Historical Institutionalism In Contemporary Political Science

HISTORICAL INSTITUTIONALISM IN CONTEMPORARY POLITICAL SCIENCE

Paul Pierson and Theda Skocpol Harvard University

Like the character in Moliere’s play who spoke prose all his life without knowing it, contemporary political scientists are familiar with leading examples of historical institutionalist research without necessarily realizing that they exemplify a coherent genre—much as do worksin the other two major research approaches practiced in empirical political science, survey-based behavioralism and rational choice modeling. Historical institutionalists analyze organizational configurations where others look at particular settings in isolation; and they pay attention to critical junctures and long-term processes where others look only at slices of time or short-term maneuvers.Researching important issues in this way, historical institutionalists make visible and understandable the overarching contexts and interacting processes that shape and reshape states, politics, and public policmaking. Stephen Skowronek’s The Politics Presidents Make (1997), for example, reveals recurrent cycles in the nature and success of presidential leadership throughout U.S. history. Anotherlong-term study in American politics, John Mark Hansen’s Gaining Access: Congress and the Farm Lobby, 1919-1981 (1991), develops a model of interest group interaction with government and uses it to explain the emergence, persistence, and ultimate eclipse of the national influence of national farmers’ associations. Ranging across nations as well as time, Peter A. Hall’s 1986 book Governing theEconomy: The Politics of State Intervention in Britain and France explains how institutions and organizations intersect to shape not just the policies of governments but also the strategies and alliances of interest groups and public intellectuals. Painting on even grander canvases, Shaping the Political Arena: Critical Junctures, the Labor Movement, and Regime Dynamics in Latin America by Ruth BerinsCollier’s and David Collier (1991) and Birth of the Leviathan: Building States and Regimes in Early Modern Europe by Thomas Ertman (1997) explain regime dynamics and the varied formation of modern national states. And XXXX [need an IR example: Beth Simmons first book?]. The foregoing, moreover, are but a few of many possible citations, for recent historical institutionalist studies have cumulatedto provide wideranging as well as causally precise understandings of such important matters as transitions to democracy;1 the emergence and demise of authoritarian regimes;2 the intersection of domestic and international politics;3 the origins and development of welfare states;4 social identities in politics;5 the
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See for example Baloyra (1987); Bratton and Van de Walle (1997); Diamond(1999); Downing (1992); Gould (1999); Haggard and Kaufman (1995); Rueschemeyer, Stephens, and Stephens (1992); and Yashar (1997). A comprehensive review of hypothesis-testing and cumulative theoretical development in this field appears in Mahoney (2000c).
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Examples include Doyle (1986); Ekiert (1996); Im (1987); Mahoney (2001); and Snyder (1998). For further review of the literature, see Mahoney(2000c).
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Examples include Friedberg (2000); Gourevitch (1986); Ikenberry (2001); Katzenstein (1978); Krasner (1978); and Simmons (1993).

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roots and development of economic regimes;6 and the causes and consequences of social movements and revolutions.7 Obviously, studies using historical-institutionalists strategies of analysis vary in many important ways. Some are explicitlycomparative, while others analyze trends within just one macro context. Some offer suggestive interpretations (e.g., Hart 1994) while others offer explicit models framed in general terms (e.g., Hansen 1995). Some historical institutionalist studies draw extensively from primary sources (e.g., Gamm 1999), while others synthesize findings from secondary publications (e.g., Skocpol 1979, Downing 1992). And...