e ‘new institutionalism’ is a term that now appears with growing frequency in
political science. However, there is considerable confusion about just what the
‘new institutionalism’ is, how it differs from other approaches, and what sort of
promise or problems it displays. The object of this essay is to provide some preliminary
answers to these questions by
reviewing recent work in a
burgeoning
literature.
Some of the ambiguities surrounding the new institutionalism can be dispelled if
we recognize that it does not constitute a unified body of thought. Instead, at
least three different analytical approaches, each of which calls itself a ‘new institutionalism,’
have
appeared
over the past fifteen years. We label these three
schools
of thought: historical institutionalism, rational choice institutionalism,
and
sociological institutionalism.
1
All of these approaches developed in reaction
to the behavioral perspectives that were influential during the 1960s and 1970s
and all seek to elucidate the role that institutions play in the determination of social
and
political
outcomes. However, they paint quite different pictures of the
political
world.
In the sections that follow, we provide a brief account of the genesis of each
school and characterize what is distinctive about its approach to social and political
problems. We then compare their analytical strengths and
weaknesses,
focusing
on
the stance that each adopts toward two issues fundamental to any institutional
analysis, namely, how to construe the relationship between
institutio