Taking institutional turns seriously requires attention to the micro- foundations, meso- connections and macro- contexts of an institution. We identify five complementary ways to put institutions in their place. The order of presentation is intended to make the argument easier to follow; it does not indicate a mandatory chronological sequence in these responses.
Micro- foundations and Macro- contexts
Institutions are not only sustained and instantiated in individual, organi-zational and inter- organiorgani-zational activities, but also embedded in more or less distinct institutional orders in a complex, decentred societal forma-tion. This is where historical institutionalism is superior to rational- choice institutionalism (cf. Thelen 1999). However, as Colin Hay has observed, some leading historical institutionalists have resolved the rational calculus versus cultural norms conundrum in favour of the former. He writes that their attempt at bridge- building ‘runs from historical institutionalism, by way of an acknowledgment of the need to incorporate microfoundations into institutionalist analysis, to rational choice institutionalism’ (Hay
60 Towards a cultural political economy
2006: 63). A similar point is made by Graça, writing on the new economic sociology, when noting that
it dared to refute, if only in part, some of the assumptions and methods of aca-demic economics. At the same time, however, it hastened to delimit the scope of the refutation, and again and again tended to retrace its steps and revert to the traditional, self- legitimizing allegation that there are a number of points of view or analytical angles and that its own view is just one among several, in juxtaposition with – rather than in opposition to – that of economics. (Graça 2005: 111, translated and cited in Cardoso Machado 2011: ¶18)
Thus to rescue sociological and historical institutionalism from their
‘friends’ is an important task in the battle against economics imperial-ism. More generally, analyses that focus on micro- foundations and fail to locate institutions in broader contexts find it hard to address the limita-tions of institutional design or institutional change. This problem has been addressed in the ‘actor- centred institutional approach’ of the Max Planck Institute for Social Research in Cologne and associated, above all, with its former co- directors, Renate Mayntz and Fritz Scharpf. This approach investigates strategic, goal- oriented political action and its limits, as rooted in various kinds of institutional constraint. From the mid- 1980s, their work has focused on the limits to political steering (a form of goal- oriented, purposeful political action) that originate from the complexity and resulting opaqueness of modern societies. They combine two themes in various case studies: (1) problem- solving activities, strategies and poli-cies, especially those pursued by organizations, collective actors (such as industrial associations), state agencies and policy networks; and (2) the limits of attempts to steer the development of large technical infrastruc-ture systems, the evolution of particular functional systems, or societal development more generally. They address these limits in part through actors’ bounded rationality and in part through the complexity of func-tional systems and funcfunc-tionally differentiated societies, which have their own special logics (Eigendynamik) that make them resistant to steering and produce unintended and unanticipated outcomes that are historically surprising, even to informed social scientists. This is related in turn to the non- linear dynamics of complex systems, with their proneness to sudden ruptures and transformations.
In dealing with actors, agent- centred institutional theorists focus on complex actors rather than individuals, on actors’ interests, identities, action orientations and resources in specific actor constellations rather than in generic, context- free terms, and on different forms of interaction (e.g. negotiation, multi- level decision- making and hierarchical command).
In dealing with institutions, they focus on the logics and particular
Institutional turns and beyond 61 dynamics of different institutional orders and functional subsystems. One
link between the two is the analysis of the asymmetries involved in spe-cific interaction arenas, including those that involve multi- level and/or multi- site interactions. Within this school, Mayntz has maintained a more sociological approach, whereas Scharpf has moved towards rational- choice and game- theoretical analyses. Actor- centred institutionalism is a research heuristic and makes no claims to become a general theory (for a representative selection of work of its founding figures, see Mayntz 1997;
Mayntz and Scharpf 1995; Scharpf 2000).
This approach has theoretical and methodological advantages over Giddens’s structuration theory (especially as regards operationaliza-tion) but it still has three major limitations. First, it does not ask, as a Foucauldian or discourse- institutionalist analysis would, why and how particular collective problems come to be ‘problematized’ and treated as potentially solvable in ways that serve some construal of the collective interest (see Chapter 3). Second, it does not provide the broader contextu-alization offered by the SRA, especially in relation to questions of domi-nation (as Mayntz 2001 later conceded). And, third, it does not address, where relevant, the limits to collective problem- solving that are rooted in the contradictions of capitalism and/or of social formations in which profit- oriented, market- mediated accumulation is the dominant principle of societal organization. This would reveal more fundamental limits to institutional redesign, policy- making and problem- solving than can be derived from bounded rationality and system complexity alone.
In this regard, without seeking to engage in a capital- or class- reductionist analysis of all institutions (thereby contradicting its founda-tional principles), the SRA as developed here and elsewhere would – where appropriate – investigate institutions and institutional clusters as particu-lar, overdetermined instantiations of the basic social forms of the capital relation, which, while they have their own dynamics, also reproduce, in different ways, these incompressible contradictions. Institutional analyses certainly permit distinctions among different forms or stages of capitalism and facilitate historical and comparative studies of capitalist societies. But they cannot explain the generic features of capitalism and they ignore the generic constraints imposed by the self- organizing dynamic of capitalism in favour of more middle- range analyses. This is also a potential weakness, for example, in more recent work in the RA in so far as it ignores the inher-ent limitations, contradictions and dilemmas of any and all accumulation regimes and their modes of regulation. This is reflected in problems with some recent regulationist analyses of the neoliberal forms of globalization and post- Fordism (see Jessop 1999, 2013e).
Similar points hold for critical institutionalist analyses of other forms of
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domination or discursively and structurally reproduced social exclusion.
Commonly studied forms include: different modes of patriarchal domi-nation and heteronormativity; ‘ethnic’ and ‘racial’ discrimidomi-nation and oppression; and uneven spatial development that reinforces social exclu-sion. This is also a field where issues of the intersection of different forms of domination and exclusion can be posed (see Chapter 4).
Spatio- temporality
Institutions emerge in specific places and at specific times, operate on one or more scales and with specific temporal horizons, develop their own specific capacities to stretch social relations and/or to compress events in space and time; hence they have their own specific spatial and temporal rhythms. These spatio- temporal features are not accidental or secondary features of institutions but constitutive properties that help to distinguish one organization, institution or institutional order from another (cf.
Pierson 2004). They also define the power geometries or ‘envelopes of space- time’ associated with different ways of organizing and institutional-izing social interaction (Massey 1994) and condition social forces’ capaci-ties to reproduce, transform or overturn institutions. Institutions provide a framework in which relevant actors can reach and consolidate agreements over (albeit possibly differential) spatial and temporal horizons of action vis- à- vis their environment. Thus institutional analyses should examine (1) the spatio- temporalities inscribed in (and reproduced through) specific institutional forms; and (2) the differential temporal and spatial horizons of various actors and their capacities to shift horizons, modify temporali-ties and spatialitemporali-ties, jump scales and so on. These inquiries must go beyond time and space as external parameters of institutions and/or action.
Institutions as Strategic Contexts
The social meaning of institutions involves the rules, modes of calcula-tion, logics of appropriateness and so on associated with the ‘doing’ (the performative realization) of an institution. The incomplete specification of institutions makes their reproduction dependent on skilled, reflexive and adaptable actors who understand the purposes of the institution and can reproduce it. These actors should have the corporeal, social and intellectual dispositions, capacities and skills to produce specific types of institutional behaviour and thereby reproduce the institutions (cf. Foucault). From a more radical constructivist position, subjects not only ‘do’ institutions but, in performing them, also constitute themselves as subjects through their performance (e.g. from a radical feminist perspective, Butler 1990). In
Institutional turns and beyond 63
Agency
Simple dichotomy
Newtonian space-time (external, absolute)
Kantian a priori (ideal, universal)
Reflexive–
recursive Genuine dialectical dualities
Embedded spatialities and embedded temporalities
(emergent, regularized)
‘Social spaces’ and
‘social times’
(constructed measures)
Structurally inscribed spatio-temporal selectivities
(differential constraints)
Spatio-temporally oriented strategic calculations (differential horizons) Structure
Heterog-eneous dualities
Reflexively reorganized spatio-temporal matrices (differentially distantiated differentially compressed)
Recursive reproduction of spatio-temporal fixes
Recursively selected strategies and tactics (chronotopic governance,
historicity etc.)
Figure 1.2 A strategic- relational approach to spatio- temporality
64 Towards a cultural political economy
addition, we must consider the changing perceptions of institutions among those who reproduce them, seek to transform them, are affected by them, or observe them from a distance. Institutions can have different functions in different contexts, be accorded different material weights, semiotic values and meanings, and be re- evaluated. For example, the institution of taxation is perceived and operates differently in the economy, juridical system and polity; it becomes more legitimate during military crises; its role is regularly re- evaluated over economic cycles, structural crises and swings of the political pendulum; and it is contested by different interests.
Relatedly, we must study how, if at all, actors (individual and/or collec-tive) take account of structurally inscribed strategic selectivities through
‘strategic- context’ analysis when adopting a course of action (Stones 1991, 2005). They may do so to reinforce, modify or undermine these selectivi-ties. Of course, because actors (individual and/or collective) have different capacities, they will be more or less well equipped to interpret institutions as a set of rules and resources for action and to circumvent constraints and exploit opportunities. They will also vary in their capacity to reflect on their experiences and to learn lessons and, a fortiori, to engage in ‘double- loop’ learning – learning how to learn and enhancing their capacities to engage in such reflection (on learning, see also Chapter 11). For actors are more or less able to modify their identities, recalculate interests, modify spatial and temporal horizons of actions, formulate new strategies and tactics, and so on, to improve their opportunities and chances of effective action. A reflexive turn might explore actors’ capacity to monitor their own actions; learn from experience; integrate social science knowledge into their activities; and programme their own development (producing evolution in modes of evolution). It is likely that less skilled actors who fail to realize their objectives will eventually exit the institutional field or survive in permanent subordination because there is no ‘exit’ option (cf. Archer 2012). This leads to the recursive selection of strategies and tactics through individual, collective or organizational learning about the results of pursuing different strategies and tactics in different conjunctures and through the structurally mediated selection and retention of some behaviours as habits (cf. Hodgson 2002). Such agential selectivities must be explored alongside the structural and discursive selectivities indicated above (later chapters will discuss technological selectivities). The scope for the reflexive reorganization of structural configurations is subject to structurally inscribed strategic selectivity (and thus has path- dependent as well as path- shaping aspects).
Institutions cannot be meaningfully or productively analysed without locating actors in a wider strategic- relational context. At any given instant, institutional analysis is prior to action – even if the latter subsequently
Institutional turns and beyond 65 transforms institutions and institutional contexts (cf. Grafstein 1992).
Interrelated constraints matter because actors cannot change all the con-ditions of action at once. In this sense, ‘explanation of the rules of the game and the focal points that attract [strategic] actors rests on the sort of institutional analysis provided by sociology’ (Nee and Strang 1998:
713–14). Social science explanations must be formally adequate in the sense that they explain all the effects included within the explanandum (which will not, of course, exhaust its referent); and they must be socially adequate in so far as they explain the discursive (intentional, meaningful, subjective, interpretive etc.) features that mediate the chain of events pro-ducing the explanandum (cf. Weber 1949, 1977; Ringer 2000). Weak social constructionist forms of institutionalism can be useful here.
Institutional Emergence
Against the temptation to reify or naturalize institutions, we agree with those new institutionalists who analyse them as complex, path- dependent, emergent phenomena, reproduced through specific forms of action. But we stress that their reproduction is inevitably incomplete, provisional and unstable, and that they co- evolve with diverse other complex, emergent phenomena. Institutions must be deconstructed and located historically.
Institutionalization involves not only the conduct of agents and their con-ditions of action, but also the very constitution of agents, identities, inter-ests and strategies. Institutionalization co- constitutes institutions as action contexts and actors as their institutional supports. This co- constitution is problematic from both sides. Thus neo- institutionalists should examine the many and varied struggles over the constitution of institutions, com-peting strategies, tactics and techniques of institutionalization, and the contingently necessary incompleteness, provisional nature and instability of attempts to govern or guide them. Moreover, because institutions are never fully constituted, there is space for competing institutional projects and designs. Sensitivity to this surplus of possibilities is found in many versions of sociological and historical institutionalism.
We should look behind the naturalization of institutions to examine institutional emergence as a complex evolutionary phenomenon that depends on specific mechanisms of variation, selection and retention in specific spatio- temporal contexts. Some rational- choice theorists argue that institutional variations emerge, are selected and are retained because they are efficient in a given environment. This risks tautology, where efficiency is reduced to allocative efficiency and given a ‘thin’ interpreta-tion analogous to rainterpreta-tional- choice concepts of rainterpreta-tionality. More complex accounts of efficiency (including recognition that actors’ accounts of
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efficiency can vary, may be mistaken and may conflict with each other) could avoid this temptation. Moreover, as other institutionalists argue, selection and retention are not quick, precise, frictionless and reversible, but slow, haphazard and path- dependent (March and Olsen 1996: 255).
The issue becomes yet more complex when one follows other institutional-ists in claiming that institutions and their environments co- evolve as the latter are modified by institutions as well as vice versa. In so far as reflex-ively reorganized structural configurations and recursreflex-ively selected strate-gies and tactics co- evolve over time to produce a relatively stable order out of a potentially unstructured complexity, we can talk of the structured coherence of this co- evolving, self- organizing order (see above).
The Limits to Institutional Coherence
From a strategic- relational perspective, the coherence of institutions and institutional complexes is always multiply tendential. Four reasons justify this conclusion:
1. Because the reproduction of institutions (like other structures) is only ever tendential, their strategic selectivities are tendential too.
2. Because institutions are strategically rather than structurally selective (Jessop 1990, 2001a, 2007b; Boyer and Saillard 2002; see also this chapter), there is always scope for actions to overflow or circumvent structural constraints through bricolage, innovation, resistance and so forth.
3. Because subjects are never unitary, never fully aware of the conditions of strategic action, never fully equipped to realize their preferred strat-egies, and always face possible opposition from actors pursuing other strategies or tactics, failure is an ever- present possibility.
4. Because institutions often embody structural contradictions and create strategic dilemmas, crisis tendencies and poor solutions to dilemmas can produce failure (see, in SRA terms, Jessop 1990; from an Anglo- Foucauldian perspective, Malpas and Wickham 1995; in discourse- analytical terms, Scherrer 1995; and, from an actor- network perspective, Dumez and Jeunemaître 2010).
All four of these disruptive and disorienting factors critique the common (but not universal) trend in the three main new institutionalisms to assume a tendency towards equilibrium in institutional orders. For example, eco-nomic institutions will be stable: (1) for rational- choice institutionalism when the conditions for efficient institutions exist and the ‘rules of the game’
enable dispassionate rational behaviour; (2) for historical institutionalism
Institutional turns and beyond 67 when chance discoveries and/or gradual or punctuated evolution select the
right set of institutional complementarities or isomorphism and maintain them through path- dependent inertia; and (3) for sociological institutional-ism when the market economy is embedded adequately in a market society.
Likewise, for discursive or ideational institutionalism, stability would entail
‘getting the ideation right’. In contrast to these approaches, which prioritize institutions and tend to take their reproduction for granted, a strategic- relational CPE approach emphasizes the possibility that social practices can overflow and disrupt institutions14 (cf. Poulantzas 1973: 264–7; 1974:
63; 1978: 38; and Buci- Glucksmann 1980: 48–9).
CONCLUDING REMARKS
A strategic- relational institutionalist research agenda requires new con-cepts and methodologies to transcend disciplinary boundaries. This matters more for new institutionalisms, which, in contrast to their old predecessors, are often firmly rooted in distinct disciplinary traditions and epistemic communities. Thus it is worth noting the trend, observed by DiMaggio (1998), that different institutionalisms have already moved from ‘mutual disengagement’ through constructive criticism to mutual dialogue. This aims to build bridges between disciplines that have hitherto favoured different forms of institutionalism to enhance their overall influ-ence in the social sciinflu-ences (cf. Campbell and Pedersen 2001). However, this can lead some adherents to engage in disciplinary expansion or impe-rialism; to engage in eclectic forms of empirical analysis when they step outside the home domain; or to produce incommensurable conceptual schemes when they seek to endogenize previously exogenous factors. In addition to fruitful ‘conversations’, we find growing recognition that many key issues actually demand pluri- , trans- or post- disciplinary approaches that operate across established disciplinary boundaries. These include social capital, trust, knowledge, learning, uncertainty, risk, innovation and entrepreneurship, competitiveness, governance, network economies, organizational dynamics, varieties of capitalism and social exclusion.
These have closely linked economic and extra- economic dimensions and also raise central issues of structure and agency.
Taking account of these concepts, we highlight the heuristic poten-tial of the strategic- relational concepts of ‘structurally inscribed stra-tegic selectivity’ and ‘structurally oriented strastra-tegic calculation’. The SRA argues that institutional structures have important strategic biases inscribed in their form, content and operation; and that actors are more or less context- sensitive in evaluating this strategic selectivity and their
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ability to exploit, contest or transform it. The material, discursive and spatio- temporal selectivities of an organization, institution or institu-tional ensemble privilege some practices and strategies over others (see Chapter 5). This depends on how such practices and strategies ‘match’
the material possibilities, meanings, and temporal and spatial patterns inscribed in these structures. Some actors, some identities, some interests, some strategies, some spatial and temporal horizons, some actions will be better positioned than others to realize the possibilities or circumvent
the material possibilities, meanings, and temporal and spatial patterns inscribed in these structures. Some actors, some identities, some interests, some strategies, some spatial and temporal horizons, some actions will be better positioned than others to realize the possibilities or circumvent