I.

INTRODUCTION

“We find ourselves under the government of a system of political institutions, conducing more
essentially to the ends of civil and religious liberty, than any of which the history of former times
tells us.” -Abraham Lincoln

A. Traditional Approaches in the Study of Political Science

 A tradition is a set of understandings someone receives during socialization. A

certain relationship should exist between beliefs and practices if they are to make
up a tradition. First, the relevant beliefs and practices should have passed from
generation to generation. Second, traditions should embody appropriate
conceptual links. The beliefs and practices that one generation passes on to
another should display minimal consistency.

 The distinctive contribution of political science to the study of institutions is the

analysis of the historical evolution of formal-legal institutions and the ideas
embedded in them. The “new institutionalisms” announced the rediscovery by
American modernist-empiricist political scientists of this theme, and they offer
sophisticated variations on it, but it is still the starting point.

 It is a taken for granted assumption that the rise of the “new institutionalism”
replaced the “old institutionalism.” Old institutionalism is not limited to formal-
legal analysis. It encompasses all the traditions discussed below.
TRADITIONS IN THE STUDY OF POLITICAL INSTITUTIONS

Traditions Modernist- Formal-legal Idealist Socialist

empiricist

Definition of Formal rules, Public laws that Institutions The specific

Political compliance concern formal express…ideas articulation of
Institutions procedures, and governmental about political class struggle.
standard organizations. authority…and
operating embody a
practices that continuing
structure approach to
relationships resolving the
between issues which
individuals in arise in the
various units of relations
the polity and between citizen
the economy. and government.
 Present Day USA: New French UK:
Examples Institutionalisms constitutionalism Conservative
Idealism

Reference: Adcock, R., Bevir, M., and Stimson, S. 2006. Historicizing the new institutionalisms.
In Modern Political Science: Anglo-American Exchanges since 1880, ed. R. Adcock, M. Bevir,
and S. Stimson. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

B. POLITICAL INSTITUTIONS: DEFINITION, PURPOSE, AND GOAL

Political institutions are the organizations in a government that create, enforce, and
apply laws. They often mediate conflict, make (governmental) policy on the economy
and social systems, and otherwise provide representation for the population.

Political Institutions play a role in determining the process for electing leaders; the roles
and responsibilities of the executive and legislature; the organization of political
representation (through political parties); and the accountability and oversight of the
state (Scott & Mcloughlin, 2014).

Political institutions are needed in order to safeguard the interests of citizens of the
country and to ensure the unity and integrity of the nation. It further results in the overall
development of the country.

These institutions and systems play a pivotal role in regulating political, social and
economic engagement and determining how public authority is secured and used (e.g.
constitutions, laws, customs etc.). They also determine how, where and upon whom
resources are allocated and spent.

References:
Armingeon, Klaus. "Political Institutions." Handbook of Research Methods and Applications
in Political Science. Eds. Keman, Hans and Jaap J. Woldendrop. Cheltenham, UK: Edward
Elgar Publishing, 2016. 234–47. Print.
Scott, Z. & Mcloughlin. C. (2014). Political systems (Topic Guide). Birmingham: University
of Birmingham (GSDRC).
II. The Shared Challenges of Institutional Theories: Rational Choice, Historical
Institutionalism, and Sociological Institutionalism

In this slide, you will understand how Political Institutions integrated the political
dynamics as to how it explained long term patterns of political development as a product of
path dependence (Mahoney, 2000), while social choice theorists first turned towards
institutionalism in order to deal with chaos theorems, which predicted irresolvable instability
as a likely product of even moderately complex strategic situations.
It partially reflects institutional-specific issues in theory, and especially in the challenge of
eliciting a coherent definition of institutions from the muddled interconnections of ideas,
judgments, and actions, as well as the social influences that shape all three: Rational
Choice, Historical Institutionalism, and Sociological Institutionalism.

*Note: Yung Rational Choice and Sociological Insti, andon po kay Gia.

B. Historical Institutionalism

Historical Institutionalism began with a different intent and mission—securing

some space for the macrohistorical tradition of social inquiry, which was under threat both
from quantitative social science, and from micro-oriented rational choice theories.

In short then, historical institutionalists equivocated between two notions of what

history was. One saw it as a nightmare from which we were struggling to awaken—or more
prosaically, as a vast set of structural givens, which led to fixed but potentially very different
outcomes in different societies, depending on which specific conjuncture of structural factors
a given society had. The other saw history as a process, which was relatively open-ended,
in which institutions did not squat on possibilities as stony near-immovables, but instead
changed over time as they were worked on by the artful behavior of multiple actors, with the
unexpected congregations of those actions leading to new institutions that presented new
opportunities and new constraints in an endless dance.

Reference: J. Glückler et al. (eds.), Knowledge and Institutions, Knowledge and Space
13, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-75328-7_2