INSTITUTIONALISM

Discipline and Ideas in Social Science

INTRODUCTION:
• According to Veblen Institutions are place of
socially shared mental habits. After the post war
periods, focus of Institutionalisms moved to
analysing the individual rather than the institutions
which surrounded him/her. In the 1980s however,
new institutionalism, sometimes called 'neo-
institutionalism', has seen a revived focus on the
study of institutions as a lens for viewing work in
number of disciplines
including economics, sociology, international
relations and political science.
• .New institutionalism was born out of a
reaction to the behavioural revolution and
based on which the Washington
Consensus describes the important
reforms under neo- institutionalism.
Institutionalism advocates removing the
colossal deprivation that exists in the
country (like India) to make it a “less
unjust” society.
THORSTEIN
VEBLEN:
•The line of thought of Institutionalism
was initiated by Veblen in the 1890’s. In
order to have a better understanding we
need to take a glance at the course of
America’s economic history most from
1880 to 1915 which corresponded to the
most active period of the intellectual
carrier of “THORSTEIN VEBLEN” the
‘founder’ of institutionalist approach.
THORSTEIN
VEBLEN:

•Veblen developed a radical

critique of all orthodox economic
theory, from Smith onwards,
putting both classical and
neoclassical economists in the
same basket.
• According to Veblen human behaviour is governed
by basic instincts and the propensities to action
which are formed both by nature and the
institutions, the latter being defined as socially
shared mental habits.
• The first group is motivated by the instinct of
workmanship and idle curiosity, the second group
compete with each other in terms of ‘conspicuous
consumption’, a type of consumption that does not
satisfy real needs but only feeds the desire to
display one’s status in the eyes of a social reference
group.
Book of Veblen
• It was in his famous book “The Theory of Leisure
Class [1899] “that Veblen applied his social theory
to the way of life of the average American
consumer. In spite of difficulties of sometimes
archaic language, caused in large part by Veblen’s
struggles with the terminology of unilinear
evolution and of biological determination of social
variation that still dominated social thought when
he began to write, Veblen’s work remains relevant,
and not simply for the phrase “conspicuous
consumption.”
Traditional Institutionalism
•It draws insights from previous work in a wide
array of disciplines, including economics,
political science, sociology, anthropology,
and psychology. The reappearance of interest in
institutions in the early 1980s followed a
familiar pattern: it was a reaction to dominant
strands of thought that neglected institutions,
historical context, and process in favour of
general theorizing.
Traditional Institutional Approach
• It deals with the deeper and more resilient aspect of social structure
• It considers the processes by which structures, including schemas,
rules and norms and routines become established as authoritative
guidelines for social behaviour.
• It inquires into how these elements are created, diffused, adopted
and adapted over time and space, and how they fall into disuse and
decline.
• Institutions are regular, stable, recurring patterns of behaviour.
• Institutionalism is an approach to the study of political institutions,
a set of theoretical ideas and hypothesis concerning the relations
between institutional characteristics and political agency,
performance and change.
Features of Traditional Institutional Approach
• Holism- it was also concerned with constitutions and formal structures.
• The analysis of political institutions was done within their
– historical development
– Socio-economic milieu

• Normative – Political Science emerged from normative roots and so traditional

institutionalists linked their descriptive analysis of politics with the concern for
“good government”
•
• Legalism-it deals with the dominant role of law in governance. law constitute both
the framework of the public sector itself and major way by which the government
can affect the behaviour of people.
• Structuralism- the contention here is that structure not only mattered but also
determined behaviour. It concentrated on the major institutional features of political
systems and undertook comparative analysis of different political systems.