Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-gvvz8 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-26T08:15:12.411Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Do We Really Need a New ‘Constructivist Institutionalism’ to Explain Institutional Change?

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  09 June 2011

Stephen Bell
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Rational choice, historical institutionalism and sociological institutionalism are under criticism from a new ‘constructivist institutionalism’ – with critics claiming that established positions cannot explain institutional change effectively, because agents are highly constrained by their institutional environments. These alleged problems in explaining institutional change are exaggerated and can be dealt with by using a suitably tailored historical institutionalism. This places active, interpretive agents at the centre of analysis, in institutional settings modelled as more flexible than those found in ‘sticky’ versions of historical institutionalism. This alternative approach also absorbs core elements of constructivism in explaining institutional change. The article concludes with empirical illustrations, mainly from Australian politics, of the key claims about how agents operate within institutions with ‘bounded discretion’, and how institutional environments can shape and even empower agency in change processes.

Type
Research Article
Information
British Journal of Political Science , Volume 41 , Issue 4 , October 2011 , pp. 883 - 906
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2011

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

1 Lowndes, Vivian, ‘The Institutionalist Approach’, in David Marsh and Gerry Stoker, eds, Theory and Methods in Political Science (London: Palgrave, 2010), pp. 60–79CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

2 Hay, Colin, ‘Ideas, Interests and Institutions in the Comparative Political Economy of Great Transformations’, Review of International Political Economy, 11 (2004), 204–226CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Blyth, Mark, Great Transformations: Economic Ideas and Institutional Change in the Twentieth Century (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Schmidt, Vivien, ‘Taking Ideas and Discourse Seriously: Explaining Change Through Discursive Institutionalism as the Fourth “New Institutionalism” ’, European Political Science Review, 2 (2010), 1–25CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

3 Parsons, Craig, ‘Constructivism and Interpretive Theory’, in Marsh and Stoker, eds, Theory and Methods in Political Science, pp. 80–98Google Scholar, at p. 80.

4 Pierson, Paul, ‘The Limits of Design: Explaining Institutional Origins and Design’, Governance, 13 (2000), 475–499CrossRefGoogle Scholar, pp. 490 and 493.

5 Pierson, ‘The Limits of Design’; Pierson, Paul, ‘Increasing Returns, Path Dependence, and the Study of Politics’, American Political Science Review, 94 (2000), 251–267CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Mahoney, James, ‘Path Dependence in Historical Sociology’, Theory and Society, 29 (2000), 507–548CrossRefGoogle Scholar; North, Douglas, Institutions, Institutional Change and Economic Performance (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1990)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

6 Schwartz, Hermann, ‘Down the Wrong Path: Path Dependence, Increasing Returns and Historical Institutionalism’ (unpublished paper available from the author, 2004), p. 1Google Scholar.

7 Hay, Colin and Wincott, Daniel, ‘Structure, Agency and Historical Institutionalism’, Political Studies, 46 (1998), 951–957CrossRefGoogle Scholar, p. 952; Olson, Johan P., ‘Change and Continuity: An Institutional Approach to Institutions and Democratic Government’, European Political Science Review, 1 (2009), 3–32CrossRefGoogle Scholar, p. 3. Also, see Guy Peters, B., Pierre, Jon and King, Desmond S., ‘The Politics of Path Dependency: Political Conflict in Historical Institutionalism’, Journal of Politics, 67 (2005), 1275–1300CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

8 Crouch, Colin, Capitalist Diversity and Change (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005), p. 4CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

9 Steinmo, Sven and Thelen, Kathleen, ‘Historical Institutionalism in Comparative Perspective’, in Kathleen Thelen, Sven Steinmo and Frank Longstreth, eds, Structuring Politics: Historical Institutionalism in Comparative Analysis (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992), 1–32CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at p. 16.

10 Steinmo, Sven, Taxation and Democracy (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1993), p. 12Google Scholar.

11 Krasner, Stephen, ‘Approaches to the State: Alternative Conceptions and Historical Dynamics’, Comparative Politics, 16 (1984), 223–246CrossRefGoogle Scholar, p. 234. Also, see Ikenberry, John, ‘Conclusion: An Institutional Approach to American Foreign Economic Policy’, International Organization, 42 (1998), 219–243CrossRefGoogle Scholar, p. 223.

12 Steinmo, and Thelen, , ‘Historical Institutionalism in Comparative Perspective’, p. 15Google Scholar.

13 Hay, and Wincott, , ‘Structure, Agency and Historical Institutionalism’, p. 952Google Scholar.

14 From Wrong, Dennis, ‘The Over-socialized Conception of Man in Modern Sociology’, American Sociological Review, 26 (1961), 183–193CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Also, see Meyer, John W., ‘World Society, Institutional Theories, and the Actor’, Annual Review of Sociology, 36 (2010), 1–20CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

15 Fligstein, Neil, ‘Social Skill and the Theory of Fields’, Sociological Theory, 19 (2001), 105–125CrossRefGoogle Scholar, p. 110.

16 Hay, Colin, ‘Globalization and Public Policy’, in Martin Rein, Michael Moran and Robert Goodin, eds, Oxford Handbook of Public Policy (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006), pp. 587–606Google Scholar, p. 590.

17 Blyth, Mark, ‘Any More Bright Ideas: The Ideational Turn in Comparative Political Economy’, Comparative Politics, 29 (1997), 229–250CrossRefGoogle Scholar, p. 230.

18 Schmidt, Vivien, ‘Discursive Institutionalism: The Explanatory Power of Ideas and Discourse’, Annual Review of Political Science, 11 (2008), 303–326CrossRefGoogle Scholar, pp. 313–14. Here, Schmidt emphasizes not only the role of subjective ideas, but also inter-subjective ideational phenomena, such as discourse, or the ‘interactive processes by which ideas are conveyed’.

19 Schmidt, , ‘Discursive Institutionalism’, p. 314Google Scholar.

20 Schmidt, , ‘Discursive Institutionalism’, p. 314Google Scholar.

21 Schmidt, Vivien, ‘From Historical Institutionalism to Discursive Institutionalism: Explaining Change in Comparative Political Economy’ (paper given at the annual meeting of the American Political Science Association, Boston, Mass., 2008)Google Scholar.

22 Schmidt, , ‘Discursive Institutionalism’, p. 316Google Scholar.

23 Hay, , ‘Globalization and Public Policy’, p. 603Google Scholar, emphasis added.

24 Blyth, Mark, Great Transformations: Economic Ideas and Institutional Change in the Twentieth Century (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), p. 17CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

25 Blyth, , Great Transformations, p. 17Google Scholar. See also Hall, Peter, ed., The Power of Economic Ideas: Keynesianism Across Nations (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1989)Google Scholar, and Weir, Margaret and Skocpol, Theda, ‘State Structures and the Possibilities of “Keynesian” Responses to the Great Depression in Sweden, Britain and the United States’, in Peter B. Evans, Dietrich Rueschemeyer and Theda Skocpol, eds, Bringing the State Back In (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985), pp. 107–168CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

26 Blyth, , Great Transformations, p. 17Google Scholar.

27 Blyth, , Great Transformations, p. 270Google Scholar.

28 Blyth, , Great Transformations, p. 270Google Scholar.

29 Blyth, , Great Transformations, p. 27Google Scholar.

30 Blyth, , Great Transformations, p. 251Google Scholar.

31 Blyth, , Great Transformations, p. 15Google Scholar.

32 Kurt Jacobsen, John, ‘Much Ado about Ideas: The Cognitive Factor in Economic Policy’, World Politics, 47 (1995), 283–310CrossRefGoogle Scholar, p. 297. In Hay, Colin, ‘Ideas, Interests and Institutions in the Comparative Political Economy of Great Transformations’, p. 210Google Scholar, Blyth's work is deemed: ‘The overly parsimonious conception of crisis as moments of Knightian uncertainty may, in the end, obscure more than it reveals, turning the moment of crisis into something of a black box’.

33 Blyth, , Great Transformations, p. 29Google Scholar.

34 Hay, , ‘Globalization and Public Policy, p. 65Google Scholar; Blyth, , Great Transformations, p. 208Google Scholar.

35 Hay, , ‘Globalization and Public Policy, p. 64Google Scholar.

36 Hay, , ‘Globalization and Public Policy, p. 64Google Scholar.

37 Hay, Colin and Rosamond, Ben, ‘Globalisation, European Integration and the Discursive Construction of Economic Imperatives’, Journal of European Public Policy, 9 (2002), 147–167CrossRefGoogle Scholar, p. 147, emphasis added.

38 Blyth, , Great Transformations, p. 11Google Scholar.

39 Blyth, , Great Transformations, p. 11Google Scholar.

40 Blyth, , Great Transformations, p. 11Google Scholar.

41 Blyth, , Great Transformations, p. 34Google Scholar.

42 Blyth, , Great Transformations, pp. 171–172Google Scholar.

43 Blyth, , Great Transformations, p. 270Google Scholar.

44 For a similar critique on this point, see: Hay, Colin, Political Analysis (Basingstoke, Hants.: Palgrave, 2002), pp. 214–215CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Hay, Colin, ‘Constructivist Institutionalism’, in Rod A. W. Rhodes, Sarah Binder and Bert Rockman, eds, The Oxford Handbook of Political Institutions (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007), pp. 56–74Google Scholar, at p. 70.

45 Schmidt, Vivien, ‘Institutionalism’, in Colin Hay, Michael Lister and David Marsh, eds, The State: Theories and Issues (London: Palgrave, 2006), pp. 98–117CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at p. 113.

46 Schmidt, , ‘Discursive Institutionalism’, p. 314Google Scholar.

47 Schmidt, ‘Taking Ideas and Discourse Seriously’, p. 4.

48 Schmidt, , ‘From Historical Institutionalism to Discursive Institutionalism’, p. 15Google Scholar; Schmidt, , ‘Discursive Institutionalism’, p. 314Google Scholar. This is veering close to the fully interpretivist or postmodern constructivism found in Bevir, Mark and Rhodes, Rod A. W., The State as Cultural Practice (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

49 Schmidt, , ‘Discursive Institutionalism’, p. 316Google Scholar.

50 Adler, Emanuel, ‘Seizing the Middle Ground’, European Journal of International Relations, 3 (1997), 319–363CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

51 ‘Modern constructivism’, as Adler puts it in Adler, , ‘Seizing the Middle Ground’, pp. 321–2Google Scholar.

52 Schmidt, Vivien, ‘Institutionalism’, p. 113Google Scholar. Bevir and Rhodes, from their interpretive or postmodern perspective, criticize Hay on this front, pointing to his ‘clear reluctance to adopt a thorough-going constructivist perspective’ in Bevir and Rhodes, The State as Cultural Practice, p. 37.

53 Hay, , ‘Globalization and Public Policy’, p. 62Google Scholar. On a similar point, see Colin Hay and Daniel Wincott, ‘Structure, Agency and Historical Institutionalism’.

54 Schmidt, , ‘From Historical Institutionalism to Discursive Institutionalism’, p. 1Google Scholar.

55 Blyth, , Great Transformations, p. 23Google Scholar.

56 Schmidt, , ‘Discursive Institutionalism’, p. 316Google Scholar.

57 Yet there are important differences even within the path-dependency approach, some of which allow room for agency and are thus, in principle, compatible with an agent-centred HI framework. Approaches that focus on path dependency can be distinguished by the degree of determinism implied by such dependency. In Sewell, William H., ‘Three Temporalities: Towards an Eventful Sociology’, in Terence J. McDonald, ed., The Historic Turn in the Human Sciences (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1996), pp. 245–280Google Scholar, at pp. 262–3, it is claimed that earlier events will ‘affect’ later outcomes (implying room for contingency and agency), whilst Mahoney writes about ‘event chains that have deterministic properties’ in Mahoney, ‘Path Dependence in Historical Sociology’, p. 507. Pierson is somewhere in between, implying a degree of agency, although his quote above that past choices by agents ‘seriously limit their room to manoeuvre’ implies substantial stickiness in Pierson, ‘The Limits of Design’, pp. 490–3.

58 Crouch, , Capitalist Diversity and Change, p. 3Google Scholar.

59 Schmidt, , ‘Discursive Institutionalism’, p. 315Google Scholar; Searle, John, The Social Construction of Reality (New York: The Free Press, 1995)Google Scholar.

60 Searle, , The Social Construction of Reality, p. 28; Adler, ‘Seizing the Middle Ground’, p. 322Google Scholar.

61 Bevir, Mark and Rhodes, Rod A. W., Interpreting British Politics (London: Routledge, 2003)Google Scholar. Similarly: Bevir and Rhodes, The State as Cultural Practice; McAnulla, Stuart, ‘Challenging the New Interpretivist Approach: Towards a Critical Realist Alternative’, British Politics, 1 (2006), 113–138CrossRefGoogle Scholar, p. 122; Adler, ‘Seizing the Middle Ground’, p. 332.

62 Marsh, Ian, ‘Keeping Ideas in Their Place: In Praise of Thin Constructivism’, Australian Journal of Political Science, 44 (2009), 679–696CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

63 Archer, Margaret, Structure, Agency and the Internal Conversation (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003), p. 2CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

64 Guzzini, Stefano, ‘A Reconstruction of Constructivism in International Relations’, European Journal of International Relations, 6 (2000), 147–182CrossRefGoogle Scholar, p. 148.

65 Hay, and Rosamond, , ‘Globalisation, European Integration and the Discursive Construction of Economic Imperatives’, p. 147Google Scholar.

66 Steinmo, and Thelen, , ‘Historical Institutionalism in Comparative Perspective’, p. 17Google Scholar. For more on this point, see: Cortell, Andrew and Petersen, Susan, ‘Altered States: Explaining Domestic Institutional Change’, British Journal of Political Science, 29 (1999), 177–203CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Streeck, Wolfgang and Thelen, Kathleen, Beyond Continuity: Institutional Change in Advanced Political Economies (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005)Google Scholar.

67 Hay, , ‘Globalisation and Public Policy’, p. 62Google Scholar, emphasis in original. Original quote from Steinmo and Thelen, ‘Historical Institutionalism in Comparative Perspective’, p. 10.

68 In particular: Campbell, John L., ‘Mechanisms of Evolutionary Change in Economic Governance: Interaction, Interpretation and Bricolage’, in Lars Magnusson and Jan Ottoson, eds, Evolutionary Economics and Path Dependence (London: Edward Elgar, 1997), pp. 10–32Google Scholar; Campbell, John L., ‘Ideas, Politics and Public Policy’, Annual Review of Sociology, 28 (2002), 21–38CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Campbell, John L., Institutional Change and Globalization (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2004)Google Scholar.

69 Campbell, , ‘Mechanisms of Evolutionary Change in Economic Governance’, p. 15Google Scholar. Also, see Crouch, Capitalist Diversity and Change; and Crouch, Colin, ‘How to Do Post-Determinist Institutional Analysis’, Socio-Economic Review, 5 (2007), 527–567Google Scholar.

70 Schneiberg, Marc, ‘What's on the Path? Path Dependence, Organizational Diversity and the Problem of Institutional Change in the US Economy’, Socio-Economic Review, 5 (2007), 47–80CrossRefGoogle Scholar, p. 50.

71 Schneiberg, , ‘What's on the Path?’ p. 50Google Scholar.

72 Bell, Stephen and Feng, Hui, ‘Beyond Path Dependence? Agents, Institutions and Path Shaping Change in Chinese Monetary Policy’ (unpublished paper, available from the authors, 2010)Google Scholar.

73 Hall, Peter A.. ‘Politics as a Structured Process in Space and Time’ (paper presented at the Annual Meeting of the American Political Science Association, Washington, D.C., 2010)Google Scholar.

74 A similar argument is made in Culpepper, Pepper D., ‘Institutional Change in Contemporary Capitalism: Coordinated Financial Systems since 1990’, World Politics, 57 (2005), 173–199CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

75 Steinmo, and Thelen, , ‘Historical Institutionalism in Comparative Perspective’, p. 14Google Scholar.

76 Hall, The Power of Economic Ideas; King, Desmond S., Actively Seeking Work? The Politics of Unemployment and Welfare Policy in the US and Great Britain (Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1995)Google Scholar; Weir, Margaret, Politics and Jobs: The Boundaries of Employment Policy in the United States (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1992)Google Scholar.

77 Hattam, Victoria, Labor Visions and State Power: The Origins of Business Unionism in the United States (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1993), p. 12CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

78 Checkel, Jeffrey T., ‘The Constructivist Turn in International Relations Theory’, World Politics, 50 (1998), 324–348CrossRefGoogle Scholar, pp. 340–1.

79 Dennis Wrong, ‘The Over-socialized Conception of Man in Modern Sociology’.

80 Checkel, , ‘The Constructivist Turn in International Relations Theory’, p. 339Google Scholar.

81 On this point, see: Clark, William R., ‘Agents and Structures: Two Views of Preferences, Two Views of Institutions’, International Studies Quarterly, 42 (1998), 245–270CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Sewell, William H., ‘A Theory of Agency: Duality, Agency and Transformation’, American Journal of Sociology, 98 (1992), 1–29CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Steinmo, Taxation and Democracy, p. 2000. Weir uses ‘bounded innovation’ in a somewhat similar way in Weir, Margaret, ‘Ideas and the Politics of Bounded Innovation’, in Kathleen Thelen, Sven Steinmo and Frank Longstreth, eds, Structuring Politics: Historical Institutionalism in Comparative Analysis (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992), pp. 188–216CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

82 Nevertheless, how the deductive parsimony of rational choice approaches are to be melded with such specifications of ‘thick rationality’ remains something of a challenge and the concept of active agents used here (in contrast to at least the standard deductive rational choice models) implies inductive explorations of endogenous preference formation.

83 Mahoney, James and Thelen, Kathleen, ‘A Theory of Gradual Institutional Change’, in James Mahoney and Kathleen Thelen, eds, Explaining Institutional Change: Ambiguity, Agency and Power (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010), pp. 1–37Google Scholar, at pp. 11–13.

84 Streeck, and Thelen, , Beyond Continuity, p. 14Google Scholar.

85 North, Institutions, Institutional Change and Economic Performance.

86 Tsai, Kellee S., ‘Adaptive Informal Institutions and Endogenous Institutional Change in China’, World Politics, 59 (2006), 116–141CrossRefGoogle Scholar, pp. 117–18.

87 Stephen Bell and Hui Feng, ‘The Rise of the People's Bank of China: The Structural Foundations of Institutional Change’ (unpublished).

88 Lieberman, Robert C., ‘Ideas, Institutions, and Political Order: Explaining Institutional Change’, American Political Science Review, 96 (2002), 697–712CrossRefGoogle Scholar, p. 703. See also: Beckert, Jens, ‘Agency, Entrepreneurs, and Institutional Change: The Role of Strategic Choice and Institutionalized Practices in Organization’, Organization Studies, 20 (1999), 777–799CrossRefGoogle Scholar, p. 780; Schneiberg, ‘What's on the Path?’

89 Crouch, ‘How to Do Post-Determinist Institutional Analysis’.

90 Scharpf, Fritz W., Games Real Actors Play: Actor Centered Institutionalism in Policy Research (Boulder, Colo.: Westview, 1997), p. 36Google Scholar. See also: Clemens, Elizabeth S. and Cook, James M., ‘Politics and Institutionalism: Explaining Durability and Change’, Annual Review of Sociology, 25 (1999), 441–466CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

91 Mahoney, and Thelen, , ‘A Theory of Gradual Institutional Change’, pp. 8–14, at p. 14Google Scholar, emphasis in original.

92 Although acknowledging the impact of the past, the ‘contingency’ in Johnson's account is partly a product of the ‘freedom of choice’ opened up by critical junctures, such as the collapse of communist states in Eastern Europe. Change after such junctures, however, is shaped by earlier institutional legacies in the case of ‘passive’ policies, which largely alter or adapt earlier institutions. Alternatively, in the case of ‘active’ policies, which build new institutions, Johnson suggests that change is shaped more by ‘state capacity’, in Johnson, Juliet, ‘Past Dependence or Path Contingency? Institutional Design in Post-communist Financial Systems’, in Grzegorz Ekiert and Stephen E. Hanson, eds, Capitalism and Democracy in Central and Eastern Europe (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 2003), pp. 289–316Google Scholar, at p. 292.

93 Harty, Siobhan, ‘Theorizing Institutional Change’, in André Lacours, ed., New Institutionalism: Theory and Analysis (Toronto: Toronto University Press, 2005), pp. 51–79Google Scholar, at p. 65.

94 Cortell and Petersen, ‘Altered States’.

95 Harty, , ‘Theorizing Institutional Change’, p. 65. For an opposing view to Harty, see Steinmo and Thelen, ‘Historical Institutionalism in Comparative Perspective’, p. 15Google Scholar.

96 Harty, , ‘Theorizing Institutional Change’, p. 65Google Scholar.

97 Blyth, , Great Transformations, p. 8Google Scholar.

98 Harty, ‘Theorizing Institutional Change’.

99 See Lindner, Johannes, ‘Institutional Stability and Change: Two Sides of the Same Coin’, Journal of European Public Policy, 10 (2003), 912–935CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

100 Hay, , ‘Globalization and Public Policy’, p. 65Google Scholar.

101 Katznelson, Ira, ‘Periodization and Preferences: Reflections on Purposive Action in Comparative Historical Social Science’, in James Mahoney and Dietrich Reuschemeyer, eds, Comparative Historical Analysis in the Social Sciences (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2003), pp. 270–304CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at p. 283.

102 Campbell, Institutional Change and Globalization; although Schmidt agrees that the ‘shift in historical institutionalism … to incremental or evolutionary approaches has gone a long way toward overcoming institutional stickiness order to account for change’, she still maintains (erroneously) that ‘problems remain’ and alleges that HI has no agent-centred account; see Schmidt, ‘From Historical Institutionalism to Discursive Institutionalism’, p. 1.

103 Thelen, Kathleen, How Institutions Evolve: The Political Economy of Skills in Germany, Britain, Japan and the United States (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Streeck and Thelen, Beyond Continuity; Campbell, Institutional Change and Globalization; Mahoney and Thelen, ‘A Theory of Gradual Institutional Change’.

104 Thelen, Kathleen, ‘How Institutions Evolve: Insights from Comparative Historical Analysis’, in James Mahoney and Dietrich Rueschemeyer, eds, Comparative Historical Analysis in the Social Sciences, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003), pp. 208–240CrossRefGoogle Scholar, p. 225.

105 ‘Layering’, ‘conversion’ and ‘bricolage’ are terms found in Campbell, Institutional Change and Globalization, and in Streeck and Thelen, Beyond Continuity. Harty's point is made in Harty, ‘Theorizing Institutional Change’, p. 60.

106 Thelen, Kathleen, ‘Historical Institutionalism in Comparative Perspective’, Annual Review of Political Science, 2 (1999), 369–404CrossRefGoogle Scholar, p. 384; Pontussen, Jonas, ‘From Comparative Public Policy to Political Economy: Putting Institutions in Their Place and Taking Interests Seriously’, Comparative Political Studies, 28 (2005), 117–147CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

107 For the view that ‘crises propel change’, see Krasner, ‘Approaches to the State’. For reinforced path dependency, see Pierson, ‘Increasing Returns, Path Dependence, and the Study of Politics’, as well as Pierson, ‘The Limits of Design’. For structural environmental changes, refer to Mahoney and Thelen, ‘A Theory of Gradual Institutional Change’.

108 Jessop, Bob, State Theory: Putting Capitalist States in Their Place (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1990)Google Scholar. See also Hay, Colin, Re-Stating Social and Political Change (Buckingham: Open University Press, 1996)Google Scholar.

109 Bell and Feng, The Rise of the People's Bank of China.

110 Pontussen, , ‘From Comparative Public Policy to Political Economy’, p. 126Google Scholar.

111 Archer, , Structure, Agency and the Internal Conversation, p. 2Google Scholar.

112 Adler, , ‘Seizing the Middle Ground’, p. 330; McAnulla, ‘Challenging the New Interpretivist Approach’, p. 121Google Scholar, emphasis in original.

113 See Archer, Margaret, Realist Social Theory: The Morphogenetic Approach (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1995), p. 197CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Archer, Margaret, ‘For Structure: Its Reality, Properties and Powers: A Reply to Antony King’, Sociological Review, 48 (2000), 464–472, p. 465CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Archer, , Structure, Agency and the Internal Conversation, p. 2Google Scholar.

114 Margaret Archer, Realist Social Theory.

115 Archer, , Realist Social Theory, p. 1Google Scholar.

116 Wendt, Alexander, ‘The Agent–Structure Problem in International Relations Theory’, International Organization, 41 (1987), 335–370CrossRefGoogle Scholar, p. 359.

117 Wendt, , ‘The Agent–Structure Problem in International Relations Theory’, p. 359Google Scholar.

118 Culpepper, , ‘Institutional Change in Contemporary Capitalism, p. 197Google Scholar.

119 Culpepper, , ‘Institutional Change in Contemporary Capitalism, p. 197Google Scholar.

120 Archer, , ‘For Structure’, p. 465Google Scholar.

121 Archer, , Structure, Agency and the Internal Conversation, p. 7Google Scholar.

122 McAnulla, Stuart, ‘Making Hay with Actualism? The Need for a Realist Concept of Structure’, Politics, 25 (2005), 31–38CrossRefGoogle Scholar, p. 32.

123 See Bell, Stephen, Australia's Money Mandarins: The Reserve Bank and the Politics of Money (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, chaps 4 and 5.

124 Paul Kelly, ‘The Reserve Can Bank on Independence’, The Australian, 16 August 2000.

125 This viewpoint is elaborated in Hay, Colin, ‘Narrating Crisis: The Discursive Construction of the “Winter of Discontent’’ ’, Sociology, 30 (1996), 253–277CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

126 Bell, , Australia's Money Mandarins, p. 54Google Scholar.

127 Fraser, Bernie, ‘Understanding Australia's Foreign Debt and the Solutions’, Reserve Bank of Australia Bulletin (August 1990), p. 13Google Scholar.

128 Harty, ‘Theorizing Institutional Change’.

129 Hay, , ‘Globalization and Public Policy’, p. 65Google Scholar.

130 Probably the frankest statement of the new resolve came from (then Deputy Governor) Ian Macfarlane in 1992: ‘It may have been possible to have a somewhat smaller recession if all the policy guns had been quickly turned towards maximum expansionary impact. But if we had followed this course how could people credibly have believed we were serious about reducing inflation? … The central point is that on this occasion we had to run monetary policy somewhat tighter than in earlier recessions and take the risk that the fall in output would be greater than forecast. To do less than this would be to throw away a once-in-a-decade opportunity for Australia to gain an internationally respectable inflation rate’. (Quoted in The Australian, 22 May 1992.)

131 The pattern of institutional interaction can also be important in helping to empower or enable actors. In this case, the relationship between the RBA, the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet (PM&C) and the federal Treasury proved important in providing authoritative backing for the push against inflation and the move towards central bank independence (CBI). Michael Keating, the Head of Prime Minister and Cabinet at the time, argues that PM&C was supportive of the push against inflation, especially when the depths of the recession became obvious. But he also points to Treasury's even greater significance in this context: ‘In my view the Bank did not enjoy sufficient independence at the time that it could have run an anti-inflation policy purely on its own initiative, even if it had been fully united in this endeavour. In fact the role of Treasury was perhaps almost as critical as that of the Bank in this whole policy episode’. (Written communication to the author, 23 August 2003.)

132 Bell, , Australia's Money Mandarins, pp. 77–78Google Scholar.

133 Pitchford, John, ‘A Skeptical View of Australia's Current Account and Debt Problem’, Australian Economic Review, 22 (1989), 5–13CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

134 Pitchford, , ‘A Sceptical View of Australia's Current Account and Debt Problem’, p. 13Google Scholar.

135 The rise of economic rationalism in Australia is told by Pusey, Michael, Economic Rationalism in Canberra (Melbourne: Cambridge University Press, 1991)Google Scholar; and also Bell, Stephen, Ungoverning the Economy: The Political Economy of Australian Economic Policy (Melbourne: Oxford University Press, 1997)Google Scholar.

136 Bell, , Australia's Money Mandarins, p. 67Google Scholar.

137 Bell, , Australia's Money Mandarins, p. 54Google Scholar.

138 Bell, Stephen, ‘The Power of Ideas: The Ideational Mediation of the Structural Power of Business’, (unpublished paper, available from the author, 2010)Google Scholar.

139 Bell, Stephen, ‘How Tight Are the Policy Constraints? The Policy Convergence Thesis, Institutionally Situated Actors and Expansionary Monetary Policy in Australia’, New Political Economy, 10 (2005), 67–92CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

140 Quoted in Steve Burrell, ‘Yes, He's the Gov’, Sydney Morning Herald, 27 November 1999.

141 Sikkink, Kahtryn, Ideas and Institutions: Developmentalism in Brazil and Argentina (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1991), p. 3Google Scholar.

142 Hay, , ‘Globalization and Public Policy’, p. 65Google Scholar.

143 Marx, Karl, ‘The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte’, in David Fernbach, ed., Surveys in Exile: Political Writings, Vol. 2 (New York: Penguin, 1973), p. 147Google Scholar.