THE UNIVERSITY OF LEIPZIG

can have remarkable consequences at a later date, regardless of whether they were adopted
purposefully or unthinkingly and that some policy choices may prove almost irreversible.
Overall, we ought to note that there are a number of important theoretical and analytical
problems in the use of the historical institutional approach. The very factors that make the
approach so appealing at the onset such as a description of reality tend to diminish its ability
to function as an explanation of those same phenomena. 239 That is to say, the notion that
institutions persist along well-worn paths when they make policy and when they manage their
internal affairs, is a common observation about organizations, whether public or private. That
observation borders on banality, especially when considered in the context of constructing
institutional theory. 240 Furthermore, the ability to predict persistence does not help in
understanding institutional change. If, as in the historical institutionalist account, change tends
to be defined in primarily terms of major shifts away from the status quo, then somewhat
paradoxically we are left with little possibility of institutional explanations for change.
Sociological Institutionalism
Sociological institutionalism buds out of sociology, the sub-field of organizational theory. It
attempts to look at cultures and the study of organization. 241 According to Hall and Taylor,
sociological institutionalism was developed by the Stanford sociologists Meyer, Rowan,
Scott, DiMaggio and Powell from the late 1970s. 242 The intellectual root of this school of
thought illustrates the distinction between those parts of the social world said to reflect a
formal means-ends to rationality and those parts said to reflect culture. Sociological
institutionalists build on this to argue that, the reason why many of the institutional forms and
procedures used by modern organisations have been adopted, is not necessarily that they are
most efficient for the task at hand. Instead they argue that many of these forms and procedures
should be seen as culturally-specific practices. 243 This is opposed to views that see certain
institutional forms as inherently and transcendently rational. Examples are ‘weberian’
portraits of bureaucracy.
Hall and Taylor argue that one distinctive feature of sociological institutionalism relates to the
relationship between institutions and individual action. 244 We have seen that this branch of
new institutionalism typically has a ‘cultural’ approach to this relationship. This implies that
239
Weir, M. 1992. Ideas and the Politics of Bounded Innovation. In Structuring Politics: Historical
Institutionalism in Comparative Perspective, edited by S. Steinmo, K. Thelen and F. Longstreth.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
240
Hedstrom, P., and R. Swedborg. 1998. “Social Mechanisms: An Introductory Essay.” In Social
Mechanisms:An Analytic Approach to Social Theory, edited by P. Hedstrom and R. Swedborg.
Cambridge:Cambridge University.
241
Selznick, P. 1949. TVA and the Grassroots: Study in Sociology of formal Organization. Barkley: University
of California Press.
242
Hall, P and R. Taylor. 1996. Political Science and the Three New Institutionalisms. Political Studies 44: 936-
958.
243
March, J. 1999. The pursuit of organizational intelligence. Malden MA: Blackwell.
244
Karen, L. R. 1997. Theoretical Decay and Theoretical Development: The Resurgence of Institutional
Analysis,’ World Politics, 50:34-61.
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