Third, this article takes up recent calls to bring ‘historical’ or ‘new’ institutionalism
– a theory which has found application primarily in domestic
and comparative political science – into international relations (IR) (Z¨ urn,
et al., 2007; Fioretos, 2007). In IPE institutional change is often addressed
from a constructivist perspective (see e.g. Broome and Seabrooke, 2007;
Blyth, 2007). I show that issues of institutional dynamics and stasis can
also be explained from a rationalist viewpoint, and that it is worthwhile
for scholars to supplement analyzes based on interests and structure with
historic institutionalism’s perspective on sequence and timing.