; 1998; pp. 77-101.
Barak D. Richman. How Community Institutions Create Economic Advantage: Jewish
Diamond Merchants in New York. Law and Social Inquiry 31,2:383-420. 2006.
Gambetta, Diego. The Mafia: The Price of Distrust. In Gambetta, Diego ed. Trust:
Making and Breaking Cooperative Relations . Oxford: Oxford University Press
1990.
5 – Historical Institutionalism I – Macro-Institutions (Society and the State).
October 4
Thelen, Kathleen and Steinmo, Sven. Historical Institutionalism in Comparative Politics. in: Steinmo, Sven and Thelen, Kathleen, eds. Structuring Politics: Historical
Institutionalism in Comparative Analysis . Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press; 1992.
Katznelson, Ira. Structure and Configuration in Comparative Politics. in Lichbach, Mark
I. and Zuckerman, Alan S., eds. Comparative Politics: Rationality, Culture and
Structure . Cambridge: Cambridge University Press; 1997.
Hall, Peter A. Policy Paradigms, Social Learning and the State: The Case of Economic
Policymaking in Britain. Comparative Politics 25, 3:275-296. 1993.
Tilly, Charles. War Making and State Making as Organized Crime. in: Evans, Peter B.;
Rueschemeyer, Dietrich, and Skocpol, Theda, eds . Bringing the State Back In .
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press; 1985.

6 – Historical Institutions II –Path Dependence, Persistence and Change (Varieties of Capitalism). October 11
Pierson, Paul. Path Dependence, Increasing Returns, and the Study of Politics. American
Political Science Review . 2000; 33, 6/7:251-67.
Hall, Peter and Soskice, David. Varieties of Capitalism. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
2000. Chapter One.
Kathleen Thelen. Historical Institutionalism in Comparative Politics. Annual Review of
Political Science . 1999; 2,1:369-404.
Colin Crouch and Henry Farrell. Breaking the Path of Institutional Development.
Alternatives to the New Determinism. Rationality and Society 16,1:5-43.
Bob Hancke, Martin Rhodes and Martin Thatcher. Beyond Varieties of Capitalism.
Beyond Varieties of Capitalism . Oxford University Press 2008.
7 – Historical Institutionalism III: Beyond Path Dependence: Identifying Specific
Mechanisms of Historical Institutional Change (The Welfare State). October 18
Pierson, Paul. The New Politics of the Welfare State. World Politics . 1996; 48:143-79.
Skocpol, Theda. Protecting Soldiers and Mothers: The Political Origins of Social Policy in the United States.
Cambridge MA: The Belknap Press. 1992. Conclusion.
Hacker, Jacob S. Policy Drift: The Hidden Politics of US Welfare State Retrenchment. in:
Streeck, Wolfgang and Thelen, Kathleen, eds. Beyond Continuity: Institutional
Change in Advanced Political Economies . New York: Oxford University Press;
2005.
Alan M. Jacobs, “Policymaking as Political Constraint: Institutional Development in the
U.S. Social Security Program, in James Mahoney and Kathleen Thelen,
Explaining Institutional Change: Ambiguity, Agency and Power . Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press 2010.
Morgan, Kimberly J. The “Production” of Child Care: How Labor Markets Shape Social
Policy, and Vice-Versa. Social Politics 12,2:243-263.

James Mahoney and Kathleen Thelen, “A Theory of Gradual Institutional Change,” in
James Mahoney and Kathleen Thelen, Explaining Institutional Change:
Ambiguity, Agency and Power . Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 2010.
8 – Ideational and Sociological Accounts of Institutions I (Norms and Ideas in
World Politics). October 25.
March, James and Olsen, Johan. The New Institutionalism: Organizational Factors in
Political Life. In The American Political Science Review 78,3, 734-749. 1984.
Olsen, Johan. “The Many Faces of Europeanization,”
ARENA Working Paper 01/02 available at http://www.arena.uio.no/publications/wp02_2.htm (also published in the Journal of Common Market Studies ).
Schimmelfennig, Frank. The Community Trap: Liberal Norms, Rhetorical Action and the
Eastern Enlargement of the European Union. International Organization 55:47-
80. 2001.
Kathleen McNamara, “Where Do Rules Come From?: The Creation of the European
Central Bank.” In Stone-Sweet, Alec and Wayne Sandholtz eds., The
Institutionalization of Europe (Oxford University Press 2001).
Meyer, John. and B. Rowan. Institutional organizations: formal structure as myth and ceremony. American Journal of Sociology 83:340-63. 1977.
Evan Schofer. The Structural Sources of Associational Life. Unpublished Paper. 2006.
10 – Ideational and Sociological Accounts II. The Institutional Sociology of
Economic Change. November 1.
Paul DiMaggio and Walter Powell. The Iron Cage Revisited: Institutional Isomorphism and Collective Rationality in Organizational Fields. American Sociological Review
48,2:147-160.
Richard Swedberg. Markets as Social Structures. In Smelser, Neil and Swedberg, Richard eds. Handbook of Economic Sociology . Princeton NJ: Princeton University Press. 1994.

Neil Fligstein and Doug McAdam, Towards a General Theory of Strategic Action Fields.
Sociological Theory . 29,1:1-23. 2011
Dobbin, Frank. Forging Industrial Policy: The United States, Britain and France in the
Railway Age . Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 1994. Chapter One.
Neil Fligstein. The Structural Transformation of American Industry: An Institutional
Account of the Causes of Diversification in the Largest Firms: 1919-1979. in Powell,
Walter W. and DiMaggio, Paul eds. The New Institutionalism in Organizational Analysis .
Chicago: University of Chicago Press. 1991.
Mizruchi, Mark and Gerald Davis. 2004. The Globalization of American Banking, 1962-
1981. In Frank Dobbin ed. The Sociology of the Economy . New York: Russell Sage.
2004..
11 – Ideational and Sociological Accounts III (Ideas and Economic Institutions in
Comparative Politics). November 8.
Blyth, Mark. Great Transformations: Economic Ideas and Political Change in the
Twentieth Century . Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Chapter Two,
Chapter Eight.
Hall, Peter A. The Role of Interests, Institutions, and Ideas in the Comparative Political
Economy of the Industrialized Nations. In Lichbach, Mark and Zuckerman, Alan eds. Comparative Politics: Rationality, Culture and Structure . Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press. 1997.
Culpepper, Pepper. Institutional Change in Contemporary Capitalism: Coordinated
Financial Systems since 1990. World Politics 57,2: 173-209. 2005.
Stephen Bell. Do We Really Need a ‘New Constructivist Institutionalism’ to Explain
Institutional Change? British Journal of Political Science (forthcoming 2011).
Vivien Schmidt. A Curious Constructivism: A Response to Professor Bell. British
Journal of Political Science (forthcoming 2011).
12 - Comparing Accounts of Institutions I (Crisis and Continuity in the Former
Warsaw Pact Countries). November 15.

Shleifer and Vishny, The Grabbing Hand: Government Pathologies and Their Cures.
Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press 1999. Chapters Eight, Eleven.
Allio, Lorene et al. Post-Communist Privatization as a Test of Theories of Institutional
Change. In Weimer, David L. ed. The Political Economy of Property Rights:
Institutional Change and Credibility in the Reform of Centrally Planned
Economies . Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 1997.
Bunce, Valerie. Subversive Institutions: The Design and the Collapse of Socialism and the State . Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 1999. Chapter Seven.
Appel, Hilary. The Ideological Determinants of Liberal Economic Reform: The Case of
Privatization. World Politics 52, 4:520-549.
Timothy Frye, “Original Sin, Good Works and Private Property in Russia,”
World
Politics 58, 479-504. 2006.
David Woodruff. Rules for Followers: Institutional Theory and the New Politics of
Economic Backwardness in Russia. Politics and Society 28,4:437-482. 2000.
No Class because of Thanksgiving Week of November 22.
13 - Competing Accounts of Institutions III – The Institutional Politics of
Delegation. November 29.
Carpenter, Daniel. The Forging of Bureaucratic Autonomy: Reputations, Networks and
Policy Networks in Executive Agencies . Conclusion: The Politics of Bureaucratic
Autonomy. Princeton NJ: Princeton University Press. 2001.
Barnett, Michael and Finnemore, Martha. Rules for the World: International
Organizations in Global Politics . Ithaca: Cornell University Press 2004. Chapter
Two.
Epstein, David, and O’Halloran, Sharyn. Asymmetric Information, Delegation and the
Structure of Policy-Making. Journal of Theoretical Politics 11,1:35-56. 1999.
McCubbins, Mathew D. and Schwartz, Thomas. Congressional Oversight Overlooked:
Police Patrols versus Fire Alarms. American Journal of Political Science 28,1,
165-179. 1984.
John Huber and Charles Shipan. Deliberate Discretion?: The Institutional Foundations of
Bureaucratic Autonomy.
Chapter Four. Cambridge University Press. 2002.

14 - New Directions in Institutional Theory – Cognitive Institutionalism. Dec 6
(Tuesday).
Jack Knight and Douglass North. Explaining Economic Change: The Interplay Between
Cognition and Institutions. Legal Theory 3:211-226. 1997.
Josiah Ober, Democracy and Knowledge: Innovation and Learning in Classical Athens
Chapters 3 and 4. Princeton: Princeton University Press. 2008.
Farrell, Henry and Cosma Rohilla Shalizi, Evolutionary Theory and the Dynamics of
Institutional Change . Unpublished paper.
Page, Scott. Uncertainty, Difficulty and Complexity. Journal of Theoretical Politics ,
20(2):115-149. 2008.
Padgett, John F. and Paul McLean. Organizational Invention and Elite Transformation:
The Birth of Partnership Systems in Renaissance Florence. American Sociological
Review 111, 5:1463-1568. 2006.