CHAPTER III: CONTINUITY AND CHANGE—HISTORICAL INSTITUTIONAL
3.2 R ESEARCH F RAMEWORK OF E XPLAINING C ONTINUITY AND C HANGE
3.2.1 Self-reproduction Mechanisms
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3.2 Research Framework of Explaining Continuity and Change
In this section, I will explain the main mechanisms used to explain causal relationship of my case study—the British medieval commonfields. The main mechanism of explanation is
“self-reproduction mechanism” already partly mentioned above. Below, I will elaborate it a bit more for research clarity and operational purposes.
3.2.1 Self-reproduction Mechanisms
As the objective of part of this research is to answer why there were regional variances in the British commonfield system causing pain and suffering more so in certain areas than others, it is of utmost importance to identify the self-reproducing mechanisms within the institutions. The essence of historical institutionalism lies in its notion that “past influence future” via causal mechanisms such as “path dependency”, “lock-in” effects and/or
“self-reproducing sequences” mentioned earlier. However, as scholars pointed out, there is an urgent need for historical institutionalism to specify more precisely “the reproduction and feedback mechanisms on which particular institutions rest”,176 or else, it is only a
“mysterious block box” (“without clearly specifying the underlying mechanisms or processes by which change occur…”).177 “Exploring these mechanisms”, as Pierson puts it, “can lead us to reassess prominent areas of social science inquiry and conventional practices in new and fertile ways”. 178 Thus, the “identification and clarification of such mechanisms can enhance our ability to develop arguments about temporal processes that are both convincing and have at least limited portability”.179
176 Thelen, 1999, p. 400.
177 Campbell, 2004, p.5.
178 Paul Pierson , Politics in Time: History, Institutions, and Social Analysis (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2004), p. 6.
179 Pierson, 2004, p. 6.
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Ikenberry characterized two sources of this institutional “stickiness” or “lock-in”
phenomenon. The first, coined by Thelen as “distributional”,180 states that “institutions tend to create privileged positions for groups and individuals who work to perpetuate those institutions, even after the interests that created the institutions have gone or changed”.181 This creates a so-called “vested interest” that the beneficiaries of the institution seek to retain and protect.182 Hence, from this view, the reinforcement of these institutions only strengthens status-quo power and resource asymmetries, even if it was not meant to be intentional initially. This renders institutions as non-neutral, but rather seemingly “created to serve the interests of those with the bargaining power to devise new rules”.183
Second, coined as “functional” by Thelen,184 institutional persistence exists “in terms of costs and uncertainty”.185 Thelen puts it best: “once a set of institutions is in place, actors adapt their strategies in ways that reflect but also reinforce the ‘logic’ of the system”.186 Zysman also illustrates this effect rightly that “the institutional structure induces particular kinds of…behavior by constraining and by laying out to the market and policy-making process”.187 This largely coincides with North’s notion of “increasing returns” (due to existence of transaction costs among all human dealings).188 North sees increasing returns channeling through four effects: (1) large setup or fixed costs; (2) learning effects; (3) coordination effects; (4) adaptive expectations. The first effect is about “sunken costs” of the old institutions adding on top of the erection costs of a new institution with unforeseeable benefits, and thus a large uncertainty of loss versus gain prospects. (If according to prospect
180 Thelen, 1999, p. 394.
181 Ikenberry, 1994, p. 8.
182 Arthur L. Stinchcombe, Constructing Social Theories (New York: Harcourt, Brace and World, 1968), pp.
108-118.
183 Douglass C. North, Institutions, Institutional Change and Economic Performance (Cambridge, U.K.; New York: Cambridge University Press, 1990), p.16.
184 Thelen, 1999, p.392.
185 Ikenberry, 1994, p. 9.
186 Thelen, 1999, p.392.
187 John Zysman, “How Institutions Create Historically Rooted Trajectories of Growth”, Industrial and Corporate Change, Vol. 3, No. 1 (1994), p. 243.
188 See North, 1990, 93-96.
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theory, it suggests that “individuals value losses twice as much as they value gains”.)189 The second to forth effects are all kinds of “adaptive strategies” of response to the institutional structure: learning the logic, working within the logic with others, and thus constructing a mutual/inter-subjective expectation of others also within the institution (also lowers uncertainty). In sum, when we combine the above effects, North predicts, “the interdependent web of an institutional matrix produces massive increasing returns” (especially when in a situation of “imperfect markets” with asymmetrical information).190
It is important here to remind that under these two reproduction mechanisms, neither implies increasing efficiency of the institution in question, nor do individuals or groups always act to the utility-maximization logic. Moreover, both of these mechanisms operate under the causal chain of path dependency, punctuated by critical junctures that cause certain continuation or breakaway of institutional arrangements.
However, the two categories above are still too general for research. I’ll need to borrow from the four adaptions of self-reinforcing mechanisms from Mahoney (originally from Randall Collins) mentioned before: utilitarian, functional, power, and legitimation explanations. From definition, we can generally relate the utilitarian and functional explanations under Ikenberry and Thelen’s “functional” mechanism and power and legitimation explanations under the “distributional” mechanism.
(1) Utilitarian explanation: Rational actors make rational decisions to reproduce institutions—including even possibly sub-optimal institutions—due to the reason that potential benefits of changing the institutions outweigh the costs. Douglas North’s concepts of increasing returns fall under here. Efficiency is also the main rationale in the making of decisions. It is also understandable that this view is most applicable in a market situation and much less salient outside the marketplace. Change is brought about when
189 Deborah Kay Elms, “New Directions for IPE: Drawing from Behavioral Economics”, International Studies Review, Vol. 10 (June, 2008), p. 245.
190 North, 1990, p. 95.
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faced with “increased competitive pressures” and “learning processes” in which rational actors are able to anticipate future costs and make changes in the present. In short, institutional change comes from change of cost-benefit analysis of possible options.191 (2) Functional explanation: There are strong and weak versions of this explanation. Mahoney
emphasizes the strong version—“institutional reproduction is explained specifically because of its functional consequences for a larger system within with the institution is embedded in”.192 More importantly, “the consequences of an institution for an overall system are also understood to be the causes of the reproduction of that institution”.193 The institution serves a certain function, which helps the system to function, and in turn, expands the institution and furthers its ability to perform the function and so on.
Functionality replaces efficiency as the core rationale mechanism of reproduction. Should changes arise, they would come from “exogenous shocks that transforms the systems need” to change or even replace the old institution.194
(3) Power explanation: Similar to the utilitarian explanation, analysts using this approach assume actors to act rationally weighing costs and benefits of options. However, they view institutions as non-neutral and biased in distribution of costs and benefits, and that actors have “different endowments of resources” and influences with “conflicting interest vis-à-vis institutional reproduction”.195 This means that certain actors have a better chance at swaying the distributional effects of an institution towards their way, and use that institution to further their own interests. Thus, even when most individuals are hurt by the institution and wish to change it, the institution, provide with powerful elites with vested interests, may still endure and reproduce. This is not to say that the benefited powerful elites existed before the institution. It may be because of the institution that such
191 Mahoney, 2000, pp. 517-19.
192 Mahoney, 2000, p. 519.
193 Mahoney, 2000, p. 519.
194 Mahoney, 2000, p. 517 (Table 1), pp. 519-21.
195 Mahoney, 2000, p. 521.
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a group become privileged and this advantaged group uses its additional power to increase institutional benefits for themselves. In effect, they become better off and more powerful again. Should change arise, it would come from the “weakening of elites and strengthening of subordinate groups”.196 In short, apart from sudden external power shifts, this change could only come incrementally from within.
(4) Legitimation explanation: In this perspective, institutional reproduction is “grounded in actors’ subjective orientation and beliefs of what is appropriate or morally correct”.197 In other words, it is the logic of appropriateness to do what is believed to be right. Thus, institutions reproduce because actors deem it as legitimate and “voluntarily opt for its reproduction”.198 Such a belief may arise from moral principles or just an acceptance with the status quo. “What is right to do” replaces utilitarian cost-benefit analysis, system functionality or elite power as the main rationale of decision making. If change happens, it means “changes in the values or subjective beliefs of actors”.199 In short, as longs as there are no change in ideas, “what is right to do” remains right; when ideas change, so do actors’ perception of what is legitimate.
Thelen rightly observes that “what we need to know is which particular interactions and collisions…have the potential to disrupt the feedback mechanism that reproduce stable patterns over time, producing political openings for institutional evolution and change”.200 It is this particular observation that makes possible for both positive and negative feedback loops to explain change and stability:201 if the feedback mechanism it not disrupted, we can assume institutional stability; if it is, then we can assume some kind of change is bound to follow in time.
196 Mahoney, 2000, p. 517 (Table 1).
197 Mahoney, 2000, p. 523.
198 Mahoney, 2000, p. 523.
199 Mahoney, 2000, p. 517 (Table 1).
200 Thelen, 1999, p. 397.
201 Thelen, 1999, p. 399.
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